The coldest place on earth

November sometime - Songpan

Songpan is a little village that sits in a valley some 2,800m above sea level and a popular hub for visiting the mountains and nearby national park. The impression it left on me was that of a Chinese ski resort without any skiing; undoubtedly it has been influenced by the tourist trade and a number of boutiques can be found on the pretty main street. But this is China after all and so quite normal for sheep to be herded down the street in the middle of the day and probably explains why there is no heating.

One of the main attractions of this 'o so cold and I'm a boy' place is to take a horse trek into the mountains. We (and when I say that I mean I, with Helen under duress) settled on a 3 day trek to Ice Mountain. It all sounded so Thundercats.


We might even have made it up there, but, in predictable fashion, the weather took a turn for the worse and towards the end of our first night we were greated with snow. I like snow; it's a still a novelty and good for snowboarding.
But it turns out horses don't. They care for neither snowboarding nor skiing. Indeed graced as they are, with long legs and small hooves, on snow, they have the confidence of a woman in stillettos. This I found out on a number of occasions as my horse slipped, slid and fell up and down the narrow mountain tracks. It even had the nerve to throw me over the handle bars into the snow.

On the second day, we made it to about 3,800m before our guides decided that it was too dangerous to continue and so we returned early to our tibetan homestay. The scenery was breathtaking but harsh - this is not an environment that yields anything easily and you respect those who live there for it.


The homestay was an experience in itself - our hosts numbered more than 8 and covered 3 generations. For them, the experience of tourists in their home was not unusual and with a couple of exceptions, they carried on with their daily routine. A routine that, I suspect, has not changed in generations. In the evenings, we would all sit around the table drinking tea, eating the hearty (if meet free) food and sipping some filthy rice wine. This social gathering included joking, singing and listening to one guy play his guitar. Their kids; a couple of young brothers, divided their time between collecting wood, acting the goat and torturing their two 3 week old kittens (much to Helen's distress).