Joseph Fullop: An active traveler in China and Central Asia who resides with his family in Bend, Oregon, USA

Travel Time: the summer of 2004, last six weeks.

Itinerary: Chengdu - Ya'an - Luding - Kanding - Drango - Kandze - Derge - Katok monastery - Dzongzar monastery - Pelyul - back to Kandze - valley of Yalong Jiang - Litang - Batang - Gartok - Pomda - Chamdo - Pomda - Pema - Rawok -Tramog - Nyingchi - Bayi - Gyamda - Lhasa.

The Tea Trade has existed between areas of Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet for over 1,000 years. This trade has had a profound impact on both cultures and was one of the primary commodities, along with horses, that served as the reason to blaze roads and trails through some of the most dramatic mountain and canyon country in the world.

The trade for hardy Tibetan horses was a key to Chinese frontier policy from the Tang Dynasty onward. The robust Tibetan mounts were used extensively by Chinese cavalry who were entrusted with defending the Chinese frontiers from nomadic tribes from Central Asia. In return, Chinese tea became a mainstay in the diet and social life of Tibetans, as it remains today. Tea provided the necessary nutrients to offset the meat and dairy-dominated diet of Tibetans, and it also served to reinforce many of the social customs in the mountainous plateau country. Additionally, the tea trade was a financial resource which provided support for the widespread network of lamaseries that dot the Tibetan landscape. It also served to unite many of the far-flung and isolated Tibetan communities in eastern Tibet.

The north branch of the tea route continues over the Tro La pass (4,916 meters), one of the highest passes on the route to Lhasa and then descended into the watershed of the upper Jinsha Jiang. Derge was the next stop with its ancient wood block printing presses which are one of the historical treasures of the Tibetan culture. It is one of the most complete collections of Tibetan traditions preserved within its extensive archives of wood block prints.

I disconnected from the tea route to head south to the ridge top monastery of Katok with its Shangri-la like location. At Katok a festival was ongoing with tsechu dances commemorating the birth of Padmasambhava of Tibetan Buddhism. It was interesting to me to see large numbers of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims in many of the monasteries in Sichuan and Tibet. Pilgrims from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China are all playing an important role in the refurbishing and rebuilding of Tibetan monasteries through financial support. Similar support is also being provided by national, provincial and local level government. As prosperity begins to spread into the interior areas, Tibetan people themselves are getting the resources as well to rebuild the monasteries. The result is an extensive rebuilding of monasteries which will serve the spiritual needs of Buddhist pilgrims from near and far as well as reinforce the prosperity provided by tourism for the area from the outside.


From Katok I crossed the mountains to Kandze and the gorge of the Yalong Jiang river south to connect with the south branch of the Ya'an tea route. Many of the houses and villages in the Yalong gorge have a distinctly fortified appearance perhaps from the tradition of local banditry which has historically been prevalent in the area. We reconnected to the tea trail in Litang in time for the Litang Horse Festival, a time when Tibetans from the surrounding areas converge on Litang in a holiday mood with festival tents and horse racing events. One can reflect back to the time of the tea trade when this historic festival must also have been a time when extensive horse buying must have taken place as well.

The tea route from Litang continues west over the Puborang snow mountains past the Tsopu Nature Reserve where possibilities exist for extensive overland trekking through spectacular alpine countryside. The descent is spectacular into the Yangtze River watershed and the relatively low altitude town of Batang which at 2,700 meters was a relief from the previous several weeks which had been spent at elevations mostly over 3,500 meters. Batang is unique in that it historically has sustained a large Chinese population in the midst of a primarily ethnic Tibetan population. It was also a center of European and American missionary activity and in the 1930¡¯s it housed a western medical hospital. It was a main stopover point on the tea route west.

From Batang the route of the tea trail crosses the upper Yangtze River over one of several massive bridges. The Yangtze at this point is still a massive and powerful body of water and would have been a significant obstacle to trade without bridges or ferries. We are now in Tibet proper or the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region).

The route then makes a dramatic ascent of the Markam Shan Mountains on the west side of the river and continues on to the market town of Gartok where the south branch of the Ya'an route met with the Yunnan tea route from the south. This must have been a very strategic place in the tea trade. There is still considerable tea trade activity here as is evidenced by tea warehouses and tea stores in the town.

The combined tea route heads north along the valley of the Yu Chu which is also known for its gold deposits and strange rock formations. On the way to Chamdo the route passes the Pomda airport which gives access to this part of Tibet from Lhasa. As the Kham portion of TAR becomes more accessible to visitors from the outside this region has tremendous potential to attract tourism and the prosperity that comes with it. The spectacular canyons of the Nu Jiang (Salween) and Lancang in this area are three to four times the size of the Grand Canyon in North America. This area is referred to as the Land of Corrugations since its parallel peak and valley format resemble an extremely large scale sheet of corrugated roofing ¨C valleys of 2,000 meters in elevation with intervening ridges of 4,000 to 5,000 meters. It must have been a formidable obstacle to the tea caravans of old.

The tea route from Chamdo west to Lhasa extends through an area of rugged mountains via Lhorong, Banbar and Lhari. The automobile road had not been completed as of the summer of 2004 so we chose to take a different, more southerly route along the southern frontier of Tibet. This route, rarely traversed by westerners, required four separate sets of travel permits and considerable effort by our travel coordinators. We were now, once again, off the historic tea route.

Our route took us south from Chamdo through the spectacular gorge of the Nu Jiang and over the crest of the Hengduan Shan mountains ¨C we were now ascending into the area of 6,000 and 7,000 meter summits characteristic of the Central Plateau of Tibet. Once through the Ngajuk La pass we began a descent into the valley of the Parlung Tsangpo, a verdant, low altitude area that traditionally was at the margins of control from Lhasa. Somewhat off the beaten path, this was not an area associated with the historic tea trade. However, due to its low elevation it is an area that is currently being used to cultivate a high grade of tea ¨C the only place in Tibet where tea can be grown. It is also an area famous for its production of medicinal herbs.

This "south road" to Lhasa is one of extreme beauty. The valley bottom tends to be heavily forested with alpine lakes and high snow-capped mountains and large glaciers. The rainfall is greater in this area due to its proximity to the crest of the Himalayas and the monsoon rains from India. The road is often closed by landslides ¨C in many places the road defies reality and is an engineering marvel in itself. At this point we were a scant 20 miles from where the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), one of the giant rivers of Asia carves through the eastern edge of the Himalayas and makes a great bend around the massive Namchabarwa (7,756 meters) creating one of the deepest canyons on earth. According to Tibetan Buddhism, this is magic country.

We climbed out of the valley of the Parlung Tsangpo and over Serkhyem La pass and dropped into the valley of the Nyang Chu. We arrived in the low altitude town of Bayi which is notable as one of the largest concentrations of ethnic Chinese living in Tibet. Extensive fields of vegetables and wide modern streets made this place seem more like a suburb of Chengdu. This was an island in the middle of high mountains.

As we climbed up the valley of the Nyang Chu we rejoined the tea trail from Chamdo to the east. Over a final 5,000 meter pass, the Mamzhong La, we dropped into the watershed of the Kyi-Chu valley and Lhasa. This objective of our six week journey had taken us through some of the most challenging and beautiful terrain on earth ¨C deep gorges, snow-capped mountains, dark forests and high grasslands.

As I walked around the extensive market at the Jokhang Temple I saw one of the beloved objects of this adventure ¨C a block of brick tea. A casual inquiry into price indicated that the wholesale value in Lhasa was 5 times that in Sichuan. There was the fuel that powered the tea trails for a thousand years.

China Tibet Information Center
Joseph Fullop