huang long.

I was starting to feel a little apprehensive, prior to landing in mountainous northern region of Sichuan Province - a slight shift north-east of the epicenter of the big earthquake - were these two days of hiking going to take the wind out of Tibet? Do I even like hiking? Were the dreamy photographs of the area's two principle reserves - Huang Long and Jiu Zhai Gou - to be believed? And, it looked bloody cold out there!

I realized in Chengdu that a lifelong aesthetic distaste for athletic wear and gear had left me woefully unprepared for three weeks in the mountains and the cold. I'd wandered idly and ignorantly into a couple of trekking apparel stores only to discover that-! This shit was expensive! And unwarranted, because the same puce-toned fleeces and body-bag backpacks that I'd shuddered at in Amherst apparently hadn't yet gone out of fashion. I had left in a huff, and instead spent 114rmb (about $16USD) instead at a Chinese supermarket on two pairs of shiny waterproof pants and two breathable "bamboo" jumpers. If I was going to look like a moron, I was going to do it on the cheap.

The sight that greeted me upon landing in Jiu Zhai Gou swept away all stresses and grumpiness. We were high up in the Minshang mountain range, where snowy peaks and stratus clouds reigned. And rained (but only a little). It was surprising and beautiful.

The Huang Long peaks - at an altitude of about 3,200km - would be a respiratory appetizer for Tibet. I began to feel a little light-headed during the ascent. I met and chatted with the only other lone hiker in sight, Yan, who, at 22, was about to enter his final year at Durham University in England. He talked a lot, and was pretty funny. He also bore the burden of a whopping SLR with a little cache of lenses, spare batteries and memory cards.

Huang Long's travertine basins are its pride and glory. And stunning they were! - all smoke-lit and luminescent, the color of swimming pools :

Lovely, right? Apparently, Yellowstone's got a famed collection of travertine terraces as well. . . which I might have known, had I ever bothered to get nature-y in the States.

Yan and I commiserated over the timing of our trip - just about two weeks too early to catch the ripening autumn colors rippling red and gold frames all around the exquisite aquamarine pools. To our disappointment, we found that another section of basins were blocked off due to earthquake-related damages. When we finished the trail, Yan took my arm and marched us into the ticket office, where he insisted on getting our reserve admission tickets refunded because of the inaccessible areas. The woman shrugged him off.

Yan then asked to use her phone, and dialed the recreation area office. He demanded a sit-down with somebody in charge. It was getting late; I was feeling a little restless and hopeless about the whole operation. To my surprise, the recreation office sent two managers out by Jeep to the ticket office. Yan went on a pursuasive and hilarious little diatribe, weaving an intricate story of crushed hopes and blown savings, in which I was cast as the confused and litigious American, and he, the poor but patriotic college student.

In the end, we didn't get our money back, but they loaded us up with a ton of crap from the gift shop. 'Not bad, Durham.' I offered him my hand. 'Nice work being my bitchy American girlfriend,' he returned, handing over the bag of DVDs, books and keychains.