How Did I Get Here?

The morning I left Litang the industrious street cleaners were already at work: two tubby pot-bellied pigs sniffing at the pavement curb and meticulously consuming all the rubbish in their way. It gives recycling a whole new dimension…

The bus dropped me off in Kangding, a forgetable but convenient cross roads town used for passing through and not discovering. The town equivalent of a one-night stand. Nestled deep in the folds of a valley, its life force is a torrentious river coursing through its centre.
The only notable event happened on my last night just before I fell asleep. I kept on hearing scraping, shuffling noises outside the window, I thought it was people coming back to their rooms. Finally I got up and looked through my window which overlooked a narrow alley. To my utter horror I looked down on a man’s head, climbing up the wall (I was on the 2nd floor), towards my open window. With the volume pumped up to max, my voice was my only weapon: “Hey, what are you doing??”, I hollered at the faceless intruder. Thank god spiderman didn’t think it necessary to answer my idiotic enquiery into his crepuscular activities. It was enough to change his mind and he lurched onto the other side of the alley wall, scrambled onto the roof, and melted back into the amorphous darkness.
I had to tie the window closed with my shoelaces, as the iron pegs were missing (from a previous burglary?). While doing so it dawned on me that I have no problems in dealing with a prospective burglar, but confronted with a cockroach in my room, I’m reduced to a pathetic, hysterical wreck who has to accost complete strangers to kill or get rid of the harmless ‘tresspasser’.
I’ll be the one in the safari park that would rather throw herself into the jaws of a lion than stay in the car with a grasshopper. [read on]

Fri-Sat, 1-2 June 2007

I heard about the Tiger Leaping Gorge before even setting foot in China. So has everyone else it seems. It’s one of the deepest gorges in the world, measuring 3900m from the waters of the Yangzi River to the snow capped mountains.
So, on the morning of my departure, I was a bit apprehensive about the two day trek, not wanting to share the world renowned scenery with stampeding crowds.
I need not have worried. 3 hours later, and no crowds in sight, I stepped from the minibus and onto a quiet footpath leading into the gorge. [read on]