Marmalade Daydreams

Arrived this afternoon in Kangding, a small city built on the banks of a raging river between steep and rocky slopes, after heading east for eight hours on the Sichuan-Tibet highway. The road crosses treeless passes, and I spent hours looking out the window without viewing any permanent human habitation, the grassy landscape periodically punctuated with the lumbering hairy black masses of yaks and the less hairy tents of their nomadic herdspeople. If you looked closely (and I had little else to do from my seat in the back of a bus following the road winding like the back of some mythological serpent) you could make out their nomads's steeds grazing on the alpine vegetation and, occasionally, a motorcycle, the steed of the modern age, that, barring further advancement in alternative energy, can only be sated with the fossilized energy of carbon-based life from eons past.

But I digress. Just wanted to punch in, say that I am now in a city where I can update photos, and that this should be done in the next day or two. Tomorrow, off to an alpine lake. The next day, maybe the disappearing glacier that should have a view of 26,000 ft. Gongga Shan. For those of you who are growing to resent my somewhat nomadic lifestyle (though I generally sleep under a roof, unlike the two motorcycling Americans I met this evening who are out of yuan, at least until the bank opens tomorrow), rest assured that the last couple of days I had a headache, possibly from the altitude, possibly from choosing a hotel in the hammering district (aside from the omnipresent construction, the metalworkers didn't stop last night until after midnight), and my time abroad is fast waning. I'll try to make the most of it.