“Mekong” Mick O’Shea–Chapter 3: Wherein the Aussie adventurer paddles through a region of rapid-fire industrialization, gets serenaded by some bored cops, and reaches the point of no return…
The next day as I approached Chamdo the landscape changed rather dramatically as the white water, which had been sporadic until then picked up several notches with dozens of class 3-4 rapids. The mountains became denuded of pine and major road construction was being undertaken by teams of hundreds of workers. Periodically explosions could be heard as obstructions were blasted from the canyon walls to widen tiny horse trails into what would soon become sealed expressways. Kham Tibet is changing. My passing would bring entire sections of roadwork to a standstill as hundreds of predominantly Chinese workers downed their tools to jeer as I bashed through standing waves and navigated around obstructions.
I encountered a huge sawmill just one kilometer north of town and the reason for the denuded mountains up river became evident. Thousands of logs lined the storage yard and work continued into the evening. The rapids continued straight through the heart of town. I must admit that I was struck by how entirely un-Tibetan the Chamdo looked. Until now the vast majority of the architecture encountered had been classical or rustic Tibetan in style yet Chamdo gleamed with aluminum, fresh paint and the feel of a new town. There were few buildings under 4 stories high and cement rather than rammed earth was the main building material.
As I passed the third and largest of the 4 bridges that span the Mekong in Chamdo, large neon lights flashed brightly on both sides advertising discotheques in new hotels. It looked as though the authorities had picked up a Hahn Chinese settlement from the coast and plonked it in Eastern Tibet. Although the sun was setting I decided to push on beyond Chamdo and ended up settling for a piece of riverbank flanked by a busy road.
After 3 days of paddling 10-12 hrs per day I had made very good time yet my body was starting to feel the strain. Nevertheless the rising river motivated an early start. I paddled along two sections with roads in the morning and at two separate points police cars followed my descent. I was concerned that they might stop me to cause problems with my permit (Something that had happened with the previous expedition to pass through this section) yet apparently they were just after some light entertainment as this crazy foreigner charged down various rapids. The first car even played some Shanghai rock over the loudspeakers as paddled a class 4 rapid, cool cops in one of the most restricted regions on earth is not what I initially expected!
The road abated around lunch time but horse trails continued to follow the river. Regular class III and IV rapids were encountered and by early evening I came across a short and steep class V drop that I identified as the twin falls rapid where the Pete Winn Expedition had called it quits only weeks earlier. With trails and farmers homesteads nearby (Where horses could most likely be hired) it seemed an infinitely easier extraction point than where I was going. I estimated that if getting to a road from this location took his team one week to achieve then from the far more remote gorges down stream, if at all possible I would be looking at 3 weeks plus to make it back to civilization. With no villages at which to obtain food and no trails to follow, the only really viable way out of the pristine section would be by river and it was a wild guess as to just how dangerous the river would be. All I knew for sure is that the gradient drop would double in the downstream section ensuring increasingly difficult rapids and the gorges would become more precipitous. I could definitely see why the previous expedition pulled out at this point, the commitment level required to continue was at the top end of the scale and the stakes were high.
Tomorrow: Into the unknown…
The Earthist Chronicles 