Pu Ta Leng Peak

Pu Ta Leng, in Vietnam's northwest, is 3,049 meters high, and climbers call it the second roof of Vietnam. Fansipan, at 3,143 meters, is the highest peak in the country, and Pu Ta Leng stands 94 meters below it.

Among serious climbers, Pu Ta Leng has something that Fansipan does not. It is a forest of ancient tea trees, growing almost 3,000 meters above the sea.

The peak stands in the Tả Lèng area of Tam Đường. It is about 20 kilometers northeast of the city of Lai Châu. The name is easy to understand once it is broken apart. In the languages of the Dao and the Hmong, "pu" means mountain, and Tả Lèng is a place name. So Pu Ta Leng means Tả Lèng Mountain.

To reach the top takes three to six days on foot. There is no cable car and no elevator, only legs and willpower. That is the biggest difference from Fansipan. Fansipan has had a cable car since 2016, and thousands of people go up every day. Pu Ta Leng keeps the one old way, on foot through thick old-growth forest.

On the first day, the group sets out from Tả Lèng village and walks through the forest. It camps at a height of about 1,800 to 2,200 meters. On the second day, the climb goes on. Then the group comes to a place where everyone stops, unable to believe their eyes.

Almost 3,000 meters up, in forest and drifting cloud, there are tea trees.

Not one or two. There are 48.7 hectares of ancient tea forest, with more than 4,300 trees, every one of them hundreds of years old. The trunks are thick and covered with moss, and the branches spread wide. No one in the village knows when the trees first grew here. The elders remember seeing trees this big when they were children.

No other peak in Vietnam is known for a natural tea forest at this height, not Fansipan, not Bạch Mộc Nương Tử and not any of the other highest peaks. Only Pu Ta Leng has one.

People call it the green gold of Tả Lèng. The province of Lai Châu has a special program to protect this tea forest.

With the ancient tea trees come the rhododendrons. From January to April, they bloom in red, pink and white, from the slopes up to the summit. The rhododendron is a flower of the high peaks of the northwest. Red blossom, quiet old tea trees and a sea of white cloud: no other peak in Vietnam is said to have all three at once.

On the third day, the group wakes at half past four in the morning to watch the sunrise from the summit. Below lies a vast sea of cloud, with only the highest peaks showing through. A pale white shape in the cloud is Fansipan, at 3,143 meters. To the right is Bạch Mộc Nương Tử, at 3,045 meters, only four meters lower than this summit. Farther away is Ngũ Chỉ Sơn. Three of the highest peaks in the country come into one view.

Climbers say that moment of sunrise alone is worth three days of hard climbing.

The Red Dao community of Tả Lèng is Indigenous to this land and has been tied to the mountain for generations. They are the porters and the guides, the true keepers of the forest. Without them, no one could find a way through the old-growth forest, where no signs mark the path. A climb of three to six days is not for everyone. For those who reach the top, that sunrise over the sea of cloud is enough to remember for a whole life.

Pu Ta Leng is not as famous as Fansipan, and it has no cable car and no busy tourist trade. Because of that, it keeps what is most precious: a wild forest still in its original state, with thousands of ancient tea trees, where the only way up is still on foot.