One of the villages en route.
Although we're staying in Songpan for a few nights, we had to check out of the hotel this morning as we're not staying overnight there tonight! In reality we shouldn't have to do this since I would imagine that we'll be in the same rooms when we come back as we're in now, but just in case, we had to check out.
It wouldn't be an adventure holiday without doing something adventurous, so .... at least I wasn't the only one who had never ridden on a horse before!!!
We got saddled up and trotted our way through the town. It felt kinda weird at first, I almost felt like I was going to fall off at any given second! But after a little while, I did start to get more used to it. My main trouble was maintaining a nice balance - it was noted that going up the first hill my centre of balance was quite a bit off, and I did spend much of my time trying to correct that rather than maintaining any real degree of control over the horse. It was hard work but we eventually reached the top of quite a steep hill, where we stopped for a little rest. It was quite a nice view over the nearby countryside, and we did seem pretty high up (though I don't recall how high).
We walked down the slope on the other side of the hill. The guides we were trekking with suggested that going downhill on the horses was quite dangerous and it was easier if we let the horses ride down on their own.
At the bottom of the hill, over a little ford, we paused in a village for maybe twenty minutes. Village is probably too generous a term - one shop, one toilet, four houses. At the shop one or two people bought drinks; beer and water mainly, but Kathrin had a couple of glasses of barley spirit, which she offered around and yes, I had a glass or two!
Beyond the village we trekked along what appeared to be an endless road; just over an hour of riding down a flat, bendy, road, occasionally passing by a small house or other dwelling. It could be seen that the horses followed some kind of 'pecking order', whether this was to do with the horses themselves, of with the confidence of the riders, I couldn't honestly tell. Jane and Andy were invariably at the front, mine seemed to usually hang towards the rear, which suited me fine. It was evident that my horse had others which it liked to ride near; its favourite place was behind Mirella's horse! Incidentally, mine was black, hers was white; the other horse which mine preferred was the chestnut-coloured horse ridden by Kathrin. Note I ended up near the Swiss girls again!
Some of the horses were a tad wild; Mona's and Daniel's kept veering around and didn't like to be overtaken that much (though I suspect that some of the eccentricity present in the latter was due to Daniel's riding!!).
We reached a gate in another small village (slightly more houses in this one, and a small primary school). I hoped we'd reached the end, but alas! no. My horse stopped anyway, refusing to budge for a minute or two before setting off again. After riding uphill slightly on a decent road we eventually reached home base, the place we would be camping for the night. Bags were unloaded and lunch (some filling vegetable stuff) quickly cooked up by the guides.
While the guides set up the tents and prepared for the evening, we rode on up the road to a small country park based around a series of waterfalls, which we could walk around at our leisure. And guess who I ended up walking round with?! LOL!
The park was nicely laid out. The water flowed down progressively larger rapids, and there was a wooden boardwalk alongside the water, which at every rapid branched out into the water so you could get a closer look at every waterfall, and take pictures if you liked. Each branch ended in a nice wooden hut-like structure with benches so you could sit for hours looking at the water. Quite romantic, in other circumstances, I think. The whole park was covered in nice forest; indeed the forest stretched down the hill back to the village by the second gate; our campsite was in a small clearing in the forest.
The walk round the park was good, if a little exhausting - especially the bit where we ventured up next to the main waterfall and were able to effectively stand on the top of it, looking down. Interesting viewpoint. By the time we reached the top, me and Kathrin were pretty tired; Mirella on the other hand was breezing up without a problem! "It's the altitude." we figured. "Or the alcohol!". We didn't dwell on the fact that we were both 27 years old, while Mirella was still 18. So maybe in reality it was old age!!
At one point on the way down, Kathrin slipped and fell over, nothing serious though (fortunately). Later on came one of those comedic moments where I noticed it was slippy ahead and so I told her to be careful, and she followed my advice perfectly. Unfortunately, I didn't, so slipped and fell over myself! Embarrassment 1 Pride 0!
It had, by now, started to rain quite heavily, having been dry all day up to that point (indeed when we rested on the hillside with the horses, it was quite bright and even a bit sunny!). The three Swiss girls and I walked out of the park and back to camp, on the way passing a yak herder who wanted to charge us for riding the yak and/or taking a picture of it. Me and Mirella did neither, but Kathrin and Valerie did spend some time with the yak, doing what, we don't know.
The rest of the evening we stayed round the camp fire, had a bit of food cooked for us by the guides (some kind of vegetable noodle stuff - filling and nice), then we all had a bit of a chat. As the night went on, and darkness fell, there were fewer of us and the chat became a little weirder and driven by alcohol. For the latter half of the evening it was mostly me, Andy, James, Alan, and Dee.
The beer eventually ran out so the guides firstly gave us some barley wine - quite a nice, grape-flavoured spirit - and then some rather potent home-brew stuff in a Sprite bottle that even Kathrin had refused a second sip of!! James, Andy, and Alan finished that off, grudgingly but willingly - "Hold your nose, drink a bit, hold the bottle at arm's length and swallow quickly without tasting it." was Andy's method of handling it. It was excessively strong stuff though; Andy had basically collapsed on the floor by the end and Alan was telling us drunken university tales ("I wouldn't be telling you this if I was sober").
We went to bed around 11pm. It felt much later.