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Hong Kong Highland Exploration Team 2006

Author：Jasmine Ma

Picture：莫炳亮及Hong Kong Highland Exploration Team

Jasmine’s Diary

16 to 18th July Hong Kong , Nanning , Kunming

Eventually we started our journey. The trip was somehow different from the previous arrangement. My father had decided to close the door of his shop temporary and suspend the business during the trip. We had planned to use one and a half months to visit the Western part of China . We would make a move to the Himalayas via Dian-zang Xian , across Front and Rear Tibet to Pamirs Plateau , Khunjerab , then from South Xinjiang to Hongyuan, then back to Hong Kong via Cheng-du and Chong-qing. In fact , the trip would cover three journeys , but we wouldcomplete them in one time. The name of our team was “Yu-Feng” in Chinese , it meant to conquer strong winds and difficulties ahead. Our team members were all equipped with Lexus 470 or Toyota LC100 . All cars looked almost the same and the only difference was the body colour. We had plenty of fun and joke to see people got on the wrong cars by mistake .

The weather on the first day was bad . Roads were flooded like rivers and it was exhausted to drive for a whole day . We could hardly sleep well last night because we were all very excited for the journey and we had headaches to manage our luggage and all kinds of equipment and food stuffs we needed to bring along for camping and the desert climate. We tried our very best to pack as many stuffs as we could in our cars. My father estimated the total extra weight for our stuffs inclusive of 270 litre of petrol would not be less than 1000kg. It was the Hobson’s choice. The cars would be our home outside . I just imagined it would be much better if we could drive another unit of 6-wheel drive which was inside our parking log . I saw my uncle drove that when I was a small girl and I felt it was very stable and it could be another option for our future journeys.

It was raining heavily like floodwater, the cars were tired with excess weight. Roads looked like rivers , the hill slope looked like a waterfall with 3,000 ft in height. The visions ahead were white and blurred and we could only move on slowly….

19th July

We had been suffering from heavy rains in the first three days. That was the only season available for kids to spend the summer holiday for that adventure. We arrived Yun-nan , it was a wonderful place we all loved it. That was a place with the mixture of different cultures and it was also the first place I visited years ago on wheels. When we were about to leave , we discovered there was a railway for small locomotive . My father told me that was running between Yun-nan and Vietnam . I just couldn’t image we were so close to another country. Shortly after that we had passed by a very famous highway – the “Burma Highway” and I recalled the pictures of the American Jeeps and GMC 6 X 6 trucks climbing up that road.

20th July
Heqing . Deqin

We traveled from He-qing to De-qin. Shortly after we left He-qing, we arrived Shangri-la . Shangri-la was known as a Utopia , an ideal community in Asia isolated from the corruptions of civilization . It was really beautiful , but we had only very little time to glance around inside our cars. A vast piece of grassland and lots of beautiful flowers gave us a feeling of geniality and freedom. When we reached the point at the altitude of more than 3,000 m , we stopped and took a look at a mountain at the front with triangular shape .The mountain tip was called “ Virgin Tip” and it was not conquered by human so far. We had now found not only the plastic bags of the chips were all broken , we had the symptom of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) and we needed to release the pressure of our tires and the fuel tanks. De-qin was a city in the mountain and it was the only place with lights at night when we arrived in the midnight.

21st July
Deqin , Zhuka

We departed Yubn-nan for Tibet. When we just arrived Tibet , we had found one of the tires of the No.1 car was flatted and the wheel was damaged as well because we didn’t aware of that in the first beginning. We had some kids blocked our way after we entered the village . We had some messages from our internal radios ( walkie talkies) yelling there were 7 to 8 kids climbing up on our cars. Those kids informed the others fellows to come out when they saw our cars at the front. Some of kids knocked our windows and asked for food. We were kind enough to offer them with candies and that made the situation worse. They were so insatiable to ask for money. They raised two fingers to symbolize for two dollars. Our drivers were very upset about that. The kids just chased at our back and throw stones against us. We escaped ! Eventually , there jumped out with a small kid who was less a meter in height and looked lovely stopped our car at the front. Who were the ring leaders ? Most likely their parents , I guessed.

My father said they were worse than the kids in Africa , at least the African kids were not as bad as throwing stones to visitors passing by.

22nd July
Zuka , Ranniao Lake

I suffered from AMS last night with headaches and vomit. I felt a lot better the next morning. It was not easy to drive on the country roads in Xizang . The roads were full of stones and they were lying in between deep cliffs and riptides and it was hardly to describe how dangerous of that in words . The scenery on the way was very beautiful , as beautiful as Xanadu and it looked like a country park. At night , we had our first camping near the lakeside. We had our camping devices on top of each car and we could experience how good it could be, We had also discovered there were two more broken tires and wheels and we perceived the roads ahead would be even tougher .