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The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of AsiaTravel’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

We have moved further southwest near Da Re, from Maqen towards the badland-borders with Sichuan province, less than one hundred kilometres from Serthar. We’ve arrived to a town that sits squeezed along the Yellow River wedged in between auburn coloured valleys. Our travel thus far has been the moving equivalent of the Russian Doll concept – one doll is opened up to reveal another smaller doll, and so on. In our case it is one small town leading to another smaller community, then onto a village until finally we will be completely embalmed in the open air.

Yet to reach Honkor as things go more slowly than we calculated (although in these areas we are well aware that ‘plans’ are only plans until some other plan is adopted) due to caterpillar fungus collection. Epic battles have been waged between Tibetans over who owns lands and who can access the springtime harvests of caterpillar fungus. We must abide by unwritten codes and land-crossing rules that are difficult and complicated to understand. Certain lands we simply cannot cross, even if these massive spaces appear to belong to the earth itself. While there are no actual laws, to presume anything in these raw and informal lands is a mistake. We must wait for counsel. Travelling over lands that belong to nomadic clans requires permission and this is especially true as fungus-picking season is upon us. The fungus is the one certain income generator many nomads have and one month of work can fill the coffers for the rest of the year. Nomads protect the lands and fungus with something bordering on violent desperation.  Our journey and routing through these lands must be carefully considered to prevent offending, or worse.

Another issue is that the old trader who was to come (and still may) and usher us along the Salt Road, is not in good health. Though he is adamant on joining us, his family is genuinely concerned with his health as the entire journey we are set to do will be above 4,000 metres and we will be in lands that are entirely cut off from communication, aid and access routes. If anything happens we are entirely on our own with the possibility of nomadic help. Our old trader’s health is ailing and, though Michael and I do very much want his company along the route, we will not for one moment consider risking his health or causing offence.  It may be that all we can achieve is an interview with him and others, but this will be enough. In such cases we simply must ‘hurry up and wait’.

Our morning begins ascending a 4,600 metre mountain heading up the twenty-degree grade to get a view of our intended route. Below, the Yellow River courses through a dozen channels wandering away and then reconvening. The water levels are down but vibrant green currents run deep and strong and the strands of water are visible from above creating white ripples in the sunlight.

Air moves in cold currents up at this altitude and the clean sharp waft of snow filters through the air. In the distance there are the comforting white peaks, which I’ve become attached to making daily eye contact with.

Yaks graze below and speck the horizon – the only dark marks on this sand-coloured earth, and once Michael and I reach the summit our sightlines seem infinite. Looking south-west we can see the valley we will travel through. It bends, widens, bends again and then simply funnels away into the mountain’s wedges. As the distances lengthen, the mind itself is wandering and wondering.

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For the full post, please visit www.tea-and-moutain-journals.com

Images: Jeff Fuchs

The following post was written by Gerry Levandoski, a AsiaTravel client who traveled with us on a small group journey with Yosemite in September 2010.  This is the first of a series of articles he wrote detailing his experience.  We begin in Jiuzhaigou…

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Daybreak added disappointment to the dread Esther and I already felt. Cold and rain had returned, and the day’s itinerary had us hiking and overnight camping. Hiking has become a favorite activity. If I have the proper clothes, I don’t even mind walking in the rain. But I will always choose a hotel bed and pillows over a sleeping bag on an air pad.

Park visitors need special permission and local guides to enter the Zharu Valley, our destination. The park zone contains a monastery, a couple temples and stupas or shrine, plus Zha Yi Zha Ga (“King of All Mountains”), a 14716’ peak sacred to local Benbo Buddhists. The Benbo or Bön is an ancient pantheistic sect with shamanistic and animistic traditions. Bön predates Buddhism in Tibet, but today’s followers combine Bön and Buddhist beliefs and practices.

The valley is a biodiversity treasure house, too. According to the park website, the valley contains 40% of all plant species existing in the whole of China. By the time we boarded the van that would take us to the valley’s mouth, the air was trending warmer and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. The van left us at Re Xi Village and proceeded to the campsite with the equipment and supplies.

Re Xi reflects the changes wrought by the area’s conversion into a park. The houses feature recent and modern two-story, stone and tile construction. One old style three story home remains as a museum piece for the tourists. Of wood construction, both the interior and exterior exhibit colorfully painted religious symbols and images.

Tigers on the exterior discourage evil spirits. Inside, the kitchen and living room are one. This main living space features Tibetan-style lacquered wood shelves and panels. The family altar, with a lotus positioned Buddha, a cropped peacock feather array and an incense burner, occupies a prominent shelf. Multiple teakettles sit atop the central wood-burning stove, ever ready to accommodate guests. Yak butter tea, anyone?…Adjoining bedrooms, workrooms and storage occupy the main floor’s remaining interior space. The top story serves as a hayloft.

Today, the villagers continue to wear traditional clothing and earn a living in the tourist industry rather than relying on hunting and subsistence farming. The few remaining farm animals find shelter in detached buildings rather than the traditional ground floor stables.

We did not follow the van up the road. Instead we proceeded over an easy rolling trail on the river valley’s right wall, first, through a temperate forest, and then past abandoned fields, orchards and crumbling concrete and wood farm cottage remains. When we began hiking the group’s mood was subdued, but the weather continued to dry and to warm, which lifted our spirits. Soon, our conversation and laughter proscribed any chances of encountering the local fauna. Even the birds kept their distance. John and Jay, two park rangers, served as our guides/interpreters.

On my own, I watch the trail for wildflowers, fruiting bushes and unusually-shaped leaves, but I’m no botanist. John and Jay’s powers of observation and knowledge of the local flora astonished me. They stopped us repeatedly to point out a plant or shrub, give us the English name and to tell us its value in herbology or cooking. Many wildflowers were in bloom including some orchid varieties. Ramon, an avid nature photographer stood beside himself with delight:

After a three or four mile hike, we reached the campsite, a piney flat beside the river and a teal-watered reservoir. To our delight, the tents were already up. The site provided clean pit toilets WITH tissue, and a ranger cabin where we could relax at tables and chairs.

Phillip, our Tibetan guide, was already in the kitchen making dinner preparations.

John explained that the Chinese have yet catch on to camping as recreation, but the national parks service hoped to promote the activity. Park management had originally intended Zharu Valley to become a campground as well as a horseback riding area.

However, the local inhabitants objected vehemently because of the valley’s religious importance, so future usage now stood unclear. Our hosts had erected our tents next to an enclosure that once housed giant pandas. For better or worse, the bamboo inside the enclosure died, so the pandas were released.

We had stopped for lunch along the trail and dinner was still a couple hours away, so when John and Jay offered us another hike, the majority accepted. This trail took us deeper into the forest toward Zha Yi Zha Ga summit. We passed a Benbo stupa and a nearby field strewn with prayer flags. In case you don’t know, Buddhist prayer flags commonly come in five color combinations, blue, white, red, green and yellow. While sometimes displayed as long banners, most flags I’ve seen are roughly 8”x12” rectangles with a prayer, and often a symbol, printed upon them. The flags are sold sewn to a cord so they can be strung up where they will flap in the wind.

Buddhists believe in something like a universal consciousness rather than a god. The wind waving the flag means the prayer is being continuously recited. The best analogy might be votive candles lit beforea Catholic church side altar honoring Saint Somebody or the Virgin Mary. Just as the candle burns until used up, so the prayer flags remain until they disintegrate.

I find the concept beautiful, but the practice far less lyrical. One sees masses of thin, faded and tatted cloth drooping toward the ground or, having already landed, lying in the mud. Yet, maneuvering through this chaotic flag array triggered a long-lost childhood memory of summer days when my mom had the sheets and clothes from our eleven-member household hung out to dry in the backyard. This vision lacked poetry, but I recalled the simple joy of walking between the waving sheets wearing nothing but cutoffs. In the moment I felt again the sheets’ cool, damp touch on my hot bare skin.

The rain restarted as we moved further along the trail. We passed the roofless walls and doorless portal of a claustrophobia-inducing stacked stone shelter. John explained that the builders/inhabitants had had an opium poppy plantation out here. A tiger carried off one of their children. They abandoned the homestead only after the same tiger carried off their second child. Everyone grew quiet and began paying closer attention to the meadow grasses and wildflowers around us…

Esther voiced the obvious questions. “How long ago did this happen?” (In the 90s.) “Are there still tigers here?”

(Maybe—butprobably not)

“I want to see a tiger.”

A drizzly mist enfolded us on the return walk and the trail was muddier and colder for it. We trudged into the ranger cabin to find the dinner tables set and Western beers and California wines set out for sharing. During a recent trip to California and Yosemite, John purchased these treats anticipating our visit and this meal. Phillip, our chef du jour, created the best meal we ate in China. Fresh vegetables rescued from the primordial cooking oil ooze, and meats spared a deep fryer plunge. Generally, our Juizhaigou hosts treated us like the VIPs.

While we were chatting over cookies and tea, Don pulled a bottle of clear liquor and several thimble-sized shot glasses from his pack. His actions raised a collective “Ahhh” from his group, which caused the rest of us to pay more attention.

I happened to be sitting on Don’s right. He set a thimble before each of us and filled them with liquor. I raised the drink to my nose and detected a faint soy sauce fragrance.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mao Tai.”

Don raised his glass, and indicated that I should do likewise. “Ganbei!” he shouted and downed the drink. Why not? I thought and followed suit. Mao Tai comes from fermented soygum, not soy beans. Its alcohol content varies between 35% and 53%. At the state dinner during Nixon’s 1972 China visit, Prime Minister Zhou En-Lai touched a match to his glass demonstrating to the President that Mao Tai can indeed catch fire. A young Dan Rather called it “liquid razor blades.”

Despite all that, I found the taste experience surprisingly smooth (At least that was true for the brand Don shared with us). Even notorious tea totaling Esther enjoyed a second glass. Mao Tai first gained a worldwide reputation after winning a gold medal at the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, but I’d never heard of it. If you drink hard liquor, the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant with a bar, try Mao Tai and form your own opinion.

With a great meal in our bellies and good spirits to warm us, we were set for a long evening of stories and jokes. Our hosts, however, found it impolite to clear the tables while their guests remained seated there. It was only about 9:00, but they had to clean up before going to sleep. Zhao Bei politely told us we had a long day of travel tomorrow, and we should go to bed.. We had a good laugh over this, but obeyed.

It wasn’t my best night’s sleep. The sleeping bags were cozy enough, but in the middle of the night, my air pad popped and I laid across the uneven contours beneath the tent the rest of the night.

Did I mention that I don’t like camping?

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This year, this trip departs September 14, 2011.  For inquiries, please click here: Hiking Yosemite Sister Parks in China or e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

Image: Gerry Levandoski & Ramon Perez. See all photos on Facebook here.

The following piece is an excerpt from an article written by Alison Beard for the May 2011 edition of Harvard Business Review.

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FORCED TO SHUT DOWN: What a Chinese travel entrepreneur learned from the SARS crisis and its aftermath

The first defining moment of Zhang Mei’s career came in late 1999, when she quit her lucrative consulting job to launch a small travel company in her native China. In December, the Harvard MBA was wearing business suits to New York boardroom meetings; by July, she was in jeans, on the floor of her tiny Beijing office, untangling telephone wires.

The second—and more important—turning point came nearly four years later, when the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak hit Asia, battering a travel industry still recovering from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and all but killing Zhang’s fledgling business. Nothing in her training had taught her how to handle the crisis. But she managed to keep the company going, and today AsiaTravel is a leader in its field.

Looking back, Zhang sees that her first big move turned her into an entrepreneur. But it was the SARS experience that taught her how to be a CEO.

“I had high hopes for the business,” she recalls, “and early on I wondered: Am I a good manager? Am I a smart leader?”

After 2003, however, she was battle tested:  “These extraordinary events happen once in a decade, and I’m lucky I got mine early.”

A New Direction

Zhang grew up in Dali in China’s Yunnan province, studying English at the insistence of her father, an electrician who’d never attended high school  She went to Yunnan University and then worked as a translator, until a Thai banker she had met at a business event encouraged her to apply to Harvard’s MBA program – and promised to pay her tuition if she would join his company after graduation.  Once enrolled, she set her sights on a corporate career – “doing the job while other people took care of the details” – and was thrilled to land at McKinsey, a position that required extensive travel and allowed her to repay the banker rather than work for him.

But consulting left her unfulfilled.  She wanted more freedom and even more travel.  She also wanted to do something good for China.  McKinsey gave her a pro bono assignment:  strategizing on economic development and conservation in Yunnan province on behalf of the Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based NGO.  Zhang liked nonprofit work but didn’t want to make a career of it.  Instead, she came up with a business idea: Launch a travel company to offer sustainable, socially responsible tours of Chinese destinations and communities.

She did a test run, guiding two Nature Conservancy executives and two Washington Post journalists into Tibet – impressing one of them so much that he soon married her.  And then Zhang made her move, relocating to Shanghai and taking a job at travel website Ctrip to learn the industry while honing her business plan.  A few months later, armed with her own savings and small investments from friends and family, she joined her new husband in Beijing and launched AsiaTravel.

“I had no idea what I was doing, and I never perceived myself as a salesperson, but I became really good at selling my idea – to investors, staff, clients,” she says.  “I didn’t even mind all the mundane details of entrepreneurship at the beginning – moving the table and buying the trash can. I just had a conviction.”

With a small, young, enthusiastic staff, a growing list of mainly American clients, and tours focused on everything from city hopping to bird-watching, the company turned a profit in its first year.  Then came the travel standstill following 9/11.  “She was definitely thinking the business might be finished:  good idea, bad timing,” recalls Zhang’s husband, John Pomfret.  But the slowdown ultimately served as an impetus to improve her strategy.  “Our business had been focused on U.S. travelers, and that was the first time we started thinking about selling in other markets as well,” says Guido Meyerhans, a McKinsey colleague who had invested in AsiaTravel.  By early 2002, bookings were back on track.  Still, the experience didn’t fully prepare Zhang for the next, more painful crisis.

Second Shock

The first reports of a deadly SARS outbreak in China’s Guangdong province, about 1,400 miles south of Beijing, emerged in February 2003. In March, the World Health Organization issued a global alert, and foreign countries started to release travel warnings for China. But in part because Chinese officials were claiming to have the situation under control, Zhang and her employees carried on as usual.  “It was peak season, clients were still coming, and the news was all about how limited the SARS cases were,” she recalls.  “So we didn’t make any contingency plans.”

By April, however, cancellations were pouring in, and, late that month, Beijing was declared a danger zone. Zhang thought she could finish up the tours in progress and then redirect her staff to planning and training until bookings resumed. “Then one day,” she recalls, “the contractors renovating our office said, ‘We can’t come in.’” They didn’t want to risk infection by riding the bus. “That’s when it dawned on me: This is serious.”

Belatedly, Zhang and her COO, Jim Stent, started to consider the threat to their own employees, to cancel all trips already under way, and to develop models of what a pandemic might do to their balance sheet. Staff salaries were low by Western standards but could still have eaten up the company’s reserves within six months in the absence of new revenue. Zhang wanted to buy herself at least a year, so she opted for drastic measures: AsiaTravel would cease operations immediately. Both she and the COO would suspend their incomes indefinitely. The dozen or so other employees were asked to forgo 75% of their income until the fall, essentially taking vacation at 25% pay. Once the company reopened, if it did, everyone would be fully reimbursed. They all agreed.

Jia Liming, Zhang’s first hire at AsiaTravel, remembers ending the long- planned bird-watching trip she’d been guiding a week early and then attending an employee farewell party—held at a Beijing park since the SARS threat was considered to be less severe outside. “We thought it was over,” she says.

For her part, Zhang remained calm. But “it was hard to stomach,” she says. “The city was in lockdown, and it seemed like the whole world was coming to an end. Still, I’d been through 9/11, so I was confident we could come back.”

Indeed, by midsummer, following more than 8,000 cases of infection and nearly 800 deaths, SARS seemed to have been contained, and bookings began to pick up again. Zhang and Stent decided to reopen much earlier than they’d expected, on August 1, and called back all the staff.

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Zhang’s top performer in terms of sales and customer service—a young woman she’d hired in 2001 and come to view as a protégé—refused. “She said she wanted more time to hike around another moun- tain,” Zhang says. “I said no. I’d promised a client a proposal by August 5. Two weeks later, she didn’t show. Eventually she came back, all smiles, and I had to tell her I’d given her position away.”

The woman soon launched a regional competitor to AsiaTravel, and over the next few months several other employees left because they missed traveling independently. “It was disappointing because she’d paid these people well and given them opportunities,” Pomfret says.

The next few months at AsiaTravel were nose to the grindstone—reaching out to new clients in the corporate and education sectors; selling, planning, and executing trips; recruiting and training new employees; and replenishing the reserves to pay employees’ back salaries and fund growth. “We had to hustle,” Zhang says. But it paid off. “2004 was one of the best years we’ve had, in terms of profits and new projects.”

Seasoned Traveler

Today, “a little bit older, a little bit wiser”—and having stepped down as CEO in late 2004 to follow Pomfret to the United States, where he had a new job—Zhang points to a few ways in which the SARS crisis helped her become a better leader.

First, it taught her the importance of scenario planning and proactive communication with staff and customers in crisis situations. “I was responsive to client questions during SARS,” she says, “but I didn’t take action until May, by which point I was a little bit cornered.” Since then, AsiaTravel has established crisis response guidelines. “Number one is to make a judgment call as early as possible,” says Zhang, who remains chairwoman and part owner and oversees market- ing from her suburban Maryland office.

When riots broke out in Tibet during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example, the company issued a press release and sent instructions to staff and guides the next day.  Meyerhans notes that employees are also in closer contact with provincial government officials to ensure access to the most accurate information. “Once you start preempting clients’ questions, they feel you’re in control,” Zhang explains.

The employee fallout from SARS was also educational. When people Zhang had trusted left her, she realized she needed to think harder about whom she was recruiting and why. In the first years of AsiaTravel, she explains, “I was looking for the passionate, free-spirited traveler I should have been looking for the customer service, travel industry professional—someone who really gets satisfaction out of serving other people.” She was also giving promotions and pay raises too quickly, on an ad hoc basis, without establishing benchmarks for advancement, including long-term commitment to the company.

After SARS, Zhang built a different kind of team, including more-seasoned managers who could handle day-to-day operations when she left in 2004. “One of her biggest achievements,” Meyerhans says, “was making that transition so smoothly, based on the trust she had in the employees she’d hired.”

More broadly, he thinks the two early hits of 9/11 and SARS forced Zhang to be a more creative, confident executive, diversifying and expanding the company each time. “We had high-net-worth individuals and small groups, but that’s a difficult business to control and grow, so we started to build up the corporate and the educational business,” in addition to targeting different geographic regions, he explains. And Zhang has insisted in the years since that AsiaTravel stick to that forward-thinking strategy.  During the recent financial crisis, for example, even as competitors retrenched, “I doubled down,” she says. “I plowed more than 50% of our profits into marketing and IT. I knew that China’s rise, and its tourism and our business, would outlast the recession.”

One last benefit of enduring the SARS period, with no income, was that it reinforced Zhang’s passion for her venture. “You go through self-doubt moments,” she recalls. “When the profits aren’t great, you say, ‘Wow, how did I labor another year with no payback?’ But I’m in this be- cause I enjoy it. As long as I have a comfort level that reaches the minimum threshold, I can seek satisfaction.

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of AsiaTravel’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

The Nyi Chu river provided a valley ‘trail’ by which salt caravans, single yak, and nomads accessed the salt sources of Qinghai

Honkor – Mado

Some would call these wastelands, vast spaces of emptiness that can host only the most rugged life forms…from my heavy eyes; I see that this is as a place of great and silent power that cannot be bent by human hands. These bleak and stunning landscapes measure risk and beauty differently and the ‘reward’ for mistakes or failure here is harsh and often fatal.

Vast and empty – valleys at 4,000 metres near Mado

We are heading west to Mado and the famed salt lake awaits us (we think). Mado County rests at 4,300 metres and it is known for being one of the coldest counties of all of the Tibetan regions. It is called Marduk to the Tibetans meaning, “high place” and it is that, though the ‘town’ itself was more of a nomadic seasonal dwelling place wedged into a long lake shaped valley.

We would like to introduce a new experience in educational travel in China – the AsiaTravel Student Summer Expedition.

Designed to bring together unforgettable experiences and cultural discovery in a safe, professionally managed adventure learning experience, highlights of this program include:

– Experience life in China’s capital of Beijing where Imperial history collides with hyper-modernity

– Trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge, a spectacular natural wonder where we meet local residents cuaght in the midst of China’s struggle to balance environmental concerns with economic demands.

– Journey into one of the spiritual centers of Tibetan culture and experience the daily lives of its residents.

– Retrace an ancient pilgrimage route on a five-day Tibetan style trek amongst the snow-capped peaks of the Tibetan plateau to the 14,500 ft summit of Mount Skika.

– Participants will have an opportunity to give back to the community by participating for four days (roughly 20 – 30 hours) in a community service project.

Quick FAQs:

Q. Who is this expedition for?

A. Students ages 14+ and entering 9 – 12 grade are eligible.

Q. When does the journey depart?

A. There are two programs running in the summer of 2011: July 11 – July 28 and July 20 – August 6

Q. How much is the program fee?

A. USD 3,990. This fee includes domestic but not international airfare.

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Please see the flier below for more details.  To enquire about this trip, please email education@wildchina.com.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Travel bans to Tibet are expected to be lifted by the end of July.

Bans in 2011 have been said to be implemented on account of two major anniversaries – the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet on May 23, 1951, as well as the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1, 1921.

The destination will open its doors to visitors just as the rainy season begins to fade. To begin planning your journey to Tibet, please submit an inquiry here or e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

Buddhist art in Lhasa

The following is an excerpt taken from the Spring 2011 issue of WEALTH Magazine.

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Before solidifying your next vacation plans, consider the latest trend in eco-awareness — ecotourism.  We’ve spotlighted three green luxury travel destinations.

Every day, more people introduce another element of eco-awareness into their daily lives — recycling instead of discarding, opting for reusable grocery bags in lieu of paper or plastic ones, and choosing eco-friendly vehicles over gas guzzlers.  As you plan your next getaway, consider the latest trend for reducing your footprint on the planet — ecotourism.

According to The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), “Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” Put simply, it’s an opportunity to experience areas around the world in their natural form without putting an environmental strain on them.

Converting your vacation into an eco-friendly travel experience will likely inspire more sustainable efforts in your everyday life.  “Not only do you have a feeling of satisfaction that you haven’t contributed to global warming, but you feel inspired and motivated to bring something back with you besides memories, pictures and videos,” says John Clifford, president of luxury travel consultancy InternationalTravelManagement.com based in San Diego.  “That’s the magic of travel — it’s very rewarding to people.”

What’s more, with eco-friendly travel, parents can expose their children to far more than they could through typical ski trips, beach excursions or European tours.  It’s a great opportunity to discover and adopt new habits that promote a more eco-friendly lifestyle at home.

“These practices, many of which are fairly simple, can inspire visitors to take them home and apply them to their own lives,” Clifford says.  “Whether it’s inspiring a family to grow their own vegetables in their yard, sponsor a nearby beach cleanup or park reforestation, or something similar — as long as the family comes back home with the impetus to ‘do something’ — the ecotourism and sustainable travel has made an impact on the family.”

While it’s possible to turn a trip to any destination into an eco-friendly vacation, several locations across the globe have made it a priority to promote ecotourism.  Consider any of these three spots that offer a one-of-a-kind luxurious experience, all while safeguarding the environment.

China’s Yunnan Province

Most travelers immediately consider the bustling cities of Beijing or Hong Kong for their China vacation destinations of choice. But for those seeking an eco-focused experience, the Yunnan Province in Southwestern China is a lesser-known alternative.

Ecotourism has taken off in this region of China. Travelers can experience the region’s many natural wonders, says Mei Zhang, founder of AsiaTravel, a sustainable travel company based in Beijing. One such wonder is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site of the Three Parallel Rivers (Yangtze, Mekong and Salween rivers). In addition, over the last 10 years, Zhang says, there has been a surge in tourism facility construction projects – most pledging to have minimal impact on the environment.

ACCOMMODATIONS: For sustainable lodging, Zhang recommends the Linden Centre near Dali City. The estate – built by a local warlord in the years before the Communist Revolution – has been renovated with modern amenities yet maintains much of the original architecture of a traditional courtyard mansion. The hotel is meant to be a model of “architectural renovation, cultural conservation and a primary partner in the sustainable development of the local economy.”

While it provides certain contemporary services, such as Wi-Fi, the hotel purposefully doesn’t include televisions in the rooms. Instead, guests are encouraged to interact with one another, hotel staff and villagers in such activities as accompanying one of the hotel chefs on a vegetable market visit.

For those who wish to gain the full experience of a Tibetan monastery, Zhang recommends the Songstam Hotel in Shangri-La. A true treasure of the community, the hotel was built by local craftsmen from local wood and stone, Zhang says. It features Tibetan rugs and antiques, and an almost completely Tibetan staff. The hotel also offers energy-efficient, wood-burning stoves in every room.

ACTIVITIES: Pudacuo National Park in Shangri-La provides the perfect opportunity to hike through a biologically sensitive area with a rich plant kingdom and many endangered species of animals, offering firsthand learning opportunities for younger children.

Shangri-La also is home to Songzanlin Monastery, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan. Monks live a frugal, rural lifestyle, eating meals together and choosing to walk or ride bikes rather than burn automobile gasoline. “You can visit the praying halls or join villagers for their local celebrations,” says Zhang, who says visitors’ behaviors naturally change when they’re in this eco-friendly area. “Visitors here walk into everyday life. When you get to these sacred places and everything’s so natural and beautiful, and you see the monks practicing, people are so inspired by their surroundings that they keep quiet and stay out of the way to respect the cultural heritage.”

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To learn more about AsiaTravel’s journeys to Yunnan, check out South of the Clouds & The Ancient Tea & Horse Caravan Road: An Expedition with Jeff Fuchs. The latter journey is a immersive, small group journey which departs September 12, 2011. For inquiries, please e-mail us at info@wildchina.com.

Travel to Tibet just got more convenient: the government has just finished a 38km highway linking Gonggar airport and Lhasa. At the ribbon-cutting on the 17^th, government officials including Xi Jinping officially opened the 4 lane expressway that will allow visitors to Lhasa to cut about 30 minutes of travel time. When Tibet is reopened to visitors next month, AsiaTravel hopes that this will make getting off the beaten path with us just a little easier!

Sources: Xinhua and the China Daily

Traveling is easy these days. Planes, trains and ferries criss-cross the globe, Google maps and GPS can pinpoint your location in minute detail, and thousands of guidebooks, websites and blogs provide real-time information on almost every place imaginable. While this is certainly more convenient, it’s hard to imagine that same sense of exhilaration felt by great explorers doing something for the first time: Columbus setting foot on America; Hillary summitting Everest, for example. Earlier this month, however, I discovered that real off-the-beaten-path adventuresare still possible, if you know how to find them…

Tibetan home in Zhonglu Village

After a painfully early start and an hour’s delay in Beijing, I arrived at Chengdu airport around noon, where I was met by Frederique Darragon. Born in Paris, Frederique inherited a small fortune from her father, an inventor who died when she was 4 years old. Instead of buying things, Frederique chose to spend her money on exploring the world. Despite my tiredness, the 9-hour bucking-bronco journey from Chengdu to Danba, a quaint little Tibetan town in western Sichuan, passed quickly as Frederique wowed me with stories of her travels – hitchhiking across the United States on a shoestring budget, working on a kibbutz in Israel, sailing the Atlantic in the first race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, living amongst the golden eagle hunters in Mongolia, and being rescued by Tibetan shepherds after suffering a stroke while searching for snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau. She has been a model in Paris, a record-breaking polo player and 8-time thoroughbred racing champion in Argentina, a lauded samba dancer in Rio…
Twelve years ago near Danba, Frederique came across a tall tower made of cut stone, bricks and timber. Thinking nothing of it at the time, she came across a similar one a year later in Tibet, 800 kilometres from the first. The locals she asked had no idea who built them, how old they were, or what they were used for, and further inquiry revealed that despite their abundance in this area (known as the Tribal Corridor), almost no scientific research has been done on them. They are one of China’s enduring architectural mysteries. Frederique was intrigued, and intent on uncovering their story.

Tower of Danba Valley

Over the next decade, Frederique sifted through journals, articles and ancient texts looking for references to the towers. She wandered the area interviewing local people, gathering data from 250 standing towers and over 750 ruins, taking photographs and collecting wood samples for carbon dating, in search of clues. Using the money that her then boyfriend, media mogul Ted Turner, had given her to buy dresses, she set up the Unicorn Foundation – dedicated to preserving the towers and improving the livelihoods of the people in the area. She also published a book, filmed a documentary that aired on the Discovery Channel and put together a photo exhibition to raise awareness of the towers both in China and the West.

The next morning, inspired by Frederique’s go-getter travel philosophy, I decided to make my own way to Zhonglu, a small village 20 minutes northeast of Danba. The landscape was breathtaking. Dozens of square towers and fortress-like Tibetan houses are visible from the hilltop viewing platform, scattered across both sides of the Danba Valley. Villagers in traditional garb were bent over in fields of crops or drove animals along the narrow pathways through the village, and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the experience was not completely authentic. From my perch I could also make out a shiny cavalcade of SUVs parked outside the only guesthouse in Zhonglu, and an old lady in a toll booth had charged me 20 RMB to enter the village.

When I mentioned this to Frederique later, she explained that the landscape’s steep contours means that land for cultivation and building property is extremely limited.

Old buildings, including the ancient towers, are typically knocked down to make space for new ones, and the stones are reused as building materials. Her take on the toll fee is positive: if the locals recognize the value of the towers as tourist attractions, they will be more inclined to protect them. They will also be less reliant on harvesting Chinese herbal medicines and logging timber as ways to supplement their limited income, which reduces the pressure on the local environment. The next step is to convince them to think about long term sustainability and ecotourism, instead of trying to make quick money though mass market tourism. That’s where AsiaTravel hopes to help.

Water-powered cornmill

That afternoon, we drove a little further down the road to another village called Pujiaoding. The road wound up the side of the valley, narrowed then came to dead end. We hopped out of the car and continued on foot along a narrow dirt track, which opened up to a small primary school. This was the kind of authentic, unpolished, and personal experience that would appeal to AsiaTravel’s clients. Schoolchildren were playing basketball on the concrete playground as the school principal showed us the areas in need of repair. Seeing the multitude of little problems that could be solved with a small donation and a bit of elbow grease reminded me how much we take for granted in more developed parts of the country. Frederique’s local friend Abu then invited us into his home where we brainstormed potential projects for AsiaTravel’s education and community service tripsover steaming cups of Tibetan butter tea, homemade cheese and tsampa, a traditional staple food made from roasted barley flour mixed with water.

This pattern of events happened for the rest of the trip. We would stop in relatively touristy spots, particularly at night, but just around the corner there were hidden gems to be discovered: a tiny village that still uses the power of falling water to grind corn into flour; little old ladies that have never seen tourists, let alone foreign ones; unspoilt fields of rainbow coloured wildflowers beyond the pastures. The five days I spent with Frederique highlighted how I will approach all my travels in future, with an open mind, engaging with local people and proactively searching for experiences and adventure.

School in Pujiaoding

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Author of this post Samantha Woods is a manager at AsiaTravel.  To learn more about Danba and journeys to this area, please contact us at info@wildchina.com.

The following post was written by Jan Heininger and Jamie Reuter, AsiaTravel clients who traveled with us for two and half weeks in October of 2010.  Their journey took them through Beijing, Tibet, Yunnan Province. Guangxi Province, and finally to Hong Kong. This is the first of a series of articles he wrote detailing their experience.  We begin with their overall impression of China…

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Some people come away saying they “loved” China.  We didn’t.  Don’t get me wrong.  This was a great trip.  China was fascinating.  It had beautiful scenery.  It had lots of history and culture.  We had many very unique experiences.  Tibet was wonderful.  We saw the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  We saw amazing scenery including the karst mountains in the Li River valley.  We saw and experienced (in our own way) the spirituality of Tibet and China.  We visited towns and areas still dominated by minority populations and tribes.  We had, alas, only a few great meals but we stayed in a number of really outstanding hotels.  We had excellent guides and drivers who gave us meaningful insights into China, its history, its culture and its peoples.  We came away with a much greater appreciation for how some of the more recent aspects of Chinese history (end of the empire, Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the change to the “new economy”) have molded how people live their lives today.  We walked through “old towns” and markets established a thousand years ago.  We got a better understanding of how life works under central control.  But we didn’t “love it.”  We were fascinated.  We will go back to visit other areas of the country.  We were thrilled with our tour company and will use them again.  But we weren’t seduced by the country’s charms.

Part of our difficulties was due to the constant and sometimes overwhelming presence of Chinese tourists.  Chinese tourists are an odd group and not terribly accommodating or pleasant from a westerner’s perspective.  According to conversations with several people, Chinese tourists are less interested in seeing, learning and understanding, and much more interested in taking home pictures of themselves and cheap souvenir gifts to “prove” they had been to the big city and seen the elephant (so to speak).  In the context of China’s economic growth and the spread of wealth down into the middle classes and rural communities, millions of these tourists are on their initial trips out of their local communities.  They smoke a lot.  They spit.  They talk, stand up or even walk around during performances.  They push and shove to get to the front of a line – a survival skill, no doubt, in a country with 1.3 billion people.  In small numbers (anything less than several thousand), they are no worse than any other population of large groups discharging from parked ranks of tour buses.  You ignore their presence and carry on.  But for some reason, we were flooded with them.  Clearly, it was worst in Beijing, and our experience there may have made us hypersensitive to the issue throughout the remainder of the trip.  But our guides uniformly reflected on how they were seeing substantially many more national tourists than expected.  In prior years, the number of Chinese tourists had substantially diminished following their big national holiday (October 1).  This year, they just kept coming.  As an early example, I expected Tiananmen Square to be this huge, open square, just like the pictures I’ve seen.  Instead, all we could see were the heads of tens of thousands of tourists jamming an open space between a few monumental marble structures.  There was a 4-6 hour wait to get into Mao’s tomb (we skipped it).  Given the number of people present, the square itself didn’t even seem all that big.  For communities all across China, hanging out a “UNESCO Site” sign means you’re guaranteed millions of dollars of revenue from tens of thousands of Chinese tourists jamming little historic streets lined with shops selling plastic crap and cheap reproductions (mostly made in Viet Nam).  You can’t fault the Chinese for wanting to visit the hotspots within their own country.  But their numbers and manner definitely reduced our enjoyment and, in some cases our appreciation, for particular sights or experiences.
Second, China is clearly struggling with the size of its population, the extraordinary rate of growth in its economy and the rapid changes that are occurring in its distribution of wealth.  Improvements in their infrastructure (highways and airports in our experiences) just can’t keep up.  So in any largish city (and a country this size has lots and lots of cities with 5-10 million people), traffic jams, litter, pollution, clean water, lack of functional sewer systems, crowded public transport, crowded airports and disruptions due to construction are real problems.  I saw more Ferraris in Beijing in 3 days than I’ve seen in Washington D.C. in 30 years.  But most of them probably never get out of 1st gear due to the endless traffic jams there.  They’re like enormous pinkie rings, serving only to demonstrate the wealth of their owners.  Our trip included many, many hours in cars and vans averaging anywhere from 10-20 kilometers per hour – both in urban areas and while driving between rural towns.  Most tourist areas are struggling to deal with the explosion of tourism by Chinese nationals and foreigners, and some sites are, frankly, failing.  For example, we had to stand around for 15-20 minutes waiting for our guide to purchase tickets to get into the Forbidden City.  There was no way to pre-purchase tickets to get into sites.  And it wasn’t just for our small group of two.  Even the large groups stood around waiting, increasing the sense of congestion and crowding around key sites.  They just haven’t learned the secrets of how to move people along.
Finally (and there’s no polite way to say this) but…  Squat toilets were not our favorite Chinese experience.  Particularly when there aren’t any doors or walls between the “stalls.”  And you’d better bring your own toilet paper because you won’t find any outside of luxury hotels and airports (and even some of the airports only had squat toilets.)
I remember when my Grandmother Miller visited us in Germany back in the 1960’s and said something like “Germany would be a great place if it just wasn’t so full of foreigners.”  That’s been an inside, Reuter family joke for years.  I am very uncomfortable with the fact that my feelings about our China trip include even a tiny hint of this incredibly ethno-centric view.  I really do believe that I’m much more cosmopolitan than that.  But it can’t be argued that in the end, we just didn’t really “love” China as a country, and these were some of the reasons why.

Our tour company was AsiaTravel.  We could never say enough wonderful things about how well they actually performed.  They provided everything promised, including cars and beds big enough for Jamie.  Their guides were terrific: very helpful, informed and flexible.  While dealing with our early arrival is the best example of their flexibility, we regularly had conversations with our guides about the various options we had for spending a day.  They quickly picked up on our desire to skip the obvious and crowded and go for things that were more unusual and interesting.  They knew where the shops with “quality” goods were, and took us there.  They were very open about their own lives and experiences.  They taught us a lot about what it was like to live in the “new China.”  We highly recommend AsiaTravel to anyone planning a trip there.  They will work with you to create the type of trip you want, and then deliver it.  A very good friend of ours, who has travelled extensively, went on a 12 day trip to Yunnan, departing two days after we returned, and spent time in many of the same places we visited.  She used one of the “usual” tour companies.  The contrast between the two trips was remarkable.  If you’re going to China, use AsiaTravel.
Weather wise, we sort of lucked out.  The rainy season was supposed to have ended.  But everyone kept talking about how weather patterns had been delayed this year and that we were still in the tail end of the rainy season.  Weather.com kept predicting rain – with daily precipitation probabilities ranging from 60-80% for weeks at a time.  In reality, we had serious rain for only two days: one in Beijing (when we visited the Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven in our rain gear and under umbrellas) and one in Kunming (when a break in a steady rain let us wander around the Stone Forest without get too wet).  On the other hand, it was generally cloudy, overcast and about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder than we expected.  While Jamie never put on his wool cap and gloves, he only wore his shorts and polo shirts after we got to Hong Kong.  Jan packed too many shirts with three-quarter sleeves and was stuck wearing her 2 long sleeve shirts day after day after day.  Neither of us even got close to putting on our bathing suits.

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Stay tuned for more tales from Ms. Heininger & Mr. Reuter’s journey.  For more information about the destinations they visited, check out our destinations map here.