Kangding (Dartsendo) County

KANGDING (DARTSENDO) COUNTY

If you don't have time to travel deeply into Kham, don't worry, because there are a great many really super places to visit inside Kangding County. The county seat (which is also the capital of the prefecture) has a large Chinese population, but the countryside is very traditional and very Tibetan. Kangding has high mountains, grasslands inhabited by nomads, fanciful castle-like houses, and rich farms. There are plenty of monasteries in Kangding, too, and colorful festivals.

In the County Seat

Kangding's biggest annual festival is on the 8th day of the 4th month of the Chinese calendar, and features activities on Racehorse Hill, plus ten days of street fair that fills up the whole town. In Kangding you should drop in on the Kangding Nationalities Handicraft Workshop, located on the same street as the bus station, on the opposite side, a few minutes' walk toward the center of town. They have a small showroom downstairs; go upstairs to see craftsmen at work making traditional Tibetan jewelry, household items such as tea churns, and Buddhist ritual items.

While staying in Kangding town, you can stretch your legs on Guoda Mountain, a good warm-up if you're planning serious trekking or climbing later on.

A good, calming place to hang out and find English-speaking locals is the Jiangshan Tea Garden. It's run by Mr. Ang Luo, who lived in the U.K. for a while and speaks pretty good English. He has email and you can write him at js@ganzi.scsti.ac.cn. To find his tea house, as you exit the big Kangding Binguan (hotel) go out past the monastery on your left, and make a left turn onto the big street paralleling the river (do not cross the river). Walk down for about ten minutes until you come to a really big street coming in from the left. On the corner on your left hand is the tea garden, which is reached by going into the lobby of a fairly anonymous looking building and making a sharp right turn once inside.

Excursions

A 15-yuan bus ride from Kangding City (Dartsendo) gets you to Tagong (Lhagang) which is a very wild-west kind of Khampa town with a sacred mountain, a college of Buddhism (the largest in Sichuan) and a huge Sakyapa monastery. At the college you might run into a Hong Kong Chinese who is studying here and knows a lot about the area. Tagong's facilities are primitive--forget about hot showers. There is a guest house in the government compound on the west side of the highway in the town's center. Dorje Tashi Rinpoche runs a model orphanage nearby; they are glad for visitors; to find it, look for a new, ornate gate leading into a compound with a tall new building on the right side. If you planned ahead and picked up a few toys or kid's books in Kangding, they will be thrilled to receive them.

From Tagong town there are trails heading off in various directions to different pasture lands. Circumambulation of Zhara Mountain takes somewhere between 10 and 30 days, depending on who you ask. One can trek from here to Mo Ge Tso (a lake north of Kangding City) in probably two days--they are planning to put a road through, so trek now while you still can.

Mo Ge Tso Lake is such a popular destination that they have made the area into a park, complete with ticket sellers at the entrance. That said, it's still worth it. Don't stop at the lower lake (where the crowds are) but keep on going to the upper lake, which has beautiful sand bars and pristine scenery. There are now public buses to Mo Ge Tso, or you could hire a taxi. If the road connecting the lower and upper lakes is in bad shape, you will need to walk about an hour and a half. There is a very lovely hotspring pond between them--not so good for bathing but the waters of two springs are said to be good for the stomach and eyes respectively. From Mo Ge Tso you can trek 1-2 days past the south flank of Zhara Latse mountain to Tagong.

About 30 minutes by bus uphill from Kangding City is a hamlet called Zeduo Tang. From here starts a very well-used trail that crosses the river and heads up a valley toward some snowy mountains. According to Andre Migot, who traveled this way in 1947, this trail is the old caravan trail by which all traffic headed out of Kangding before the highway existed. It starts by some farmhouses about 500 meters of switchbacks past the place where you see a Zeduo Tang signboard by the side of the highway. Theoretically you could walk all the way across Kham from here. One nice 2-3 day hike that starts here goes to Jiagenba. When you get back there are some seedy hotspring baths at Zeduo Tang, and a couple of small restaurants. The baths are not as nice as those in Kangding City at Erdaoqiao, but make a nice finish to a long hike.

Elsewhere in Kangding County is Hailougou--a glacier park at the foot of Gongga Shan that's very popular with Chinese tourists. It makes a great starting point for treks in the Gongga Shan region.

For the really adventurous, you can try to get to Kazhi Gonpa (Gao'er Si in Chinese). This is a collection of 200-year-old stone buildings deep in a valley with about 100 monks, Sakyapa. To get there, take the bus toward Yajiang. The bus takes about four hours to go over Tsedo La, pass through the town of Xinduqiao, and climb through forest to another pass. Just at the pass, look for a dirt road leaving the main highway going left. Get off the bus here. A little ways in on this dirt road you will have a spectacular view of Gongga Shan--IF the weather is clear. Walk about 1 km to Kazhi Monastery, which is only just barely in Kangding County. The monks will be utterly amazed to see you. Bring some food and compensate for lodging with a cash donation to the monastery.