Mekong Diaries: Day 3

Day 3

Yushu to Zaduo.

Last night was a rough sleep, getting used to having less oxygen. Leaving Yushu in the rain construction equipment teems on the walls of the Mekong’s valley. On this cold gravel road we see a chain of pilgrims making their way towards Lhasa in between the roaring bulldozers, graders and trucks. In a long line they each progress by flings themselves down, sliding along the cold rough road, stand for three … … and fling themselves down again.

We spoke with one man who explained that his journey would take 6 months from Yushu to Lhasa, and every inch will be performed in this aesthetes’ masochistic ritual. He explained that these pilgrims pray for everyone, and everything. Their prayers are intended even for the smallest bugs in the prairie.

We continue on over hills shadowing a little stream which soon delivers us to the first length of the Mekong River we have seen in Tibet, a wide bend where the small stream mixes its clear water with the turgid Mekong.

In summer the river is red, and in winter blue as the warm weather melts the ice lifting the earth into the waters. Continuing upstream we encounter a surprise small dam and hydroelectric station, surely the highest hydroelectric power station on the river.

As we continue we stop at a place where the reservoir of the Mekong’s water laps at the side of wide flat grassland. Here a black tent and two highly decorated white tents have made a camp. We talk with the husband and father and the mother, washing clothes in the river. Continuing on from the Nomad’s camp we soon reach Zaduo, a muddy strange town at the edge of the times, where the wildness of its shifting population, unwashed nomad cowboys with decorated chopper style motorbikes, long black hair and slouch hats. The Mekong races through town, eating at the rocky soil. It is a world of mud and money, as the river’s water gathers in parallel to the region’s wealth here. The world in every direction of a construction site, the works of man, our roads, bridges, dams and buildings, tiny before the immense projects of nature, the crumbling mountains, global weather patterns and continental rivers being born.

We go to bed with plans in our minds.