The Yangshuo Bike Festival

Tibetan Djembe Drumming Nomads of Xing Ping

 

Chorten, Tashi and La La - hosting the Bike Festival launch and Halloween party.

Chorten, Tashi and La La – hosting the Bike Festival launch and Halloween party.

Big shout out to our Tibetan Nomad friends from Machu, Eastern Tibet / Western Sichuan, now living in Xing Ping.

Their festival brief:
Bikes and Halloween and delicious food, married together with pumpkins.
And djembes.

As we turned a corner down the dark alley ways of old town Xing Ping, the drumming started up.

Xing Ping is a beautifully preserved Li Riverside town that attracts bus loads of bamboo rafting tourists in the day time, but reverts to being a  quiet village at night. A smattering of http://viagrabuynow.com/ cafe’s anticipate the boom time when the first high speed train arrives on December 20th this year.

I know that I am going to love looking back on this first festival before the hordes arrived, and say remember when…
Hopefully, these hordes will be on bikes though, slipping through the back lanes on bicycles and spreading the cycling love into the countryside.

Chorten, Tashi, and La La,  the Tibetan nomad posse drummed us  through the doorway of their business – Cafe Himalaya. They had carved pumpkins with bicycle motifs, as well as a Tibetan demon face and the Buddha eyes from the famous Monkey Temple in Nepal. A Bicycle hung from the ceiling with wheels made from pumpkin rings.
First course of the meal arrived – a pumpkin soup up cycled from the pumpkin art discards.

Chorten, the bar owner asks if the Osmanthus flower table decorations are not too perfumed . They have spent the day hand-rolling momos – he once made 3000 for an event in Columbia. The curries are Nepali in style, the fried stuffed flat breads, Mongolian.

It’s an auspicious start for an international bike festival.

Pumpkins for wheels and prayer beeds for a chain at the  Himalaya Cafe Yangshuo Bike Festival launch dinner.

Pumpkins for wheels and prayer beeds for a bike chain at the Himalaya Cafe Yangshuo Bike Festival launch dinner.

Chorten  and the bike boys from Yunnan outside the  Himalaya Cafe. Cafe opening hours in Chinese (top left) are 9 am, 10 if we're hung over. Closing hours are 9 pm, 11 or later if there are pretty girls in the bar. Early closing hours  if bar is full of men.

Chorten and the bike boys from Yunnan outside the Himalaya Cafe. Cafe opening hours in Chinese (top left) are 9 am, 10 if we’re hung over. Closing hours are 9 pm, 11 or later if there are pretty girls in the bar. Early closing hours if bar is full of men.

A bike festival layered onto a Halloween Party.

A bike festival layered onto a Halloween Party.

African Djembes, in a Tibetan Cafe, in Rural Guangxi, china.

African Djembes, in a Tibetan Cafe, in Rural Guangxi, China.

Buddha eyes from Nepal's Money Temple on pumpkin with La la in the background.

Buddha eyes from Nepal’s Money Temple on pumpkin with La La in the background.

Local xing Ping resident comes to checking out the  new vibe in Xing Ping.

Local Xing Ping resident checking out the new vibe in Xing Ping.

Chorten, a Machu Nomad  from eastern Tibet, remembers the excitement of the first bikes coming to he grasslands.

Chorten, a Machu Nomad from Eastern Tibet remembers the excitement of the first bikes coming to he grasslands.