An explorer biography
Geng Yunpeng
Desert Walker
In 2003, he crossed Xinjiang with a backpack for 63 days
In 2005, he crossed the no-man's land of Coco Siri alone
In 2007, Yunnan Tiger Leaping Gorge hiked for 12 days
In 2008, the Ali no-man's land in Tibet crossed and walked to the sacred mountain of Kailash and the sacred lake of Mapan Yongcuo
In 2008, an environmental tour along the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River lasted 15 days
In 2009, Pokhara, Nepal, hiked for 7 days
In 2009, the all-india backpack traveled for 29 days
In 2010, Metuo walked through the Brahmaputra Grand Canyon for 9 days
In 2011, the Great Crossing of Northern Tibet and the Great Crossing of Northwest Sichuan
From 2012 to 2019, deep exploration of the Tengger Desert
In 2019, he was awarded the 8th Chinese Contemporary Xu Xiake Award Winner
With 24 years of travel experience, he has entered Tibetan areas more than 150 times and reached Lhasa 47 times
Traveled more than 40 countries and regions, and was called "one of the most influential traveler representatives in China" by the Network.
01
In search of the dream of Shangri-La, embark on the path of the walker
In 1998, the shelves of a bookstore on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, featured British novelist James Hilton's novel Vanishing Horizon. A Chinese guy stumbled by, turned a few pages, and didn't think about it, this time, the wheel of fate quietly changed directions - he was deeply attracted by the secret realm of Shangri-La depicted in the book, and for the next ten years, he walked all the places about the legend of Shangri-La.
This "Shangri-La controller" is Geng Yunpeng, who has a more well-known name in the network and outdoor world: Dapeng.
Around 2000, when the Internet was just budding in China, Dapeng registered an account on the TOM blog "Dapeng Backpacks the World" to record and share his outdoor experiences. This sharing unexpectedly became popular, and within a few years, the fans rose to more than 7 million.
"When you are noticed by so many people, you actually enjoy it at that time, and the feeling of being noticed will arouse you to want to keep posting, keep walking, and share with everyone the Shangri-La you have found."
Dapeng has traveled to all the places at home and abroad that have the legend of Shangri-La, such as Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sikkim, Bhutan, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America, and the Amazon, but it is always Tibet that touches the most and has the deepest feelings.
"I'm going to Lhasa 100 times in my life!" The first time he arrived in Lhasa, Dapeng made a bold statement. Today, he has entered Tibetan areas more than 150 times and reached Lhasa 47 times.
02
Cross coco siri, confront the wolves, eat rat meat raw, and live with urine
On the way to find Shangri-La, Dapeng escaped from death 6 times. But only once did he wake up countless times in his slumber for many years to come—in 2005, he spent 20 days alone crossing Coco Siri, experiencing poachers stomping their heads and threatening them with guns; in the early hours of the morning when the tent was surrounded by wolves, he staged a palace plan; because the journey was delayed, he ran out of food and ammunition, and then he survived with urine.
The plot is too ups and downs, so that some of the bridges are later borrowed from the movie, and no one believes that it really happens in real life.
"Planned a 17-day trip and prepared food for 19 days, but didn't expect to get lost on day 10."
Getting lost in Coco Ciri, the most terrible thing is not to encounter the unknown, but to have no water source. Dapeng roughly estimated in his heart that if he wanted to find the original planned route, it would take at least 4 days to correct, and these 4 days, the replenishment of water, was unknown.
Wave after wave of unevenness has risen, the water problem has not been solved, and new troubles have followed.
On the vast plateau, four or five hundred Tibetan antelopes flew past in an instant, and the picture was spectacular. Dapeng had seen this battle before, and was so excited that he took out his camera and took a hard shot, thinking, "I'm going to win the World Grand Prize!" ”
Before he could wake up from his excitement, suddenly, four modified Desert Prince SUVs stopped in front of him, and several people jumped down from the car, one of whom was fierce, and raised his leg towards Dapeng's neck, and Dapeng who was kicked to the ground was dizzy.
"After kicking me in the neck, he pointed a gun at my head and asked me if I was a journalist, and I said no, I was here for tourism. They said it was impossible, so they made the kind of action that wanted to pull the trigger. ”
They poured out all the contents of Dapeng's entire backpack, which contained maps, a pamphlet stamped with more than four thousand postmarks, a collection of train tickets from previous years, and some paper-cut manuscripts that had been interviewed by the media at the time. Seeing this, they believe that Dapeng is not a media person.
Dapeng knew that he had encountered poachers, and he "sensibly" divided the 4 bottles of barley wine in his bag and divided two bottles for them to drink.
"Wine is the best gift in no man's land, because money has nowhere to spend in it. That night they tied my hands and threw me in the big tent, and the night was spent peacefully. ”
Early the next morning, poachers made roast lamb and pulled Dapeng out of the tent for him to eat.
"At that moment I had a thought: Is this the last meal for me? Leave it alone! Eat first and then say! I had to be a full ghost when I died, so I ate desperately, feeling that I should have eaten two or three pounds of meat, maybe even more, and ate a mouth full of oil, choking. ”
After eating the meat, the crowd began to dig a pit to bury the leftover bones, and Dapeng thought that he would be buried here forever like the fate of this pile of leftovers, but the other party took him to the car.
After driving for about four hours, the car stopped, and a large hand pulled the collar of Dapeng's neck and threw it down, followed by his sleeping bag and backpack.
"Boy, go 3 hours further and you'll see a lake, and that's the road you're looking for, where you can replenish fresh water." With that said, drive away.
Dapeng, who had been thrown to the ground, was once again full of doubts.
From four o'clock in the afternoon to nearly eleven o'clock in the evening, Dapeng walked for a full seven hours to reach the lake that the poachers had suggested.
I thought that the bizarre encounter along the way should also come to an end, and I could take a good rest. However, the real crisis has just begun.
At three o'clock in the morning of the 19th day, the tent suddenly moved. Dapeng's heart sank, "Broken, met the wolf." ”
As early as the day of the lost, Dapeng vaguely heard a few wolf howls in the distance, and at that moment he thought it was his hallucination and was lucky. Now it seems that the one who should come cannot hide.
Dapeng began to tremble and sweat coldly, and he quickly bit his hand and arm, hoping to stimulate himself with pain to calm down. Then he took out firecrackers from his backpack, one by one, and threw them outside the tent, and when he heard the sound of firecrackers, the wolves fled in all directions. But the noise stopped, and the wolves gathered around again.
"In fact, at that time, my heart was not scolding wolves, but scolding and selling firecrackers. Because I found 2000 firecrackers, just 1000 firecrackers, the number of firecrackers is not enough! ”
For the first time, Dapeng realized so truly that whether he could survive was a powerless unknown. This is the 19th day of crossing Coco Siri, water and grain are in a hurry, but Dapeng is still not sure where the way out is. At this moment, if the wolves outside the tent do not leave, they will have nothing to do, and there is no chance of winning in terms of fighting.
After about 3 hours of confronting the wolves, it gradually became quiet outside. Dapeng secretly pulled open a corner of the tent and confirmed that there was no wolf. At that moment, he collapsed to the ground.
After the wolves receded, Dapeng did not let down his guard. "Wolves are very intelligent animals, and if they don't run away and are chased the next night, they can't be so lucky."
Dapeng trembled and packed his luggage, threw away all the tents, sleeping bags, etc., carried a small bag, brought the only water and the last bit of food, took the hiking pole and rushed non-stop, from about 7 o'clock in the morning to almost 10 o'clock in the evening, rushing 38 kilometers.
"At night, I have nightmares all night, dreaming of wolves coming at you, and being frightened awake again and again." Later, Dapeng thought back, perhaps he should also thank the wolf, if it were not for the fear of the wolf, he would probably not wake up if he slept in such a tired state.
When he woke up the next day, Dapeng had no supplies in his backpack, and when he was thirsty, he could only moisten his lips with urine, and when he was extremely hungry, he had eaten a groundhog raw. When I reached four o'clock in the afternoon, I finally saw a herder!
"An old aunt saw that I was so frightened that I almost threw away the bowl, because it had been 20 days, my face was full of beards, the whole person was seriously short of water, my mouth was cracked, and I couldn't speak."
The old aunt saw the situation and quickly brought butter tea to Dapeng, and Dapeng drank two bowls in a row, then planted it one by one, and when he woke up again, it was the third morning.
For a long time after being rescued, Dapeng did not dare to recall Coco Xili's experience. National Geographic magazine once found Dapeng and offered 1 million yuan and invited him to re-walk Coco Ciri as a guide. Dapeng resolutely refused. Because he knows very well that there are places that he will not want to go to a second time in this life.
After many years, one day my mother accidentally saw Dapeng on TV telling coco Xili about what happened to Coco Xili, and she was so angry that she almost fainted, and immediately called him to let him go home. "That was the first time my mother had me kneel for four hours."
Coco Ciri taught Dapeng fearlessness and made him love and cherish life more than ever. Especially after being smashed by a landslide in 2010 and almost falling off the Brahmaputra River, Dapeng completely faded the self-esteem of his youth, and outdoor walking always put safety and equipment first.
Since then, the story of Dapeng walking in Tibet has also added a little more warm and delicate color.
03
"Before you came, our kids would only talk"
From walking alone to beginning to feel social responsibility and walking, we must start from a public welfare that "warms Tibet".
Dapeng wants to use his influence on the Internet to appeal to more people to pay attention to tibetan children and donate some homework books, school bags, clothes and other materials to them. Among the many recipients of his donations was a school, about forty kilometres from the road.
Due to weather conditions, the rain washed away part of the road surface, and Dapeng arrived 4 days later than originally agreed. On the 5th day, dapeng finally arrived, and only then did I know that in the four villages along the way of more than forty kilometers, many elderly people and children were paving the way to welcome their arrival.
Villagers paving the way
The person in charge of receiving Dapeng made him a bowl of food with some ghee and sugar on it, and two bottles of drinks next to it, the date on which the drink showed that it had expired for two years. "This is a place that no one has been here in two years."
Before Dapeng arrived, the school had no homework books, no textbooks for teachers, and no desks for students. Now Dapeng brought these, and all the children danced around him.
There is a monastery not far from the school, where the 78-year-old lama wrote a letter to Dapeng:
"You are a golden-winged bird sent by Heaven, before you helped us, our children could only talk, did not know words, since you helped us, our children can not only talk, but also can write, and even write letters to distant parents, this is a matter of immeasurable merit." 」
04
A 92-year-old man who met Chairman Mao
One year, Dapeng wanted to make a documentary on the Tibetan marriage tradition, which was mainly based on the elderly.
Just when Dapeng was worried about who to shoot and where to shoot, a friend mao sui introduced himself, "You can come to my house to shoot, our village and our family are All Tibetan marriage families." ”
Dapeng rushed to buy a plane ticket, immediately flew to Lhasa, transferred to Nagqu, and then took a hitchhiker to Suo County, from Suo County to a friend's village is about 28 kilometers away. This last 28 kilometers, the car drove hard for 4 hours. After some boating and caring, Dapeng finally arrived at the village, and the people were also tortured by Gao Qiang.
The next day, Dapeng's face still did not improve, and his friend asked him worriedly if he had not rested well because of Gao Zheng, who knew that Dapeng said: "Or let's go back, I feel that I can't shoot what I want." ”
It turned out that after Dapeng inspected a circle, he found that there was no very suitable subject, and he was vaguely lost in his heart.
"Or you'll photograph my aunt, who has seen Chairman Mao." Friends offer one last try.
Sure enough, Dapeng was immediately intrigued after hearing this, and could not wait to visit the old man who had seen Chairman Mao.
The two of them got up and set out for the back mountain, and on a hillside meadow about 4,000 meters above sea level, there were several families scattered here and there. When I was more than a mile away from the house, I heard my friend tear open his throat and call, "Aunt! An old man came out barefoot, she was 92 years old.
The hill where my aunt lived
The relationship with Chairman Mao dates back to the 1960s. My aunt was a relatively beautiful Dolma in the village at that time, and she was once selected to go to Beijing to participate in a literary and art performance, and the group was received by Chairman Mao.
Since the liberation of Tibet in 1951, the local people in Tibet have traveled thousands of miles to Beijing to participate in literary and art performances every year on important festivals and festivals.
Knowing that Dapeng was from Zhengzhou, Henan, her aunt excitedly took Dapeng's hand and said that she had visited Zhengzhou and Luoyang that year she went to the Beijing Literary and Art Festival, and the local department also took them to visit the Longmen Grottoes. Speaking of seeing the buddha heads of those Buddhas in the grotto lost, she wanted to cry instantly.
Saying that, his aunt pulled Dapeng into the house and wanted to give him two pounds of ghee from the family.
"What does ghee mean for the Tibetan masses? The first was lighting, which was not yet energized in that place; the second was the fact that very important daily foods, such as butter tea, rice dumplings, and tibetan noodles, were filled with ghee; and the third was to go to a monastery to light lamps for the Buddha. ”
Dapeng went to the season, just when the village labor force are out to graze, generally 2-3 months to come back, considering the two pounds of ghee, perhaps the aunt's two or three months of spiritual sustenance or rations, Dapeng said that nothing will be received.
He quickly diverted the topic and asked about his aunt's physical condition, and the aunt said that she was blind, deaf, and in particularly good health, but only occasionally a little arthritis. Dapeng immediately gave her a box of Yunnan Baiyao in his pocket and instructed, "This medicine is particularly good for the leg joints." ”
"After hearing this, she made a gesture at that time, which especially surprised me, and she gave me a salute." Dapeng took a camera and snapped the photo, "Maybe it's not a good photography, but this photo is full of contemporary significance." ”
A salute from a 92-year-old man
Decades ago, if you wanted to get out of this mountain village, you needed to walk for two days and two nights, and the traffic was particularly inconvenient. Dapeng is the third Han Chinese who has ever come to this village, and the only one who has walked. The first two are for health supplements and insurance.
After that cultural performance in the 1960s, my aunt never left the village again. Perhaps her deepest memory of the outside world is that salute—that's how Chairman Mao returned it after their cultural performance.
"Deep down in her heart, maybe that's the best etiquette."
05
The walk of one person to the walk of a group of people
Dapeng's fate with Tibet and the story of chasing the dream of Shangri-La are, of course, far more than that.
In the 24 years of outdoor exploration, experienced pain, wandering, disappointment, but also joy, touch, tears, Dapeng slowly realized that where Shangri-La is, it does not matter, it is actually more like a hope, an expectation of beautiful things, to remind themselves, no matter what difficulties and challenges they encounter, always retain the light in their hearts.
"Practice is on the way, faith is on the way. The walking in the past was more of a personal interest, and now walking is more of a responsibility. ”
Today's Dapeng, who devotes his main energy to helping more people go outdoors, founded the Desert Business School, hoping to create a self-managed university without walls, so that people can see themselves, see the heavens and the earth, and see sentient beings in the exploration of nature.