"Why?" she asks, a sudden look of concern stretching across her face. It certainly wasn't our plan to head back east. We were looking forward to continuing west to Litang, and then south into Yunan province and Shangri La. But that wasn't going to happen.
I explain what had happened during the night, namely the overwhelming sense of nausea that had kept me awake for hours, the crushing headache that I'd been trying to ignore for days and seemed to be getting worse, and the sudden piercing pain that had developed in my chest that made it difficult to breathe.
It was clear that I had developed some severe symptoms of altitude sickness, and that it was imperative that we get out of town immediately and descend to a lower altitude. Chengdu was the only real option we had, despite the fact that we would have a thirteen hour journey ahead of us. On the other hand, it was a place we were familiar with, and ideal for resting up for a couple of days.
We say goodbye to French Laura and head off in search of a way out of Dodge. As no actual bus service to speak of goes through Tagong, we sit by the side of the road and wait to hail a mini-van to take us to Kangding. When one finally does stop for us, we get in and are driven for about a block before stopping so that the driver can get some breakfast.
For the next five hours, we trudge forward at a pace not much faster than walking as our mini-van is tossed one way and then the next as the driver attempts to navigate the rugged dirt road that cuts through the massive expanse of grassland. The landscape is scattered with herds of yak and the occasional black tent, which is the only evidence, other than the road itself, that human beings had ever set foot in this part of the world.
I spend most of the trip trying to remain as calm as possible and focus past the pain in my chest and the feeling that any form of exertion will result in my heart exploding through my chest. But as always, it's the ability to see the humour in the situation that makes me appreciate the experience and to endure it. Take the driver's attempt to cut through open fields rather than to continue along the road, for instance, only to have the van become stuck in the muddy tracks created by previous drivers who had attempted the same feat. Or just on the outskirts of Kangding, when the driver pulls into someone's driveway, gets out and has a smoke with his friends as a man power-washes the van with all us passengers inside becoming soaked from the deluge of water seeping in through the cracks in the weather stripping.
Indeed, it's moments like these which remind me that there's no place quite like China, which makes me appreciate home all the much more.
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