My Sichuan West Travel Diary,Written in English on a Whim

Alright, so here’s the thing — I’m a Chinese travel blogger. I write in Chinese. But today, sitting in a bumpy van somewhere between Tagong and Litang, I thought, why not write this one in English? Maybe because the driver is playing some Tibetan rap I can't understand, maybe because I just had yak butter tea that tasted like liquid smoke, or maybe because my brain is just fried from the altitude. Either way, here we go.

Day one was Chengdu to Kangding. Classic route, nothing fancy. The highway tunnels are insane — you drive through a mountain for like ten minutes and /e out the other side into /pletely different weather. Kangding itself is... fine? It's crowded and kind of touristy but the river running through town is loud and fast and I like that. I had hot pot with way too much Sichuan pepper. My lips went numb. Not my best decision before a long drive the next day.

The real stuff started on day two. Xinduqiao. Everyone calls it "the photographer's corridor" which sounds super cheesy until you actually see it. Golden poplar trees, Tibetan houses with those flat roofs, yaks just... everywhere. Not even doing anything. Just standing there like they own the place, which honestly they probably do.

I pulled over about six times to take photos. Some local kids ran up and asked for candy. I gave them some crackers instead. They seemed happy enough.

Then came the mountain pass. I keep forgetting the name — Zheduo, maybe? The road was wrapped in fog so thick I couldn't see the edge. My driver, a local guy named Tashi, just hummed along to some song and said "no problem, no problem." Meanwhile I'm gripping the door handle pretending to be cool about it. I was not cool about it.

Tagong was where it finally hit me. Not the altitude — well, also the altitude — but the whole vibe. The grasslands stretch out forever and the monastery is this giant gold thing just sitting there against the mountains. I sat on a hill for maybe an hour doing nothing. A monk walked past and smiled. Two yaks fought over something I couldn't see. The wind made that sound it makes when there's nothing to stop it for a thousand miles.

I tried to write in my journal that night but my head was pounding. Altitude sickness is real, folks. Drink water. Then drink more water. Then maybe some glucose stuff the locals sell in little bottles.

Litang was next. You know, that town everyone calls "the city in the sky"? It's over 4000 meters and you feel every single meter of it. Walking up a short staircase to my guesthouse took me like three minutes. I had to stop twice. Embarrassing but true.

But the sky there — I'm not exaggerating — it's bluer than any blue you've seen. Like someone turned up the saturation on the whole world. The prayer flags snap in the wind so hard they sound like applause.

I met a French backpacker at a small noodle shop. He'd been on the road for seven months. We talked in broken English about what we missed from home. He missed bread. Real bread, he said, not the sweet stuff. I miss my mom's dumplings. We both agreed that nothing beats a good meal after a long day of doing nothing but looking at mountains.

The thing about writing this in English is that it makes everything feel a bit further away, like I'm telling someone else's story. But it's my story. Me and the yaks and the endless winding roads that make your stomach drop and your heart race all at once.

I don't know if any of this sounds romantic. It shouldn't. Travel in western Sichuan is dusty and cold and sometimes your shower doesn't have hot water and the toilet is just a hole in the ground. But then you look up and see a glacier glowing pink at sunset and suddenly none of that matters.

Anyway. That's my English diary entry for today. Tomorrow we head to Yading, which everyone says will destroy my legs but fix my soul. We'll see about that.

If you're still reading this, go book that trip you keep postponing. Seriously. Just go.

Written on my phone while bouncing along a road that probably isn't on any map, listening to Tibetan rap, wondering if I'll ever be able to breathe normally again.

标签： 川西旅游日记英语