Travel Notes | My trip to Hoh Xil (Part 2)

Tanggula Mountain Town is located on the south bank of the Tuotuo River, and the Tuotuo River Bridge leads north to Golmud. It was built in 1958 and is the first highway bridge at the source of the Yangtze River.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the birthplace of many large rivers. The Tuotuo River is one of the sources of the Yangtze River. The water here is calm. After more than 6,000 kilometers, it enters the sea in Shanghai and has turned into a surging river.

The Yangtze River is the third longest river in the world after the Nile River in Africa and the Amazon River in South America. At this moment, we are calmly crossing the tens-meter-long Tuotuo River Bridge, which gives people a dreamy feeling. Have we really crossed the source of the Yangtze River?

There were already two Hui brothers from Qinghai on the bus. They worked in the Tuotuo River, and their faces were tanned and red, no doubt similar to Tibetan plateau red. Now they want to go home to harvest wheat, and they need to take a train to Golmud Railway Station. .

The lean and cheerful Hui brother with a high nose is humorous, cheerful and talkative. He is honest and simple and likes to tell jokes. We got along very well along the way.

His family planted 16 acres of wheat. In their arid land, which is located in a semi-mountainous and semi-hilly area, harvesting could only be done by hand. It was very tiring and troublesome, so he had to go home. Fat Brother charged each of them 130 yuan in tolls. It turns out that it is a common custom here to pay for the rides. So I obediently gave up my seat to them and hid in the berth at the back.

In the CCTV program "A Bite of China", it was mentioned that China's last Mai Ke refers to a mobile person who cuts wheat for others. It was also a way for farmers to go out to work, which was once popular in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia in the north. That is, every year during the wheat season, farmers go out to the countryside to harvest wheat for others.

At present, these two migrant workers go home and harvest wheat by themselves. They said that when they were young, they often went to other places to help others harvest wheat as wheat customers, thereby earning money to supplement their family income.

One of the oldest ways of migrant workers in China, these two eldest brothers with dark faces in their forties have experienced it. In this no-man's land of Hoh Xil, the laughter and laughter in the carriages make this journey no longer lonely.

Hoh Xil no man's land, endless openness and desolation, this is the real west.

I have seen many American western movies made by Hollywood. There are gunmen on horseback and cowboys wearing top hats and windbreakers. Everyone carries a spear. If they disagree, there will be a spear duel. Hoh Xil is a perfect place for shooting western movies.

On the vast plateau here, there are no women, no you and me, only large cars running for long distances, straight roads with no momentum, and the blue sky, low clouds, which have come from thousands of years. The Call of the Wild.

Fat Brother and his friends are playing a chasing game. This is a game with the potential for people to flip over and people to die. This is an exciting game for men in no man's land. This is a game of ice and fire. This is a game where danger is a joke, and it is also an exciting game that only veteran drivers on the Qinghai-Tibet line dare to play - a racing game in no man's land.

Dangerous drag racing game

"Don't do bad things in the car, be careful!" Fat Brother took the walkie-talkie and shouted to the driver who was taking his wife out behind him.

"What bad thing are you doing? What bad thing are you doing? You kid, please speak honestly. Besides, my sister-in-law won't let you." The cheerful sister-in-law's exciting laughter came from the car behind.

"Hey, sister-in-law, sister-in-law, please don't make my big brother happy, don't get in the ditch! It makes me miss my old lady, hahahahaha..." The fat brother flirted with the car behind him wantonly. two sisters-in-law.

"This kid, fuck it, let's see if I catch you and kill you!" The elder brother in the car behind couldn't stand hearing it anymore. I saw in the rearview mirror that a large car was speeding up to catch up with me.

"Come on, come on, if you can catch up with me, I will obey you!" After that, the fat brother stepped on the accelerator and started racing in this real no-man's land of Hoh Xil.

Oh my god, there were three or four times when the big car behind me really caught up with me. There was only one front position between them, and the two cars were driving together. In order to block the overtaking from behind, Fat Brother kept moving to the left to block the situation. If everyone was not skilled in driving, they would definitely be knocked upside down if they collided with it. This is a really big truck.

This chasing game depends on their tacit understanding and skillful driving skills, as well as the straight and flat road and the fact that there is no living person in the field of vision, so they can enjoy the wild racing in the no-man's land of Hoh Xil happily and excitingly.

Desolate no man's land, desolate plateau.

There are rows of hot rods on the highway, inserted in the frozen soil area, and there is an awe-inspiring spectacle in this no-man's land. As the highway approaches the Kunlun Mountains, a large number of sand and dust areas begin to appear. Due to the high altitude and drought, severe desertification occurs. Therefore, a large number of square-shaped anti-sand walls need to be installed to prevent sand dunes from invading the highway.

Hoh Xil's uninhabited land blends with wildness. This is where the strong survive, whether it's animals, people or cars. Under the Qinghai-Tibet Railway bridge, there are dozens of kilometers of bridge openings specially designed for the migration of Tibetan antelopes. It is convenient for Tibetan antelopes to cross the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in winter to breed at a lake in eastern Qinghai, and then return to Hoh Xil after giving birth. This is the number of thousands of Tibetan antelopes every year. A necessary place for migration.

The Qinghai-Tibet Highway, Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and high-voltage lines are three sky roads that go hand in hand through Hoh Xil. How much did it cost, how much manpower, material resources, financial resources, and how many lives and youth were sacrificed to finally achieve convenient transportation in the third pole of the world? .

A magical heavenly road, an awe-inspiring heavenly road.

We are driving on this deserted plateau, as free as the wind and as real as a dream. The straight road leads to the endless horizon.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, we suddenly saw a long line of convoys appearing in the distance like ants moving. It turned out that we encountered a transport convoy with nearly 200 transport vehicles. This was a convoy of nearly two transport companies. Everyone stopped their cars one after another to make way for the transport of officers and soldiers.

The car transport convoy walked for nearly half an hour before it completely passed the corner. During this time, everyone stopped to urinate, smoke, and take photos in the Qinghai Hoh Xil Nature Reserve.

Continuing forward, we soon arrived at Wudaoliang. This is a transfer station similar to the Tuotuo River. It is very similar to the 80K in Medog. It is a large material transfer station. There is even a Wudaoliang Railway Station. It can be seen that this is an extremely important material transfer station in the no-man's land of Hoh Xil.

Because there is a train station in the transfer station, there are all gas stations, restaurants and simple hotels beside the national highway. The signboard on the roadside reads: Wudaoliang Protection Station of Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve. There is also a Tibetan antelope observatory. It is clearly stated that poaching a Tibetan antelope will result in a three-year sentence.

It turns out that this is an important passage for Tibetan antelope migration, and a Tibetan antelope protection station and rescue station have been set up specifically.

At nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, I met several people riding BMW off-road motorcycles on the road, I also saw a lonely girl riding a bicycle, and came across another car accident scene.

According to Fat Brother, this kind of rollover accident has been encountered in dozens of rollover scenes. Most of the rollover accidents on the Qinghai-Tibet Line are related to fatigue driving. On such a road with a single and straight scenery, it is too easy to fall asleep and drive to the The car overturned in a ditch on the side of the road.

Half an hour later, we saw a snow-capped mountain in the distance, which was Mount Yuzhu in the eastern section of Kunlun Mountain. It is located 160 kilometers south of Golmud City and 10 kilometers east of the Kunlun Mountain Pass. It is the highest peak in the eastern section of the Kunlun Mountains.

Yuzhu Peak is gentle in the south and steep in the north. The end of the glacier on the south slope is about 5,100 meters above sea level; the glacier on the north slope extends to 4,400 meters. There was an avalanche that year, and several mountaineers were buried by heavy snow. Beijing's professional snow mountain search and rescue team was dispatched, but no bodies were found in the end.

It was already 18:00 when we arrived at the Kunlun Pass. At the Kunlun Pass at an altitude of 4,700 meters, there was a road monument for the Hoh Xil Nature Reserve. Unexpectedly, we had passed through the Hoh Xil no man's land without knowing it.

The next step is to cross the Kunlun Mountains, the ancestor of mountains. During the journey, the scene has changed drastically. I didn’t expect that Kunlun Mountain would be so desolate:

The sky is full of yellow sand, which is very much like the Loess Plateau. There is no grass growing here and there is no sign of human beings.

There are only weathered yellow sand and stones everywhere, and the place where the wind blows is undoubtedly like the desolate Gobi. Compared with Kunlun Mountain, the fragile green vegetation in the no-man's land of Hoh Xil looks like paradise. According to Fat Brother, the coal reserves in the Kunlun Mountains are not at all lower than those in Shanxi. There are many coal plants, large reservoirs, cement plants, etc. along the way.

Brother Baoding was dissatisfied with the slow pace of his teammates and used the intercom to shout that they were unorganized and unable to keep up with the team. At this time, the cheerful Gansu elder brother said directly:

“It’s really not okay to take your mother-in-law with you when you work!”

"exactly!"

"Ha ha ha ha……"

The woman from the Northwest, the man from the Northwest, the Kunlun Mountains from the Northwest, the yellow sand from the Northwest, the Gobi Desert from the Northwest!

After traveling through the legendary Kunlun Mountains for an hour, by 20:30 in the afternoon I finally left the Kunlun Mountains behind.

The surface, the vegetation, the scenery, were completely and utterly transformed. Here is the endless desolate Gobi Desert, with no green grass, no snow-capped mountains and grasslands, dry and desolate sandy land and exposed coarse gravel, which makes people feel desperate.

Another half hour later, at nine o'clock we finally arrived at the outskirts of Golmud City. Smooth roads, solar energy-saving street lights, and Salix green belts beside the road reminded us that we had arrived in the urban area.

Starting from the foot of Tanggula Mountain at around 7 o'clock in the morning, we walked more than 700 kilometers in 14 hours, and finally the day was coming to an end. I was so excited and excited all day long, and I was so tired from chatting and talking that my mouth was dry. This shows how hard it is for Fat Brother and the driver masters.

The big car was parked 10 kilometers away from the city. A friend drove a truck to pour out the oil from the tank of the big car and pick it up. Fat Brother and the others were also checking the front engines of their respective cars, checking every detail for the next departure.

In the midst of fatigue and excitement, I hoarsely made a phone call to my friend. Golmud was the place where he had been planning to come here for several years, but in the end he failed to make the trip. And I was in the suburbs at this moment. Everyone sighed with emotion. Living this life, lamenting these years.

Fat Brother and the others were about to leave, but they were not allowed to take taxis into the city. They arranged for a friend to take me and my two brothers, who were hitchhiking from the Hui ethnic group, into the city. Saying goodbye to the kind-hearted fat guys and their driver companions, we sat in the open air in the bed of a small truck, blowing the wind from the Gobi Desert on the plateau, recalling this day in Hoh Xil, and felt a little lost and sad.

In this way, I traveled through Hoh Xil, which I dreamed of only existing in primary school textbooks. It was so smooth, so warm, and so happy, as if it was a dream, but it returned to reality.

I settled down in a very simple guest house next to the train station and called Fat Brother to invite him to dinner. It turned out that he lived far away and was very tired, so he declined my invitation.

After I put down the phone, I found that the Tibetan felt hat that accompanied me all the way was forgotten in his car. Then I thought about it, maybe it was God's will, and it was just a souvenir for my fat brother.

I just got acquainted with my fat brother, I just spent such an unforgettable day traveling through Hoh Xil, and now I am left alone again, and I have to go on the road alone again.

Alas, this boundless lonely night in Golmud!