the bus to kangding

the bus ride to kangding is beautiful. you wind your way through mountain passes, accompanied by a rushing river the whole way. it is harvest time, so there is grain be dried everywhere you look, and farmers are burning cornhusks the middle of fields that are being put to rest for the winter. the bus keeps going up, and it becomes colder. this has been the first fall weather i've felt in about six years. it made me quite homesick.

written on the bus, stopped: "i sit on a crowded bus in a long line of cars winding through the mountains. the road drops off to my right to a gorgeous river surrounded by bamboo and trees. occasionally houses will cruise by my window. 5 foot wide satellite dishes are ubiquitous, brightening (or dulling) the lives of these country folk. a main business on this snake of a road is cleaning trucks. as they rip out the hearts of these beautiful mountains and carry it down, these trucks get dirty. so they wash them. at all times, they have hoses pumping out water. if not onto a truck being cleaned, then onto the ground. i guess it drains into the river anyways. great. "back on the bus, we've stopped at a mid-mountain, back-country traffic jam. patrick and i sit in the back of the bus, directly above the engine. neither of us have a window seat, and i am sweating like my namesake. the two way road has been blocked by our bus and a dump truck stacked with filled burlap sacks. bikes ride and motorcycles honk and yell as they cruise by on our right, justifiably upset that these two behemothes are blocking the legal? right of way. eventually, the bus and the dump truck pull over, and we exit the bus and wait."

it turns out that two dump trucks had collided. a truck had tried to pass another vehicle around a blind turn, and had run into a truck coming the opposite way. passing around a blind turn? you ask, shocked. ahhhh. china. i believe the single traffic law in china is: "you can do anything, as long as you honk as you do it." of course, i'm paraphrasing a little.

our bus tried to make the best time possible, passing multiple vehicles on a two lane road. if you want to pass a slower car in china, this is the procedure. 1. acknowledge that there is a car ahead of you by honking. 2. honk to communicate your intention to pass. 3. pass while honking, to be sure the car knows you are there. 4. honk to signal you are going to be coming back into the lane. repeat. variations: passing with oncoming traffic ahead--honk more, and louder. passing around a blind corner: lay down on your horn and pray. sometimes, clearly, the latter does not work well.

needless to say it was a great ride, and except for the delay for the accident we did make great time, arriving in kangding after dark, and just as it began to rain. at least this rain didn't burn.