Into the hills

October has already been a month to remember.  On the 1st we celebrated Emma’s 23^rdbirthday as well as the Chinese National Day during which we have had no school.  Most of my students took the opportunity to return home for the week while Emma and I played host to a few friends who came down to visit.  On the first night we cooked up some pasta marinara for our friends who arrived late in the evening after a long and grueling bus ride.   The following day we toured the city, taking our friends to all the best spots we have discovered to far.  At one point, my friend Adam and I made our way up to a temple I had not visited since first comming to Xingyi back in August.  The temple sits on a hillside overlooking the city and the mountains beyond.  Even though it rained periodically throughout the week, on that day it was remarkably clear and visibility was good for at least 20 miles.

Xingyi alleyway

Our friends cooked us dinner that evening and we began to pack for our planned trip through the mountains of 10,000 peaks.  This was my first time organizing a multiple night camping trip so naturally I wanted everything to go well.  We packed up tents, rain covers for our packs, a camp stove, gasoline, pots, pans, sleeping bags, and pretty much anything else you can imagine needing.  By the end it felt like we had packed enough to survive a whole month in the wilderness.  In the afternoon on October 3^rdwe threw on our packs and caught the city bus out to 10,000 peaks.

Getting to the trailhead

After my last experience trying to hike through this area, I was prepared to get us to the trail-head where we would make camp the first night.  Getting to the campsite from Xingyi is incredibly simple and an hour after leaving town we were setting up tents and tossing the Frisbee in a clearing above the village that borders the mountains to the West.  After setting up the camp we heard a shout coming from one of the hills.  One of our friends had gone on a hike up the hillside and was a fair ways above us.  He was now trying to get our attention and pointing up the path just beyond our range of vision.  We waited to see what was coming and sure enough a man rounded the bend herding about forty goats.  The whole lot of them trooped through our campsite on their way down to the village.

It was not long before our friend who had been climbing the hill came running down the path.  When he stopped in front of us he caught his breath and said, “I was just being chased by two oxen.”  We looked behind him and saw two giant oxen crashing down the path and making for the village running full tilt.  Their owner, who followed behind at a more sedate pace, seemed unperturbed even as the creatures nearly trampled some local children who had come up to the clearing to see the foreigners.

Right before they bolted

It was close to dusk and we had just managed to build ourselves a fire out of what little wood and thorn-covered branches we could find when a three-wheeled truck came chugging up the path towards us.  At first we thought the driver was about to run over our tents until he abruptly stopped and out popped a hand from the canvas covered back of the vehicle.  This “truck” was really not much more than a modified motorcycle that had been attached to a canvas-roofed cart so naturally we were surprised when people began to pour out of the back.  Maybe eight people in total jumped out of the vehicle, bringing full sized camping backpacks with them.  The first thing they asked was whether or not there was a river nearby and when we replied that there was not they quizzically asked where we got our water.  We told them that we had brought all of ours from home.

Anna and I by the camp fire

We helped them carry their packs a little ways away where they set up their camp.  In the group was a little girl in third grade whose English name was Anna.  Anna was an incredibly precocious kid and later that evening when the Chinese campers went for a walk, she stayed by our campfire and listened to us singing songs and telling ghost stories.  At one point in the evening, Anna even graced us with a Chinese song.  As Americans, we found it unthinkable that a family would feel comfortable leaving their child with a group of complete strangers in the middle of the countryside but that was what they did and Anna stayed with us until she nearly fell asleep.

The next morning we woke up and made pancakes before breaking camp.  When everybody was ready to go we gave our empty bottles and plastic bags to an old lady who had been hovering around our campsite all morning and we set off on our way.  At first, we followed a stone trail up through the mountains marveling at the natural beauty around us.  The mountains here are not as big as back home but they have some incredible karst rock outcroppings and they look like something out of fantasy literature.

Our objective was to hike all the way down to Fei Long Dong and camp at the cave that night so we knew we had to go southwest for most of the day.  Of the mistakes I made that day, neglecting to bring a compass was easily the worst.  It is incredibly easy to get turned around in those mountains and when we came to our first fork in the road, we asked a farmer which was the way to the cave.  That was mistake number two.  The man pointed us up hill and we passed through his farm where we were greeted by no less than five angry sounding dogs some of whom strained against their chains while chickens and geese scattered in front of us.  After the farm followed a stretch of path that was my favorite of the whole day.  We passed cornfields and the ruins of old houses where only the walls remain with neither roof nor doors and all gone to seed inside.  Soon after this however, we lost the trail and had to search for some time before we picked it up again.  That was when we began to bush-wack in earnest.  We walked and walked until we came to some old abandoned farms.  At this point some in our group stopped to look inside these dilapidated buildings while I went down the path to see if it would lead us out of the mountains.  Sure enough I saw that we were close to being out and on the other side.  Back at the houses my friend Laurie was exploring when she happened to peer into a room.  Inside, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin.

Ruins in the hills

When we finally made our way down to road, we asked a group of people which was the way to Fei Long Dong.  They literally all pointed in different directions.  Being certain that we were on the west side of the mountain range and knowing that a left would therefore mean south (the direction of the cave), we set off down the road.  We asked nearly everyone we met if this was the way to the cave.  Some said yes, others said no.  One man told us that the cave was “bu hao” or not good.  As we headed further down the road, things began to look eerily familiar.  When I mentioned this to my companions they said that it was in my head and that we had been heading southwest all day and had to be on west side of the mountains.  After not much longer we rounded a corner and my heart sank.  After six hours of hiking we had made a full circle and were now right back where we had started that very morning.  I had been responsible for getting us to the cave and I had utterly failed.

It took me some time to move past my failure and disappointment.  I realized that while I had thought we had been travelling southwest, in reality we had been traveling southeast.  Consequently when we came out of the mountains and took a left, we were heading north instead of south.  My friends were all very understanding and did not seem in the least bothered by the fact that we had spent the whole day walking in a gigantic circle.  That night we camped in the same spot as the night before and cooked up fajitas using the tortillas I had painstakingly baked for the trip.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and the following morning we got up early, broke camp, and headed back into town.

After that, our friends headed back to their hometowns and I began to clean my house and organize the camping gear.  The hike was wonderful but I am plagued by my own inability to adequately lead my friends to Fei Long Dong.  This is the second time these mountains have thwarted my attempts and now I am sure it will not be the last.  I have every intention of returning soon to finish the job and locate the path through the mountains.