Around Tacheng

April 15 2013: Around Tacheng

We spent two nights in the lodge, to give us the opportunity to explore this lovely mountainous area between the Yangtze and the Mekong rivers.  It’s an area full of ethnic culture with Tibetan, Naxi and Lisu villages still following their traditional life styles. 

Morning Has Broken!

We spent the morning taking an interesting hike up through the small village by the lodge and into the hills.  Met lots of interesting people in the fields, some fixing walls, one tending bee-hives and also a group of women and a baby cutting ribbons out of old cloth and plastic to act as bird-scarers for the many vines that are being planted in the region, taking the place of corn – it seems this part of Yunnan has exactly the right climate for wine, whereas corn grows anywhere! 

Exterior of lodge

After lunch, we had couple of hours R&R (zzzzzz!) before being taken to visit the homestead of one of the local village families.  We were greeted by an ancient uncle, a venerable monk with the sweetest smile, who presented us all with white silk scarves.  The rest of the family then came to introduce themselves, the older couple, three daughters and two of their husbands; the children were at school. 

The ladies were cooking up a storm in the kitchen and laid an enormous feast of Tibetan breads, cakes, pastries, honey, doughnuts, and the fried tops of small ferns, curled round to look just like caterpillars!!!  We did our best to  eat up, but as fast as we did, they just brought more! And then brought a couple of savory pork and veg dishes, after all the sweet stuff.  We were given salty Tibetan tea to drink, made with yak butter – an acquired taste!!  They were so friendly and seemed to really enjoy the whole thing as much as we did

Butter Tea - an acquired taste!

We were then encouraged to tour the courtyard and farm and animal area – a fine bull, well tethered!, some pigs and piglets, a granary, another kitchen for preparing the animal feed, and a farmhouse mog, a right scaredy-cat! 

As we were about to leave and say our goodbyes, Mama-san decided to offer us a wee dram of her home-made barley wine, more like a schnapps or grappa – it was crystal clear, and slipped down well, but we declined her kind offer of a taste of her rice wine too!  It was a really super experience, didn’t feel touristy at all, we just felt very honoured to share their time and produce.

Family Trip To Lhasa

Love The Pin-Up!

So on home for our delicious supper, the last one with wine before we climb up to 3600m/12,000ft high (we were at 2,200m at this point), where alcohol is not recommended!