Four trips into the mountains

published 27 July 2018

906-travel-everest — Everest Base Camp: you'll feel high in every sense

The roads less travelled in the mountains take you through landscapes of dramatic beauty. Alice Grhns reports.

The drive is "breathtaking". From Lhasa it takes about five hours to get to the city of Shigatse. Here you may enjoy an overnight pit stop, as there are then 150 more miles to go to the small town of New Tingri. The way is "peppered with small communities". After a few days of driving, Whitelocks reached her destination and looked upon the 29,028ft peak. "I got out of the van feeling on a high in every sense."

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"Ehh! Oooowey!" The lilting cry echoes across the mountainside and the sheep stir themselves and follow, recalls Juliet Rix in The Daily Telegraph. Calling them is Chandra Singh, leader of the anwal, the last remaining migrating shepherds of the Indian Himalayas. Standing on a steep mountainside above the village of Supi in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, Rix is surrounded by mountains and rivers. It's the first stop on a week-long migration with tour operator Village Ways.

Beneath lie "narrow terraced fields of yellow-green wheat and barley, vegetable patches, and traditional houses of stone and clay". Each spring, families in the area entrust their sheep to the anwal. As it gets warmer, the grass on the lower slopes becomes dry, and the animals have to go to higher pasture. The dryness follows them until the anwal set off to migrate to the glaciers "where receding snow leaves rich grass throughout the summer". With Village Ways, travellers can join them in walking from village to village, sleeping in traditional homes and eating vegetarian Indian food. "Exceptionally good, I soon discover."

At almost 15,500ft above sea level, in the final camp of our six-day trek through Bolivia's Cordillera Real, "we had sweeping views of snow fields and glaciers that dropped into the wide valley where we'd slept", says Jen Rose Smith on CNN. During Smith's trip to the mountain range in the cold spring, the sun had left the ice untouched. The Cordillera Real, however, "is far from frozen in time, and climate change has already begun to transform Bolivia's mountains".

For now, though, the snow and ice remain in the Cordillera Real, where some peaks are higher 21,000ft. It is "a landscape of dramatic beauty just a few hours from downtown La Paz, and one that holds endless possibilities for adventurous travellers". But unlike in neighbouring Peru, where the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu hosts around 500 hikers and guides per day, the trails in the Cordillera Real are almost free of visitors. Indeed, among the high peaks and alpine lakes of the Cordillera Real, hikers will find "far more llamas than people".

And there are many reasons to visit the "finger-like peak" first and foremost, for its "ecological splendour". The mountain range is known as "the gene database of China" thanks to its rich biodiversity. The region has 2,000 types of plants as well as 19 threatened animal species. Fanjingshan, which means "Buddhist tranquillity" in Chinese, has also long been a sacred site for Buddhists. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), almost 50 temples were built here, many of which have since been destroyed. The ones that remain have become important pilgrimage sites for Buddhist worshippers. For others, a main reason to visit Fanjingshan is "the superlative views" from the summit. "Or rather, summits there are three up here."

Alice grew up in Stockholm and studied at the University of the Arts London, where she gained a first-class BA in Journalism. She has written for several publications in Stockholm and London, and joined MoneyWeek in 2017.