Hellatious

While catching up on Sass Attack's blog in Google reader, I stumbled upon the mention of a blogging contest... Contest? What? My ears eyes perked up and read further ....

Apparently, there are not one, but THREE bloggers (Sass Attack, Hotfessional,And The Pursuit of Happiness) hosting this contest... which means THREE winners.

The contest..... Travel Hell: Sometimes Getting There Sucks.


I can do this. I can totally do this. But can I win? Who knows... but at least it gives me excuse to brag reminisce about my time in China.


I look back on our time in China with fond memories. Memories of noodles, tofu, friends, and baijiu. Sometimes I forget just how painful many of our journeys through that large, Red country were for me- like that time I peed on my face, or had my wallet stolen, or used a mint maxi pad instead of a regular one (good one, that story.. remind me to tell it one day). All of the most memorable stories from those days involved pain. The most painful? Our trip to Songpan.

Our plan was to ride a bus eight hours to the northwestern town of Songpan. There, we'd book a four-day horse trek into the mountains with some Tibetan tour guides.

We got there in one piece and booked the trek.

I was slightly nervous, as I'd never before ridden a horse (let alone for FOUR DAYS in th MOUNTAINS OF CHINA!). For the most part, I tried to keep my nervousness to myself. I was soon going to find out that riding the horse was going to be the easy part of all.

The next four days involved a mixture of the flu, dehydration, and altitude sickness... all while trying to ride a horse up 14,000 feet and then hike back down on foot. Needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper, but I survived.



After a long four days of eating sludgy gruel, careening down a muddy mountainside in a hail storm with a tiny man pulling me ahead, and several bouts of nausea that almost forced me to stay an extra day in the mountains to gather my strength..... all I wanted was a hot shower and some good food.

Once safely back in the town of Songpan, we all headed to the public showers to rinse off four days of dirt under cold water. Our budget accommodations didn't have showers. In fact, the bathroom at our hostel was outside and consisted of a stuccoed wall with holes cut in the cement floor. You had to squat over the rectangular holes where the waste fell about 3-4 feet below. Looking closely, you could see (and hear) thousands (millions?) of maggots slithering around.

We left the next day, on an early morning bus. We tore down the switchbacks and steep grades like we were in some Formula 1 race care. The bus drivers in China have yet to figure out that buses do not, in fact, corner as well as race cars. Not one hour into the ride at top speed with a dozen smokers on board, I was hanging out the window yakking to my hearts content. Thankfully, after an hour into this never ending bout of motion sickness, the bus came to a mysterious halt. Finally, I was granted a break from my uncontrollable urges to dry heave.



Eventually, we learned exactly WHY the bus had stopped. There had been a landslide up ahead on the road. We were only a few cars back from the slide, so we hopped out to take a closer look. It turned out to be a pretty big landslide - across the width of the road, with no way around.



We sat for FIVE hours as two, big-yellow-road-clearing-machines scooped up dirt, pushed it off the edge of the mountain, scooped up dirt, pushed it off the edge of the mountain, scooped up dirt.......




We just so happened to be in a "town" with about four little buildings in it. Not much, but we were able to buy out their entire stock of instant noodles to tide us over while we waited. When nature called, instead of trying to find a secluded place to do my business... I had my friend C asking the locals if they had a bathroom we could use. They ushered us over to a dilapidated pig pen and urged us to go inside. Through a few tattered, wood railings, I stumbled upon a makeshift closet. One of the walls to this closet was actual a fence to the pig area. A pig area with PIGS inside. Big. Fat. Pigs. On the floor were two broken pieces of concrete and in between those.... you guessed it... a hole sliding down to God only knows where. Quite possibly, the Worst. Bathroom. Ever. ...And I took a picture of it. Go figure.

After the landslide was cleared and we were back on the bus and moving at a regular pace down a regular, straight road ... all was right with the world again.

To this day, when I tell people about our trek, I find myself reliving this Epic Journey Through the Mountains of Sichuan with very little recollection of the pain and whole lot of pride because I Peed in that Toilet. Little do most people know (except for the 8 close friends on that trek), that the whole experience was a living hell for me (well, and for those who had to travel with me).