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Batang County: Trekking with a Tibetan Flavour

Sichuan Province’s Batang County Town is usually viewed as little more than a gateway to the Tibet Autonomous Region border, just 30 kilometres to its west. It’s a remarkable oversight, because the mountains here offer the most beautiful, unspoiled trekking I’ve experienced in China.

Our adventure began in Zhongza from where we headed due north to Batang, about 105 kilometres away.

The sealed highway to Batang turns abruptly west at Zhongza, a town on the frontier between several cultures: Han and Tibetan, valley and mountain, settled and transient. The main street is lined with tiled concrete boxes typical of any Chinese small town, but behind these new structures are solid homes in the local country style—two-storey Tibetan fortresses clad in red or ochre adobe, sometimes both colours alternating in metre-wide vertical stripes. Clapped-out buses and trucks cough exhaust over shoppers and Tibetan biker-cowboys, the latter wrapped in the cloaks and grime worn by men of the high plains. Our path led us into their world.

It begins as a dirt track shared by bikers and the odd four-wheel drive, plus peasants on foot for whom motorised transport is still an extravagance. This trail covers the first 45 kilometres of the journey, ending at the village of Donglanduo, from where the only way forward is on foot or horseback. It’s possible to persuade a villager to give you a roof for the night, but better to stop early at Yarigong, where a nameless guesthouse hosts an eclectic crowd of itinerant monks and traders dealing in the mountains’ medicinal herbs and wild mushrooms. It's rare to experience a town with such an old-world feeling. The economic surge has spread modern communications to many wild reaches of China’s far west, but life here moves to rhythms unhurried by bus timetables or telephone calls. It’s the kind of place where new friends tell you to stay another day—not because there’s anything particular to do but because, well, what’s the rush?

There’s no way of speeding on from Donglanduo. From here, the trail narrows into a footpath that leads 30 kilometres to the pass over Zangbala Snow Mountain, then another 30 kilometres down the other side to Batang County Town. It’s quite possible you won’t meet a single person in the interval.

That’s not to say the mountain is totally uninhabited. Herders run their yaks on several magnificent pastures that lie up to 4,400 metres above sea level. The best of these are all on the south side of Zangbala, starting about 15 kilometres north of Donglanduo. The pastures are dotted with wooden huts built as temporary accommodation for the herders, but after about 22 kilometres, there is what looks like a large settlement, but this, too, is likely to be empty when the herds are elsewhere. With the grass grazed short and a clear river running off the great mountain, I’ve seen few finer or more peaceful camping grounds. Yet even here it’s possible to stumble across discarded plastic bottles and other human detritus. While cooking at camp I found the discharged case of a rifle bullet in the grass; my partner wondered, “What do you think they were shooting at?” It was a question that I found particularly disturbing after dark, away from the campfire, answering the call of nature.

The second day brings you to the pass over Zangbala, which at 4,890 metres is not a great deal lower than the rocky peak itself, which measures 5,113 metres above sea level. Despite the great altitude, it’s best to avoid my mistake and find a campsite early. After the gentle climb and broad acres to the south, the north side of Zangbala is far less hospitable. There are only a few, much smaller pastures below the pass, after which the trail follows a new river into a gully that is not a good place for a night’s sleep. For one thing, there are no flat spaces; for another, your tent is surrounded by boulders and tree trunks swept down during previous flash floods, leaving you wondering what, exactly, you’re supposed to do if it starts raining.

Such floods have left their mark on Batang County Town, part of which was swept away entirely a few years ago. After the days on Zangbala, it’s something of a shock to come upon a relatively large and modern town, which appears almost all at once as the gully-trail abruptly bends and widens. Only minutes after that first sight, you’re already on a concrete road through the old quarter. Another five minutes and traditional Tibetan architecture gives way to an optimistic vision of “modern” Tibet. The freshly sealed southern highway from Chengdu to Lhasa cuts between bright new buildings and past a “culture square” designed to show off Batang’s famous Tibetan dances. Below the highway, more new construction eats into the town's orchards—this is an unusually fertile place, celebrated throughout Tibet for the excellence of its climate and produce. Traditionally famous for peaches, pears, grapes and walnuts, Batang today is perhaps best known for apples, first planted by the American missionary Albert Shelton in the early years of the 20th century. Tibet isn’t normally associated with good eating, but Batang’s basics are so good that it’s hard to go wrong. And after a 100-kilometre trek, there’s scope for a touch of luxury. Unlike Tibetans of the great grasslands, those in Batang have no qualms about serving and eating fish, in particular the vaguely prehistoric-looking shibazi, cooked in tomatoes and peppers, then held by the head while sucking off the flesh back to the tail. Like Batang itself, it’s a taste of Tibet, but not as most tourists know it.