Secondary Trip Day 5!

Day 5: Songpan Horse Trek and Erdaohai Park

So, I missed out on the horse trek, but no big deal- gives me a reason to go back! My fellow teacher who was going ahead with a student (he has horse allergies) fell ill, and I went with him in the car up to the campsite instead. We ended up being about 4 hours ahead of the others, but we were not ones to sit around and twiddle our thumbs. We started off down the road to hike up one of the surrounding mountain ridges...

The Summit

It only took us all of 4 hours (okay, really just me) to drag ourselves up to the top and slide back down to camp. And, it rained pretty solidly for the last 3 hours. We were absolutely soaked and covered in mud! I had some pretty cool battle scratches from the brambles, as well as an embarrassing bruised tailbone from taking too many unwanted breaks on my butt. 

After our hike, we met up with the rest of the group to explore Erdaohai National Park and the hot springs. Another gorgeous area, I felt like I was in a fairyland. And my favorite part? There was so much beautiful algae and other aquatic plants! The bright green swirled together with the cool turquoise mineral water, I was so distracted that I didn't get a good picture.  Erdaohai is not a popular tourist scene and is a sacred place to the local Tibetans. I really enjoyed walking under the prayer flags and picking up a few wind horse papers in this quiet and serene little valley. 

Wind horse papers scattered about.

I did get to play with the horses for a bit!