NYAA expedition research question response:

 

Name: Zhongyi (David) Sun

Trip: Sichuan/Tibetan Culture Trek, China

Trip time: 8th Oct 2018 – 16th Oct 2018, a total of 9 days

Date: Sunday, 27 Oct 2018

Word count: 716 words

 

NYAA research topic: “How did the local people in Kangding adapt to the cold weather in winter and the high altitude, do they get High Altitude Sickness?”

 

Our school (UWCSEA) went on a trekking expedition to Sichuan from 8th Oct 2018 to 16th Oct 2018 during the October holiday. We went to Kangding City for this expedition. We stayed in a homestay in Sandaoqiao Village. We planned to trek for 6 days and camp for 5 nights in the mountain. However, due to bad weather (heavy snow and heavy rain), we can only do 4 days of trekking with a 1-day interval in between. Which means for our first trek, we trek for 2 days with 1 night staying in the mountains. We then come down to the Sandaoqiao Homestay and stay for 1 night. And for our second trek, we trek for another 2 days with 1 night staying in the mountains. Even though the days of trekking decreased, but the difficulty of the trek is still hard. For our last day trekking, we have to trek for 15 km, and that wasn’t in the original 6 days trekking plan. For our first trek, we ascended from 3100m to 3400m in altitude and camped in the mountains. On the second day, we descended from 3400m to 3100m in altitude. We trekked for 10km for each of these two days. For our second trek, we trekked for 9km from 4100m down to 3700m in altitude for the first day. And we camped in the mountains that night, then we trekked for 15km from 3700m down to 2735m in altitude for the second day (we trekked back to our homestay that day, our homestay’s altitude is 2735m). The 15km trek on the last day was a big challenge for everyone.

 

During the trek, I met Mr. Fan who was our horseman for the first trek (the horseman brought 4 horses up the mountain with us and those horses carried food we needed) and Mr. Thomas who was a 20-year-old university student who greeted us and served us milk tea during the second trek’s lunch (the the first day of the second trek). I was fortunate that I could interview them my NYAA research topic during the trek.

 

I asked Mr. Fan first about how he managed to adapt to the high altitude in Kangding, he replied:” I adapted to it naturally! It’s nothing hard!” He thought that he adapted to this high altitude “naturally” because he was born there. In the following question to him, I asked if he has ever experienced AMS (which stands for “Acute Mountain Sickness”, which is a sickness due to the lack of oxygen in the body at high altitude, headache is a symptom presented by people who have AMS). And he answered:” No, not at all!” Which surprised me a bit since, on the mountain, members of the trekking group have to take Diamox/acetazolamide to prevent AMS whereas Mr. Fan is completely fine without this medicine.

 

I asked Mr. Thomas on the second trek about how they adapt to the high altitude in Gongga (Gongga Town is inside Kangding, however, with a high altitude, which is around 4000m). He replied to me in 3 aspects: 1. The effect on the body. 2. Job. 3. House material. 1. He thought that he was completely fine with the high altitude since he was born there (the same thought as Mr. Fan). 2. It’s because it not very developed on the mountain, therefore, their jobs are mostly farming jobs. Especially farming yaks. 3. For housing material, they usually use the soil near them. It’s because Mr. Thomas said that the soil from the cities can’t withstand the difficult situations that house at high altitude will experience (cold temperature, snowing, hailing, strong wind…). And it’s very hard to construct a house using concrete at high altitude with rough fields.

 

We embraced challenges in this expedition, and I researched and understood a lot about how people live in high altitude adapt to that altitude. And I hope to have more of this kind of expeditions in the future.

 

Photos of the expedition:

(Photo of our first campsite)

(Photo of our second campsite)

(Photo of our homestay)

(Photo of us trekking)

END OF THE RESEARCH #NYAAoutdoorappreciation