Lugu Lake and New Brakes

At least we hope the vans we rode in had new brakes. It is possible that they wore out their current ones on our 7 hour drive. Imagine bad shocks, poorly padded seats, multiple thousand foot cliffs, cobblestone roads with hairpin turns and, of course, no seatbelts, and you will get some sense of what travel is like in this part of China. About half of the road is paved which is convenient for the local farmers. It is harvest season and an asphalt road makes an excellent surface to dry your corn or hay. It also reduces things to one lane of traffic, but apparently this was only considered an issue by us. Fortunately we avoided serious mishap and spent a wonderful weekend at Lugu Lake.

Lugu Lake straddles the Yunnan/Sichuan border and is quite stunning. The locals are mostly Mosuo and Pumi-both Tibetan. We stayed at a wonderful guesthouse on a small island run by a family of three brothers. The two younger brothers enjoyed singing, dancing and beer, while the older brother was the responsible role model with his wife and two small children. A Tibetan monk was staying with the family as well. We spent many hours with them eating, drinking, singing, laughing and rowing across the lake. The language gap was significant, but nothing a good natured cheers! couldn't fix or a resounding "beautiful!". The brothers and monk were fascinated by our UV light water purifier.

Morning and evening meals begin with yak butter tea. We decided this was similar to drinking buttered popcorn. Li loved it. Both nights we ate barbecued vegetables, lake fish and yak meat under the full moon not 5 feet from the water. The brothers joined us for after dinner drinks and singing.

On Saturday we watched the sun rise from above our guesthouse and were treated to a traditional ride in the "pig trough"-a wooden canoe with all the maneuverability of a barge. We paddled out to a small island with a Tibetan temple perched on top and a lone monk, dog and cat in residence. Li and I hung out by the water for the rest of the day to the amusement and wonderment of the locals. Li built castles from rocks in the water and I answered the ubiquitous inquiries about yes, she is Chinese, no her father is not, yes she is my daughter. I really should learn the word for adopted.

Our trip home was delayed by an overloaded truck that got itself stuck in the mud on a hairpin turn. The apparently uncoordinated efforts (at least to us) to get it unstuck, deal with the line of buses and minivans that were backed up and avoid hitting one of the many gawkers was quite a feat. The other three stops we made were clearly to support the relationship the bus driver had with a local restaurant owner and with fruit vendors at a bridge delay crossing the Yangtze.

Pictures to be posted soon. Technical difficulties at the moment. Grrr.