Old Charioteer's Road: 车师古道

You will start noticing a pattern in my posts very soon. A word to the wise: if you have no interest in hiking, stop reading now.

I went hiking again.

It was with the same group of friends and a bunch of other people. The bunch of other people thing is pretty unavoidable in this country. Wherever you go, there are five hundred others.

We got to the trailhead in an unconventional way due to its inaccessability. We were supposed to be driven to our campsite that night and start hiking in the morning.

Unfortunately, the truck couldn't get past a certain point, and just as night had fallen we were already getting off the truck with quite a walk ahead of us. Wild rumors were flying around about how far we had to go: three kilometers? ten kilometers? Some said we could get there in two hours, some said we would be walking till dawn.

The pessimistic predictions ended up being more accurate, and I began wondering as we once again found ourselves running across loose rock in the pitch black, if I am not bad luck on backpacking trips. I started to wholeheartedly believe this after our fourth river crossing: sandals on, pants rolled up, and up to my knees in snow runoff ice-cold river water in the middle of the night.

The bad luck did not stop with that entirely. We unfolded out of our sleeping bags after a couple hours of sleep the next morning and tried to face the day with an optimistic disposition, but things did not improve.

We discovered our guide was incompetent. There was one guide and several assistant guides. Usually, if there's a big group of hikers, the guide goes at the front to lead the way and there's at least one person bringing up the rear. On this trip, everyone who knew the way was in the back and we were running all over the mountain like mad.

The scenery didn't fail to impress, though, with grand views of snow-capped peaks and rocky faces plummeting down to the deserted valley we were making our way through.

The going was rough, but not impossible. Unfortunately, some of the less fit people on the hike were lagging hours behind me, even after hiring locals to haul their bags on horseback.

That day was the most difficult, and I accidentally ended up so far ahead of everyone that come nightfall, my friends couldn't find me, I could find my friends, and I ended up sharing a tent with another swift hiker and waiting for them to appear on the horizon in the morning.

Appear they did, full of concern and reproaches, and we started out on the last day. My bad luck continued to follow us around. Much of the team lagged far, far behind, and when we finally made it out to the bus, we still had hours to wait for the ones stumbling along in pain somewhere up the mountain.

A few of the guys used this opportunity to stop in at a little store there, buy some liquor, and get obscenely drunk. One charming young fellow ended up making a big scene replete with kicking, crying, and screaming, refusing to get on the bus and yelling so incomprehensibly that my Chinese buddies couldn't catch all of what he was saying either. We were glad to be going home, and even gladder when he passed out.

Yet another unlucky hiking adventure with Tiffany. Stay tuned.