Kangding and Tagong

When travelling to Kangding it becomes quickly apparent by local dress and appearance, you have passed a cultural border and entered a Tibetan area. Just to the west of the town lies Zhedou Mountain where the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau start, which made Kangding a key trading site on the ancient Tree-horse Trail. Driving from Chengdu you travel the through tea growing areas of the Sichuan Basin, which was processed and compressed into solid bricks of tea. To get the product over through the last stage of the journey, which involved climbing high mountain passes not suited to wagon transport, the bricks were packed onto the backs of porters who carried huge loads on a route which is still used by today’s motor traffic. Ya’an, Tianquan, and Luding, all important junctions on the expressway to Kangding, were formerly important staging posts for this human haulage. Although the tea trade has long since lost it significance, Kangding is still an important trading town and Tibetan faces and costume are part of the scene as grassland inhabitants come down from the plateau to shop in bustling streets and markets.                                                                                                 

On the road over Zhedou Mountain you not only enter a grassland habitat that typifies Tibetan Sichuan, but also get the chance to look back east and view Mount Gonga, the mightiest peak of the Hengduan range that divides the Sichuan basin from the Tibetan Plateau. At 7,556 m (24,790 ft) it ranks as the third highest peak outside the Himalayas. Over Zhedou pass you meet Tibetan villages and towns with their rugged stone buildings designed to withstand the harsh rigours of a plateau winter. With travel now made so easy by new roads and expressway this part of world has seen a tourist boom, and once sleepy villages like Xinduqiao are now big hotel centres that cater for a market fuelled by weekend trippers from Chengdu. Driving past this rather unattractive blot and you’ll once again get to a genuine version of the grasslands and Tagong, with its important temple and views of holy Yala Mountain, makes for a far more interesting stop.