A Misty Hike to Meili Snow Mountains; A Missed Encounter with Sacred Kawagebo
- Joyce
- Jul 21
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
It was a sleepless night on a peak about 4,350 meters high in the Meili Mountain Range, straddling the border of Tibet and Yunnan in southwestern China.
Tossing and turning in a cramped sleeping bag alongside seven other hikers in a stuffy camp, I lay wide awake, listening to the heavy raindrops pounding against the tent and my racing heartbeat as I gasped for air.
Thoughts about altitude sickness killing overambitious hikers swirled in my head – thanks to RedNote, with its sneaky algorithm, which had been relentlessly feeding me these stories before my departure!
As you read this, you know I’ve survived.
This was my first trip to a high-altitude region, my first hike among snow-capped mountains, and, as a Han Chinese, my first in-person interaction with Tibetans on their home turf.
Each of these firsts has gifted me a treasure trove of thrilling and reflective memories from one of the world’s most beautiful, sacred, and mysterious mountains in Tibetan Buddhism.
Meili for travelers; Kawagarbo for local Tibetans
This hiking route is handpicked by our adventurous friend Kat, with her keen sense of cultural and natural awareness. (She trekked along Nu Jiang in Yunnan, southwestern China, last year – check out her travel diary here.) In the month leading up to our trip to Yunnan, I found myself increasingly drawn in by the mysterious legends and the rich cultural and religious tapestry of our destination.
“As a person's name is where understanding begins, a mountain's name opens the door to discovering what lies within,” writes anthropologist Guo Jing in Tales of Kha-ba-dkar-po, a 2012 book based on his decade of field research in the Kawagarbo region.
So, is it Meili or Kawagarbo?
In the travel plan provided by the local Tibetan hiking group we hired, Kawagarbo is presented as “the heart of the Meili Snow Mountains,” and the latter are said to be “the foremost of the eight sacred mountains in the Tibetan region.”
Yet, this narrative is tailored primarily for outsiders like us.
Guo explains that Kawagarbo, meaning “white snow” in Tibetan, refers not only to the main peak, which stands at about 6,470 meters, but also to a group of mountain deities long revered by local Tibetans.
“Kawagarbo is the greatest deity for us Tibetans, and people of all ages in the region worship this sacred mountain,” read a local Tibetan from Mingyoung village, situated at the foot of Kawagarbo, in a 2007 report by state-owned media. “To protect Kawagarbo, there should be no climbing, no destruction and no harvesting of medicinal herbs.”
While Kawagarbo remains a central figure in the spiritual lives of local Tibetans, the mountain's name was supplanted by “Meili Snow Mountains” in the eyes of outsiders following one of the world’s most tragic mountaineering disasters in 1991, according to Guo.
In that January, a joint team of 17 Chinese and Japanese climbers, ignoring local objections, insisted on summiting the sacred peak and were ultimately buried in a snow collapse on their return. Locals interpreted this incident as the “anger” of Kawagarbo towards those who disrespected the mountain and the deities there.
Behind the renaming from Kawagarbo to Meili Snow Mountains is a shift towards tourism driven by local government interests, yet the spiritual beliefs of local Tibetans cannot be dismissed.
In 2001, the local government finally heeded the call of the Tibetan community and banned hiking activities on Mount Kawagarbo, allowing the sacred mountain to remain untouched for decades.
However, the Meili Snow Mountains range is still open to hikers and tourists, with its natural beauty filling the local government’s coffers.
An adorably-gossipy Tibetan guide
Our tour guide, a 33-year-old Tibetan man growing up in an increasingly commercialized Kawagarbo (Meili) region, escorted us throughout the trip and brought tons of laughter with his chattiness and innocence that felt way younger than his actual age.
On May 31, the first day of our three-day hike, as Yunnan was drenched in heavy rains, he picked up three of us at 6 am from Lijiang ancient city with his off-road vehicle in a vibrant orange. We were on our way to Diqing Shangri-La Airport to collect the last member of our “special forces” group.
What should have been a 3.5-hour drive to Shangri-La turned into a more than 5-hour journey. The reason for the delay? Our guide was so engrossed in sharing gossip about Qi Zhala, the former governor of Tibet, that he didn't realize he had taken a wrong turn, heading south toward Dali instead of north to Shangri-La.
Despite the detour, we enjoyed the juicy gossip about the dramatic downfall of the former senior political adviser. Qi had made his hometown Zhongdian county a world-renowned tourist destination – Shangri-la -- in his early career and then climbed the ranks to the deputy head of the CPPCC National Committee’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Areas in Beijing, only to become the first chief official at the provincial and ministerial level removed this year amid Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign.
Our guide viewed Qi as an “impressive” politician for making the leap from local to central government. One of his greatest achievements, in our guide’s view, was snagging the coveted name “Shangri-la” for Zhongdian county in 2001, shifting the county’s economy engine from commercial logging to tourism.
The name, Shangri-la, was first introduced to the world as a fictional utopian lamasery located high in the Kunlun Mountains of Tibet in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. As the novel shot to fame, various places in Southwestern China – Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan – which share geographic similarities of the Shangri-la in the novel, began to claim the name to capitalize on the allure of the “lost paradise.”
Qi, then the head of Zhongdian county, led his hometown in winning the name and brought the “Shangri-la” brand to life, though I bet today’s highly-commercialized “Shangri-la” is likely far beyond what Hilton envisioned.
From Qi’s “political feats” and powerful family connections to his love affairs – classic gossip about Chinese male politicians – our Tibetan guide’s enthusiasm for sharing everything he knew about the former local leader surprised me a bit. At a time when Beijing’s taxi drivers, once known as “political commentators on the road,” are going silent, the Tibetan’s openness to discussing politics – even with strangers he had just met a few hours earlier – was unexpected.
Regardless, thanks to our talkative guide and that unbelievably energetic Kat — who had barely slept the night before yet still managed to keep the conversation flowing along the way — the nearly 8-hour drive from Lijiang to Rongzong Village, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was anything but boring.
Hiking business in a sacred mount
We began our ascent late in the afternoon from Rongzong Village, where we were asked to offload some of our gear to local villagers who served as porters, carrying part of our belongings to the peak.
I didn’t realize this was part of the trekking service package at the time. Honestly, it was a relief for me, an inexperienced hiker, yet it did not come without guilt, especially when I saw one of the porters being a slim woman, with four bags fastened to her back.
I intended to chat with her along the way, but sorry – I just couldn’t keep up! How could someone carrying such a heavy load move so quickly and so effortlessly, as if walking on flat ground?
They initially led us along a path right beside the rushing floodwaters, which had submerged the convenient route we were supposed to take. They soon disappeared from view while we were huffing and puffing, pausing to catch our breath and hydrate.
As the rain continued to fall, we made our way up the mountain, the fog thickening amidst the forest, obscuring most of the mountain views and the Mingyong Glacier that we could have otherwise admired — a real bummer.
Exhausted and soaked, we finally reached our first camp at about 3700 m at about 8 pm, just as darkness set in. I had a fairly warm and restful night at the well-equipped camp – even with an electric blanket – unaware of what awaited us the following night.
Day two, we aimed for the 4,350 meters peak. We all bundled up with our supplies, but the altitude sickness weighed heavily on all of us.
Kat, our superwoman who hadn’t caught a wink of sleep in two days, felt altitude sickness creeping in early and was forced to head back down halfway. While recuperating in a villager’s home, she made a new friend with a lovely local Tibetan girl.
The other three of us barely made it up to the peak at 4350 m, without much energy left to cheer.
The mist drifted around me, also reducing the distant landscape to a featureless white void. Just when I was about to accept that was all, the fog parted just enough to reveal a few snow-capped peaks to the west – dark rock faces with these perfect white snow patches.
Even though the most elusive peak of all, the sacred Kawagarbo, remained veiled in mystery throughout, I felt already lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the surrounding mountains for about ten minutes.
And our Tibetan guide, aware too well of the tourists’ desires for instagrammable photos, seized the window to snap several shots. Even more professionally, he pulled a drone from his bag and sent it soaring into the sky to videotaping him presenting each of us with a white silk khata, a traditional Buddhist ceremonial scarf.
In the original footage, the snow-capped mountains were enveloped in mist again, leaving the desolate landscape behind us. Yet, our guide later sent over an edited video, with a sun-bleached Kawagarbo behind us – too beautiful to be real.
Eroding Tibetan culture
After a torturous night where I felt I might die at the peak, I couldn’t wait to head downhill.
Personally, the four-hour descent turned out to be even more challenging than the ascent.The strain worsened my knee pain and took a toll on my thumbs, leaving me with blisters by the time I reached the foot of the mountain, while my legs occasionally trembled uncontrollably.
It was more painful but less exhausting, which allowed me to have some energy to catch and chat with our guide and the woman porter. And this was the greatest part of the descent.
As we paused halfway, the porter, who had set off later than us, caught up. I stopped her for a short break and asked if she was managing with the heavy backpack.
“Descending is fine – it felt light,” she said in fluent Mandarin with a smile.Yet, when I lifted the four bags strapped to her back with my right hand, it felt like a heavy rock.
She mentioned that she hikes up and down the mountain about twice a month, depending on tourist traffic. The guide told me that her little brother built this commercial trekking route and is now the big boss behind it.
As she rested beside me, I caught her spinning a string of beads in her left hand, which she told me were Tibetan Buddhist beads.
Like her, our guide is also a Tibetan Buddhist who speaks fluent Mandarin.
He told me that he once tried his hand at the civil service exam for the promise of a stable paycheck and high-altitude perks, but failed and since decided to become a full-time hiking guide and focus on building his social media presence to draw in tourists.
Once he learned that I work in the news industry, he bombarded me with questions about the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who fled to India about 65 years ago after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet.
When asked whether he felt Tibetan culture was eroding, his response was a hesitant yes – starting off with affirmation but trailing off with uncertainty.
"We can't even display photos of the Dalai Lama in our homes ... the local authorities come by to check," he cited an example.
When I followed up on how he felt about his Tibetan peers – some of whom might even be Tibetan Buddhists themselves – having regular check-ins at his door, he showed understanding, as the way he understood the rule that Chinese civil servants are not allowed to worship Buddha in temples.
“It's their job, after all.”