To get to Kangding, we must drive a steep and circuitous one-lane mountain road for six hours, squeezing past buses and cars at 50kph and into oncoming traffic while honking the entire way. Honking, I discover, is a distinct language here, much like the mysterious one spoken by a creative and loquacious three year old. The two most commonly used phrases are first: “Hi, driver! How are you? Have a good drive!” uttered with a short, sprightly “toot toot toot” and, second: “Oh my God, you IDIOT! Get out of the WAAAAAY!” shouted with an emphatic, desperate, uninterrupted “TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!” For much of our drive today, I hear the latter phrase.
My seat is a single on the side of the river. This is also the side that boasts an increasingly precipitous view. The drive begins with the river at my eye level but it is now approximately 3000 feet down. My nerves are not so steely right now so I listen to my iPod and pretend I am in Florida.
Halfway to Kangding, we come to Ya’an where we have lunch
and see the huge bronze sculpture commemorating the tea coolies that transported brick tea along the Jung Lam tea route. Hundreds of miles long, it began in Beijing and crossed China and Tibet into India. The brick tea trade dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and was a vital resource, currency even, to both China and Tibet. 
The route took over 8 months to traverse and these human mules, many of them women, would carry more than 300 pounds of tea on their backs, often while nursing their children. Holy cannoli! I thought Pilates was hard!The town of Kangding was known as Tachienlu prior to its “liberation” by the Chinese in 1949.
It is literally carved into a narrow valley that is bisected by the perpetually raging Zheduo River (Dartsedo in Tibetan). Once a frontier town, Kangding remains the final stop before breeching Tibet’s wild borderlands and Lhasa beyond. Huge mountains literally cradle the town, which sits at the confluence of the Zheduo and Yala Rivers. The hotel in Kangding is a giant leap from my heavenly bed in Chengdu, but it’s a leap in the wrong direction. The beds are like wood boards with sheets. The carpeting is littered with cigarette ashes and a sign hangs in the shower warning me to “slip carefully.”
At midnight, I receive a call from a girl offering her “massage” services. I tell her she has the wrong room but she calls again the next night just in case I am mistaken or suddenly horny. I unplug the phone and consider the possible origin of the hotel’s name, The Love Song.
I am struck by the disparity between the public and private spaces in this hotel. The lobby is a misguided attempt at glamour with giant, drippy chandeliers like the ones you see in the Persian “antique” shops in downtown San Francisco. Very sparkly. Very twinkly. It reminds me of the circus so I innately squint my eyes and watch as it shines. The marble floors are dirty, or perhaps just very dull from not being polished. The caulking between the pavers is cracked and dry; there are pieces of it missing so some of the tiles shift and creak lightly under my feet. It looks as though the construction budget disappeared somewhere around the elevators.
There is a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan valets at the entrance welcoming us. They don a Chinese version of traditional Tibetan clothes that are a lot shinier and more obnoxiously colored than a real Tibetan outfit, which typically features bright colors only on the hand weaved apron and in the silk strands braided through a woman’s plaits. For this reason, they appear to be the human equivalent of a Tibetan home topped with a Chinese pagoda style roof. It just looks wrong.
Inside the front door stands two six foot “crystal” studded urns with light bulbs set in the base to make them glow. The bases are a brassy fake gold as is the distracting wire that connects all the crystals. They are so tacky and sparkly that I want one for my imaginary art collection. In my mind, I place it next to a spotlighted niche holding a 12-inch seamed ‘David’ I “picked up” years ago at Hearst Castle.
Kangding has a bustling town square
across the river from our hotel and on our first evening, we all hang out there watching old men play a Chinese form of checkers, children play badminton and musicians play Tibetan music. The show goes on well into the evening, but my room looks out onto the mountain road so all I hear through the night is honking. Next to the square is a remarkably well-outfitted adventure gear shop owned by a Taiwanese mountain man who is in love with Tibet. Bart met him here last year and wants to speak to him about conditions in the area in anticipation of our trek. He is a gifted photographer and has been to Minya Konka many, many times. He is completely awed to meet Julia and Louise who are daughters of the late Arthur Emmons who in turn, was one of the four Americans who first summited and triangulated the mountain in 1932. I can tell that because of the Emmons’ presence, he wants the weather to be perfect and therefore appears reluctant to inform us that there has been mixed weather in the mountains of late. It could go either way, he says.
Now at 9,500 feet, we are scheduled to spend a day in Kangding in order to start to acclimatize to the increasing altitude. Strictly speaking, acclimatization occurs gradually by hiking high and sleeping low. For this reason, we are supposed to head out to an area lake called Mugecuo with the intention of hiking up to about 12,000 feet and returning back for sleep. But the road leading to the trail is closed so instead of just walking the road into the lake, our Chinese Tibetan guide “Phillip” suggests we go on another trail that he hiked as a boy growing up in Kangding.
Unfortunately for us, Phillip cannot actually locate the trail due to the extensive construction going on in the area and the fact that the last time he hiked it was 25 years ago when as an 11 year old, his perspective apparently did not necessarily reflect reality. So instead, after 45 minutes of scratching his head and driving up and down the road outside Kangding, Phillip fakes it by confidently leading us straight up a path that conveniently sprouts from the road about 20 feet from where we happen to be standing.
We walk about 800 feet up an incline that leads us directly to a private home that is guarded by four of the fiercest, most rabid toy sized dogs I have ever met. The owners wave to us, smile and nod their heads while we stand rigid, eyes wide and unblinking. “It is ok,” they seem to say as they wrestle two frothy dogs each and look to the direction they invite us to take, “it is safe," they seem to say, "please pass this way.” Strangely, we do what we are told.
This acclimatization hike is not really a hike. From an aesthetic perspective, I have been on prettier outings in Burbank. From a practical standpoint, we do not fare much better.
We do get up to about 10,800 feet according to my altimeter but we only do so by crouching over while bushwhacking and literally tunneling our way through holly bushes and furs. I have to keep my anorak on so my arms are not cut but I do manage to take a Christmas tree to the face without any damage. Not good. This is more of a wild boar’s view of the mountain than the one I am seeking, preferably upright and without all the street noise. We do see a funereal mound, 
which we all avidly photograph not realizing we will see about 5,000 more over the course of the coming weeks. The entire time, Phillip is on his cell phone with his Uncle trying to get directions to the trail (above right).
When we stop to eat our lunch, I really feel I haven’t earned it but I eat it anyway. I am offered loquats but I refuse because my driveway at home is covered in them and my Shih Tzu, Gyllian, sucks on them down to the pits and then wakes up in the middle of the night with the repercussions.
I don’t like loquats anymore. I eat some tasty local cherries instead, which are more like champagne grapes. After lunch, we give up on actually finding a trail and walk back down to town on a sidewalk beside a busy road. We do catch a glimpse of the Five Sisters, the range of mountains just outside of Kangding. 
We have dinner in a Tibetan restaurant on our second night here. A Tibetan guy comes into our private dining room and sings a traditional song on a Tibetan lute or guitar. He looks a little bored and I think it’s because this is an incredibly touristy thing he is doing.
Kind of like a violinist romantically serenading you in an Italian restaurant back home. They make us French Fries because we are American and they think that’s what Americans eat but in general, I prefer the Tibetan food, especially the spicy vegetables and a yummy potato thing that is part latke, part hash browns. Good thing we’re going hiking! We wander through the town after dinner and first see the very popular and extremely pricey fungus encrusted worms in a little herb shop. They are considered a delicacy and cost the equivalent of $5 per worm. They bring to mind the $1,000 burger dreamt up by some chef in NYC a couple years ago. It was topped with about a teaspoon of super expensive caviar. I bet if that chef used these worms, he could make the first $2,000 burger. New Yorkers love novelty. I’m sure someone would buy it. But not us. We pass on the worms for the first of many, many times. I mean, hello? We eat French Fries not worms! We’re American! Instead, we buy prayer flags to hang at the four passes we are going to trek over. Mine are all for Dad.
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