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After spending two days in Kanas and getting fed up with the noisy crowds, I decided to walk to Hemu by myself.

Early in the morning, I left Tuva New Village and headed out into the open wilderness. There was almost no one on the road; only a few Tuva children on their way to school brushed past me.

Stepping on the soft earth, I followed the graceful trail worn into the ground by those who came before me and by local herders.

At first, the path ran parallel to the road, where morning shuttle buses carried tourists to Fish Pavilion and Hemu. They must have noticed the solitary figure walking along the small trail to one side. At a certain point, the road and the trail split apart: the road curved around the mountain, while I, on the trail, headed straight into the depths of the grassland.

I slowly climbed the hillside and looked back at the village I had come from. The night before, the noise had left me dizzy and overwhelmed, but from here it looked like the only human habitat in a desolate world.

At the highest point, the village had already been swallowed by the forest. Beyond it, rolling mountain ridges stretched like waves, the earth showing off its strength.

The hike from Kanas to Hemu is a simple route: the path is clear, and the elevation gain and loss are not dramatic. More than anything, it is simply about walking. That leaves you with more energy to converse with the outside world and with your own body.

Wildflowers and green grass had already submerged my feet. It was peak summer, and it was hard to imagine just how beautiful this place must be in autumn, when everything turns golden.

Beside me, the hillside stretched endlessly, until it seemed to meet the white clouds in the sky.

Along the way I passed scattered wooden cabins. Some were still unfinished, while others had already been abandoned. I couldn’t help wondering what stories their owners had lived through over the years.

After crossing over the hilltop, the field below was divided by crisscrossing streams into puzzle pieces of different shapes. Here, the trail was no longer really a trail. Water and mud mixed together, creating natural obstacles for hikers.

I hopped forward among the streams as if solving a puzzle, stopping now and then to hesitate over where to place my next step. Even though I was fully focused, I still fell into the trap.

I had no choice but to stop and clean up.

Just as I finished dealing with the problem under my feet, a new danger started brewing overhead.

Dark clouds gathered more and more thickly, and before long a torrential downpour came crashing down without mercy. I held out in the rain for a while, then spotted a few lonely yurts in the distance. I pushed open the door and went inside, and the хозяин let me stay and wait out the rain.

Inside the yurt it was dim. Deeper in the gloom, two men were snoring on the kang bed-stove. On this side of it, a woman was boiling something in a pot, while two children played and roughhoused at her feet.

The woman didn’t speak Chinese very well, so our conversation came in fits and starts. They were herders who lived in Habahe County town, and every summer, without fail, they spent four months here grazing livestock.

A rainy day was a rare chance for the whole family to rest.

When the rain stopped and I opened the door, freshness filled the damp grassland. The cattle and sheep, which had looked a little bedraggled just moments ago, began running wild again.

I descended past a pile of rocks, walked along the edge of the dense forest, and then climbed uphill again.

Then suddenly I saw another tree. Another solitary tree. This was the second solitary tree since Xiata, like a lonely person waiting to embrace me.

Seeing this tree brought me genuine joy. This was not a prearranged scenic spot, nor a prescribed route. In fact, among all the tourists who arrived in Kanas that day, I might have been the only one who had ever stood and gazed at it. I do everything I can to resist assembly-line travel, and every time I manage to gain even a slight upper hand, I feel a surge of excitement.

Not far away was a wild little soccer field, where two families were playing with their children. I once bought a book called The World’s Most Beautiful Soccer Fields, and at that moment I felt this field beneath the snowy mountains deserved a place in it too.

Different shades of green connected seamlessly from near to far, while the mountaintops still held traces of snow, like white-haired old men. When I was in high school, my school opened its first Xinjiang class, and the kids from China’s far northwest quickly came to dominate the school’s soccer and basketball courts. Now I realized they must have grown up training in surroundings like these!

In Altay, the sunlight doesn’t begin to soften until six in the evening. I lay down among the trees and closed my eyes. The wind came in from all directions like ocean waves. Above me was a pale blue sky inlaid with white, and beside my ears was the sound of tall grass swaying. In that moment, I felt completely one with nature.

A squirrel stood watch.

Hiking is a way of reducing material desire. When everything you need is stuffed into a single backpack and carried on your shoulders, your sense of satisfaction does not shrink. If anything, it grows by the day.

Haruki Murakami has a book called A Distant Drum. Its title comes from a Turkish folk song: “At the call of a distant drum / I set out on a long journey / Wrapping myself in an old coat / Leaving everything behind.” At that moment, in faraway Hemu, it felt as if some mysterious distant drum was calling to me too.

At last I arrived in Hemu. Hemu and Kanas, the two villages on opposite sides of the mountain, felt like mirror images of each other. I had walked from one side of the mirror to the other.

Hemu at sunset was so peaceful that it felt wrong to break the silence with a loud voice. The village looked exactly the way one imagines such a place should look. At this point, words were no longer necessary. I was glad I had stayed to see her beauty.

I met many people who were disappointed by Kanas, and I understood exactly how they felt.

If you just take the shuttle bus straight to the scenic overlook, all you will see are a few strangely colored river bends. But a complete Kanas should include those mountains, wilds, trees, clouds, and streams. Only when you use your own feet to speak with them, when you pass through those seemingly endless routes, do you truly begin to find a little piece of My Altay.

About the Author

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