Every summer the green hills of Rebkong are home to unique celebrations during which local Tibetans believe the mountain gods visit villagers — and each other — through human mediums.

Reuters photographer Christina Hu documents the celebrations in the multimedia presentation above. To read the full story click here.

Click here or on the image above to view an audio slideshow from the Namo Monastery.

A five day prayer meeting is temporarily held at a monastery in Tongren, Qinghai province. Monks blessed sweets, fruit and biscuits then distributed to the worshipers, who scrambled to get them.

Click here to view an audio slideshow.

Day 8 - After travelling 4 days from Lhasa Airport, and spending 4 days at 5200 metres, we are all feeling the effects of altitude but mostly suffering from frustration at the lack of information about the Olympic torch. Mark Chisolm, Reuters Cameraman and Producer, Nick Mulvenney, Reuters Correspondent and myself travelled from Beijing on April 25 to Tibet to cover the Olympic torch’s ascent of Mount Everest.       We are currently at a make-shift press centre located near Everest Base Camp. Facilities consist of an extremely good media centre, with amazingly fast internet, a press conference room, that doesn’t provide the media with any information (but I will get onto that later), small basic cabins that offer fairly comfortable beds but are just plain freezing, a dining room with excellent food, and last but certainly not least, the toilet block. Oh wow!! I cannot even begin the try and find the words… so I will leave it at that.

Mountainmen Chisholm, Gray and Mulvenney.

The altitude is a major factor in everything we do. It affects each person differently. Some have a very low percentage of oxygen in their bloodstream, some have a very high heart-rate, some get high blood pressure, many get severe headaches, others stomach problems. But all get breathless after walking just 20 metres and all are very tired. But the effects of altitude are not consistent, and even somebody who has travelled frequently to and from high altitude react differently each time. So the fact that the three of us have managed to feel ok after our schedule of travelling from Beijing, situated at a height of just 50 metres above sea level, to Everest Base Camp at a height of 5200 metres in just 4 days, does make us feel like we have achieved something, even before we have produced any stories. But this is not to say we are in the clear. Acute altitude sickness can hit anytime, even once you are back at normal levels, so we are extremely wary of this achievement.

The days consist of walking around the 500 metre cordon we seem to have been restricted to. Chinese Border Police keep a watch on our moves from several vantage points along the road and surrounding hills. I like to watch the changing weather patterns on the peak of Everest, but you cannot keep photographing it every hour - the weather might change but its shape doesn’t.

The nights are the toughest. The three of us share a small hut made of what looks like recycled paper shavings. Temperatures drop to around minus five degrees, down to maybe minus 15 with the wind factor, and the paper walls are just not thick enough to keep this cold out. But while I am freezing in my bed, all I can think about is how the teams on Everest must be feeling, camped on what some have called a ‘death zone’.

But the biggest frustration is the lack of information regarding the Olympic torch’s whereabouts. The most basic questions like ‘where is it now’ and even ‘how many people are in the team taking it to the top’ are simply not being answered. The real shame is that all the good work that has been done regarding media facilities, especially the mobile phone coverage and internet, is being undermined by the lack of information.

The lack of information combined with the rigours of the altitude, freezing temperatures, absence of washing facilities and the lack of a confirmed depature date means that frustrations are high.. almost as high as the summit of Everest itself.
     
     

     Well……..I don’t believe it!!! It’s happened. If you’ve read my last blog, ‘The Road West of Kangding’ you know that I called that particular road ‘the worst road in the world’. Well….guess what….there is much worse.

     Travelling with Chris Buckley, Reuters Beijing-base correspondent, we flew to Chengdu in Sichuan Province in China’s south-west to try and get into areas where we had heard that violent demonstrations regarding Tibet had occurred. The reports stated that buildings had been damaged, thousands of riot police and soliders had been deployed, hundreds of local Tibetans had been arrested and Buddhist temples were surrounded. So with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao telling the world that such troubles were over less than a week after these reports, and there were no independent witnesses to verify this, we wanted to find out.

     We decided to travel on a local bus north-east from Chengdu to the city of Mianyang, from where we would decide what to do next. Looking back, we should have realised that the number of police roadblocks we saw, just going that far, was an indication of what we would encounter over the next few days.

     We found a local driver, and after staying just a few hours at a hotel (in case the local police became aware of our presence), we headed north. The roads out of town were wonderful. Slowly winding their way through the valley floors and then up into the mountains.

      We needed to speak to some local farmers and chose to stop for the night at a small rural township known as Baima, located around 250 kilometres north of Mianyang. Life was continuing pretty much normally for these lovely, very hospitable people. They showed us proudly around their homes, and told us we were expected for dinner at 7pm. I very quickly got our driver to take me 30 kilometres down the road to get a CDMA signal to file some pictures to the Singapore desk, but thankfully managed to make it back on time.

     The array of local dishes was spectacular. But it did come at a cost - the cost of consuming of 3 cups of local wine in less than one minute, and the singing of a song that both Chris and I knew after we were honoured with a local Tibetan welcoming song. The only song we both really knew was the Australian national anthem, (just a note, Chris has spent 10 years in China and sadly, I had to help him a little, tut tut Chris) but hopefully no recordings were made and that rendition will never be heard again.

     The next morning we got up, and it had been snowing. Around one foot of pristine, white snow blanketed the trees. Beautiful perhaps, buy not a good start when you have to travel on mountain roads that day. We had gone barely five kilometre when we had to get out and remove rocks from our path. The steep banks above the road could barely hold together at the best of times, and with the slowly melting snow adding weight to the soil, this was not exactly safe. The further we went, the more the road seemed to take on a menacing look, with places that just 24 hours earlier had seemed quite safe, now looking like they would give way and result in us tumbling into the valley some 400 metres below. But again, in hindsight, this was nothing.

     To get where we needed to go, we had to start going up into the mountains. And with a foot of snow in the valleys, what could we expect up there. Well, our questions were soon answered - two foot of snow and lots and lots of ice. Our inexperienced driver had to go back and get chains after we started sliding backwards - not enjoyable when u look over the edge of the road which now had a drop of some 600 metres.

      Slowly but surely we continued, through a harsh but extremely beautiful landscape of snow-covered trees and mountains. The treacherous conditions had taken their toll on numerous cars and buses, their engines and I suspect their brakes overheating, and a truck which had fallen on it’s side and lost it’s load over the edge (see picture).

    After 5 tedious hours, we had made it to the next town.

    We met up with our new driver, a man who proved himself irreplaceable time and time again, and started heading further north into Gansu Province. And this is where my new ‘world’s worst road’ (I will call it the WWR from now on for comparisons)  comes into the story. In order for us to get through the countless police and military roadblocks, we would have to travel on back-roads. This provided us with views of the most amazing rural landscapes, but these views came at a cost - our heads, our kidneys, the muscles in our arms and legs from holding on so tightly, but most of all, our sanity. The pot-holes this time were triple the size and a much much more often than the previous WWR. The police presence was at least ten times that of the previous WWR, meaning our ‘ducking down’ skills had to be repeated more and more often the further we got into the troubled areas. But to top it all off, the whole experience lasted four times longer than the previous WWR trip. Total time in the car was nearly 36 hours, and when your driver snores for 4 of those hours barely 3 feet from your head, its not very enjoyable.

       Eventually, after much agonising and wondering if we would ever get to where we needed to be, we made it to the township of Zhuoni. Here we managed to talk to monks in a temple and I managed to take a few frames without disrupting their prayer session. The feeling was tense, as the military had only in the last day stopped surrounding the temple grounds. We hurridly left after we suspected that we were being watched, and made it into the car. I quickly sent 6 pictures so that in the event that we were caught, we would have something to show for our efforts.

      We drove further on down the road, and the roadblocks became more and more numerous. I counted at least 20, and on six occasions, the police stopped the car and asked the driver to step out. At one, a riot policeman even tapped on the window and put his face to the glass to see in. All Chris and I could do was lie down on the back seat and wait. As I said earlier, our driver proved to be amazing.

       We managed to go further into the troubled spots and I managed to photograph a burned-down school, riot police and soldiers on township streets, and another Buddhist monastery located near the township of Xiahe, where the most violent protests had occurred just a week earlier. We even very quickly stopped at a very small Tibetan village where the whole trip for me became worthwhile. Chris finally managed to find a villager that spoke Chinese, everyone spoke Tibetan, and after a few broad questions about the riots in Lhasa and surrounding areas and what he thought about them, Chris asked him what he thought of the Dalai Lama. This ordinary, hard-working farmer who toiled in the fields 12 hours-a-day, every day, said ‘The Dalai Lama is like a member of the family that can’t come home’.

        So our trip down my new WWR was finally completed, after we went through yet another 5 or 6 roadblocks of course,  we checked into our hotel in Lanzhou and I laid out flat for what seemed like the first time in ages.

        Hopefully, this dusty, pot-hold riddled ‘track’ in south-western China will be the final winner of my little WWR award otherwise I will have to broaden the parameters a little to perhaps the ‘Worst Road in the Universe’…….?? To do that, I would definitely have to check with Douglas Adams first I think………

                                                                  
       PICTURE CAPTIONS:

 Pic1 -An elderly Tibetan woman dressed in traditional Qiang minority dress sits in her home in Baima Township

 Pic2 -  The township of Baima in the early morning after snowfall

 Pic3 - A truck that lost it’s load on the treacherous icy road over the mountains

 Pic4 - Farming land near the Tibetan village on the outskirts of the township of Hezuo

 Pic5 - A young boy sits in a cart in a Tibetan village on the outskirts of the township of Hezuo

 Pic6 - Standing with friendly Monks in the Deer Long Temple on the outskirts of the township of Xiahe
        
  

If someone had asked me just a few days ago what the worst road I could imagine in the world would be like, I would have told them probably a mountain road with lots and lots of rocks and pot-holes. Well, little did I imagine that these elements would combine with two mountain passes of around 4000 metres, vertical drops off the sides of around 500 metres, snow, ice and to top it all off, local police telling you that you cannot get to where you want to go.
The area is Sichuan Province in south-western China. The town is Kangding, located around 400 kilometres west of the capital Chengdu. The road leads west, towards Tibet. I am trying to cover the story about the violence that has spread into the province following the rioting in the Tibetan capital Lhasa on March 14. In order to find out what is going on, myself and text journalist John Ruwitch needed to get to another town called Litang, some 400 kilometres west of Kangding, where there were reports of trouble last week.

John Ruwitch and I in front of the local bus we got taken off by police.

So we got on a local bus at 6.30am, ready for an 8 hour trip. Well, before we even leave the terminal, we were asked to get off by two local policemen. ‘Where are you going?’. Well, since the bus had the name of the town written on the windscreen directly behind where John and I were standing, we pointed to it. ‘Why are you going?’. John explained very simply in his excellent Chinese ‘Because we hear it is very beautiful’. That seemed to be a good answer, and we were allowed to get back on.
The bus started off some three minutes after the scheduled departure time of 7a.m. due to our little chat with the local constabulary, and no more than one kilometre down the road, the bus was stopped again. Another two policeman got on the bus, and again we were asked to get off. ‘Where are u going?’ was the question once more. Same answer. ‘Why are you going?’ Same answer again. And to our surprise after a 20 minute delay this time, which the locals on the bus were not at all pleased about, we got back on the bus and once more started our journey.
The road started off just fine. Winding up the first mountain pass (this one was only 3800 metres-high) the snow from the previous night gave everything the look of being wrapped in a beautiful white blanket. And when the sun rose, the gorgeous morning light added a warm glow to an already pristine scene.
We got 100 kilometres from Kangding. All good.
150 kilometres, all good.
At 200 kilometres, a local official was at a toilet stop. He looked at the bus, but did not get onboard. On we went.
250 kilometres, we continued west.

The water closet along the road, and trust me, you don’t want to go inside…

Then, at 300 kilometres, we got unstuck. A police roadblock. Two police get on the bus. Two foreigners get off the bus. Two foreigners stay permanently off the bus. ‘Litang is forbidden for foreigners’ the abrupt, yet nice young female policewoman tells us. We come to the conclusion that there is no chance we will get any further west.
We are put into a small, and I do mean small, mini-van and driven back to Kangding. And how bad I thought the road was on the way in was multiplied by 20 times going back. How this van managed to stay together is a miracle. I must have hit my head on the roof at least a dozen times. And this was going at an average speed of just 20 kilometres per hour. Never again I said, never again.
Three days later, I am in a taxi travelling along the same road, at the same speed, at the same time, but now with the added obstacle of ice covering the entire road. How this taxi managed to stay on the road, going up and down the mountain passes, with no chains on the wheels, is yet another miracle. I didn’t realise just how slippery the road was until I had to get out and push the cab, when we lost momentum and stopped after getting stuck behind a large truck up a hill, and then run and jump back into it.

A yak sits in the middle of the icy road after a heavy snowfall the night before.

This time, we did at least make it to our destination - a monastery in a small village some 200 kilometres away - but due to the large increase in the number of official vehicles along the road, I also now had to duck every time one of these cars approached. Try doing that over 50 times.
Anyway, now that I am back in Kangding, trying to cover this story, which is getting more and more difficult everyday, I try to sleep at night not dreaming about those bumps on the ‘world’s worst road’.

You’ve heard of the two-horse-town, well…

A local Tibetan walks towards his home situated at the base of a beautiful snow-covered mountain near Kangding.