Tea road to the skies. Part 2, In the heart of Shangri-La
(DVD)

Running time on container, 23 minutes.

Original Enlish language release, Contemporary Arts Media in 2007.

Camera and sound, Zhou Weiping ; editing, Cecile Beaulande Kemmeche, Isabelle Collin ; music, Zhang Qianyl, Zhang Ke.

Narrator: Randy Holden with the voices of Sandy Bernard, Robert Bradford, Steven Croce, Peter Hercombe.

"It crosses the roof of the world, winding more than 4,000 tortuous kilometers across 20 mountain chains and two desert plateaux. It spans four great rivers, and cuts through the territory of 26 different ethnic groups. This is the ancient Tea Road, which opens Southwest China onto Tibet and thereby Nepal, India, Persia, Mongolia and Russia, and then Europe. The legendary Tea Road, crossed by Marco Polo during his travels, but used by innumerable horse trains for countless centuries before him. Their tracks are beaten deep into the rocks. This series of High Definition films follows in the hoofprints of those caravans which hauled their baggage of tea across the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas to be sold in the markets of South West Asia and dispersed to the entire world. With the green Gold now on horseback, the caravan will head north and climb over twenty mountain chains and cross four mighty rivers, including the Yangtze and Mekong. They make stopovers in lonely villages that hang from spectacular mountainsides in these lost parts of China. Often cut off from the rest of the world for as much as six months in the year, the villagers have developed remarkable skills to produce for themselves everything they need for their survival. For them, a crossing caravan is a welcome opportunity to reconnect to the world. Nature is harsh and savage, yet so beautiful and spectacular, that a universal spirituality has nested itself in the hearts of the men and women of these lost valleys and mountains. Buddhism is omnipresent: temples, stone prayers and other places of worship are everywhere. When our horse drivers leave these green parts of Shangri-La to confront the endless Bandga grassland in majestic altitudes, we understand that we are about to enter another completely different world." -- Container.

DVD.

DVD