A journey along the Sichuan-Tibet Road can be a test of endurance because of the high altitude and harsh weather conditions and sparse facilities for travelers. However, it is worth your while because of the spectacular landscapes and encounters with Han and Tibetan cultural elements along the road from Chengdu to Dege, a historically important town in Sichuan Province, close to the border with Tibet.

The first main stop of this trip, which usually takes up seven days, is Kangding, or its widely known Tibetan name, Dardo, some 350 kilometers west of Chengdu. Situated at the foot of the Gongga Mountain, Kangding is now the capital of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

A transportation center on the Sichuan-Tibet Road, Kangding is a prosperous city and also a rich cultural melting pot of Han and Tibetan traditions. The traditional folk song of Kangding Qingge (A Love Song of Kangding) has for decades been popular throughout the entire country. The romantic song has been credited with attracting thousands of travelers and backpackers to the city after they hear it because the people of the plateau are not as shy about romance as Han people.

One of the stories behind the love song says that it was originally dedicated to a beautiful and kind young lady named Duoluo who sold Songguang paper around the city each morning. Attracted by her stunning physical beauty, Kangding people opened their doors or windows to see and greet her whenever they heard her voice.

On the eighth day of the fourth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, people in the Garze prefecture gather on the vast grassland just outside the city for horse racing and Tibetan wrestling in the daytime and singing love songs and dancing around a fire at night. It is a long tradition called Zhuanshanhui, which literally translates as a pilgrimage to the holy mountain of Gongga by walking around it.

October is one of the best months to travel along the Sichuan-Tibet Road when the weather is still warm and trees and bushes are in various colors. The breathtakingly beautiful scenes of autumn leaves against a clear blue sky come into view after driving over a 4,298-meter pass on Zheduo Mountain just outside Kangding and past a town called Xinduqiao.

Xinduqiao enjoys enormous fame among professional and amateur photographers for its breathtaking combinations of light and shade. It is actually a cluster of small Tibetan villages dotted on the side of a mountain by a stream. It is said that hundreds of Chinese and foreign photographers often stay in Xinduqiao for just one perfect photo shot.

Shortly after leaving Xinduqiao you will reach the Tagong Temple, one of the best known and most important monasteries in the Tibetan culture. Built in 641, there is a legend that says Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) ordered the establishment of the temple en route to Lhasa.

In 640, Emperor Tang Taizong married his niece Princess Wencheng to Songtsam Gambo, the king of Tubo Kingdom in Lhasa, in a marriage of state as part of a peace treaty. As Wencheng passed Tagong, a precious Buddha statue of Sakyamuni that Wencheng was to present to Gambo, fell to the ground and could not be moved. The statue said it was willing to stay in Tagong, a vast grassland at the foot of the holy snow mountain of Zhara.

However, the Buddha statue was on a mission and had to be taken to Lhasa. So Wencheng immediately ordered the construction of a copy of the Buddha statue in Tagong. The construction was completed in one day and Wencheng continued her westward journey with the original statue.

Later on, Gambo ordered his subjects to build a temple to house the Buddha and named it Tagong Temple, which in Tibetan means a place liked by the Buddha.

The Tagong Temple comprises Daxiong Hall, the Hall of the Sleeping Buddha, Lianshi Hall, the Hall of Achievement Tower, the Hall of Goddess of Mercy with a Thousand Eyes and a Thousand Hands and the prayer wheels that surround the temple. The prayer wheels are used as a means of praying in Tibetan Buddhism.

Many reverent Tibetan Buddhists pray at the temple with the full prayer rituals every day.

Outside the temple is the vast grassland of Tagong which supports the herds of yaks and horses. The snow-capped Zhara Mountain shines in the sun in the distance, echoing the gold roof of the Muya Golden Tower, which was built in 1997 in memory of the Panchen Lama. They constitute a picture of nature at peace. It is said the roof was made from 100 kilograms of gold. Two monks were seated beside the Muya Golden Tower, continually reciting the Buddhist Sutra regardless of the coming and going of curious travelers and horsemen calling to tourists.

The further west you travel, the more colorful is the autumn scenery -- and it's all free from industrial pollution. You tend to feel guilty if you don't stop your car to take photos of the fairyland-like ranges of mountains even though you might be racing against time to arrive before dark at a place of shelter for the night.

(Shenzhen Daily November 21, 2007)