Where In The World Is Evan?

We woke on day two, sore and cold from a fitful night’s sleep, to the delightful view of snow capped mountains in the distance. The snow during the night had left a thin layer across the open field where we were camped, but had dumped down on the peaks of the surrounding mountains. To ward off the cold we headed over to the the cooking fire to watch as breakfast was being prepared. Finding the warmth of the fire to be insufficient to shake our night-time chills we busted open a bottle of baijiu and passed it around while the food sizzled appetisingly before us.

Sergio, however, wasn’t going to let anything like hot food, a stiff drink, or a warm fire get in the way of his misery. Complaining loudly about how the cold and humidity out here was doing terrible things to his respiritory infection, Jon, Olen and I took turns to reassure Sergio that he was going to be fine once we reached the promised hot springs later that day. Still insisting that we return, I managed to convince Sergio firstly, that it couldn’t feasibly rain as we were inside low lying cloud cover, and secondly that he should start dosing himself up on western medicine (which Olen, thankfully, had plenty of). To further cement our collective resolve to head for the hot springs we started an increasingly embellished fantasy about the Chinese volleyball team that was going to be skinny dipping at the hot springs when we arrived.

Heading for the day we firstly had to backtrack up the last mountain we had climbed to return to the small village we had passed through the previous day. Unfortunately, due to all the snow and rain during the night, much of the trail was unridable so we spent most the morning sharing a two lane road with wary motorists. Having picked up a bit of pace on the flat even road we spied in the distance another trekking group–our hypothetical volleyball team. On closer inspection, however, it turned out to be four English girls, a French couple, two Chinese girls and a solo Japanese tourist (quite brave considering the recent anti-Japan protests in Beijing). Upon seeing women–and indeed lao wai women–Sergio’s bout of incurable illness evaporated into thin air. Smiling and laughing, Sergio was a new man later that day when our two groups combined at a communal camp site near the hot springs.

Curiously, when eating from communal dishes with chop sticks it’s surprisingly rare that two people noticeably reach for the same piece of food. When this happened to Olen and I over lunch the point was made that this was a recurring theme between he and I, and not just with food. Having got the better of Olen the last two times I took my hint to sit this one out, and left the pretty Oxford classics graduate to him.

After lunch both groups headed off down the road towards the much anticipated hot springs. Perhaps because Olen and I were both quite stoned when we organised the trek, neither of us really considered that the advertised temperature of the springs was 21°C. This isn’t so bad considering our swim the previous day, however, the word hot seems rather misleading in this context. In fact, after spending over 30 minutes in the water my body was shivering uncontrollably and I had to get out. After this great disappointment we all returned to camp, our spirits somewhat dampened.

As the sun fell beneath the surrounding mountain tops out came the baijiu. Sitting around the fire drinking and chatting, Jon had the interesting idea of playing a traditional Jersey camp fire game. One person hums the first few lines to a famous song, and the first person to guess the right artist and song gets to hum their own choice. After a we finished off two bottles of baijiu and started to smoke some pot, this seemed like a delightful idea.

Thankfully our drunken, stoned reverie was broken by a sudden bout of rain, and we all retreated into the crowded cooking tent. It was at this point that Sergio made his most memorable of visual gags. Whilst talking about the need to show respect when addressing Chinese people, Sergio preceded to graphically simulate what appeared to be, to all who saw it, cunnilingus. Days later we were to discover that his intention was to demonstrate kissing arse, or rather, some sort of obscure Ibizan arse kissing technique. Having now ruined Olen’s chances with the only good-looking girl in the camp we shortly thereafter retired to our respective tents to sleep.

Check out the Songpan photo gallery.