Day 65 As we got the early bus from Lanzhou we were strolling in the main street in Xiahe already by 11:30 am. I would not say it was a very comfortable ride but it was not a terrible one either. The landscape was amazing and observe our driver break all possible traffic rules was also entertaining. In some point he was driving the wrong way hon...
It's not so much the capital of Gansu province, nor the mass of Hui and their mosques which line the road - even the smallest village has its minaret and the larger ones have 4 which surround a central cupola, mutton are slain and their pelts taken along the side of the road too. This doesn't describe the differences which are in the snow capped...
Part II: Gansu We arrived in Dunhuang and had a free day to explore. Dunhuang is a tourist town really, very small, in the midst of the Gobi desert. I spent a lot of time (and money) on eating because it seemed there was little else to do in the city. That and visit the night market... Outside of the city is the Mogao Grotto which is a large cli...
I actually slept soundly on the train and had to scramble to get my things together when we got off. Our train arrived in Lanzhou, which I am told is on the top ten of most polluted cities in the world. It did not look so bad, but we did not stay there long since we jumped on a bus after our Chinese breakfast buffet. Today was probably one of th...
Xiahe, Gansu by Tom Carter In these over-publicized times of China's new railroad to Tibet, one might be better off avoiding the tourist circus than rnning away with it. Indeed, unless the reader has a certain fondness for overbooked hotels and intrusive, red hat-wearing tour groups, Lhasa is hardly the Tibetan delight that travel agencies conti...
Xiahe is perhaps the second coolest place for hippies in China, besides Tibet. The Labrang monastery here is one of the largest Tibetan monasteries outside of Tibet itself, which is a bit difficult to get to, especially this month, as some Americans just pulled a cunning stunt. Apparently they planted a "Free Tibet" flag at the Everest base camp...
Local bus through Linxia to Xiahe (Tibetan town), traversed mountain roads as main highway closed due to snow - a hairy old ride, saw trucks that had come a cropper. One truck had snow chains tied to wheels with string! Toilets 'interesting', to say the least. Began to see more crops. Avalanche signs. Drove through gateway to Tibet, with stupa o...
SHIFT KEY IS BROKEN AND TOO LAZY TO USE CAPS LOCK. WILL FIX LATER spent a couple of days in xiahe, town on the china/tibet border that contains more tibetans than Lhasa (the capital of Tibet). driving through, it looks like a normal chinese town until you reach the tibetan monastery, then it just turns completely tibetan. we met up with another ...
In January, when I was contemplating booking a tour in China, a guy called Buzz at STA travel in Newcastle attempted to describe what Sichuan was like. 'Like the wild west, but with monks' was the clearest he got. Finally I know what he was talking about. I've had about 6hours sleep in the last 48, so bear with me if I'm a bit hazy here and ther...
This is weird. I'm about 3000 meters above sea level on the Tibet-Qinghai plateau, in a small Tibetan-Buddhist monastery town where donkeys defecate with indifference on the street and monks draped in red robes enjoy the sunset from atop green yet craggy hilltops without the least sense of urgency. What's weird? I'm sitting in a super-high-speed...
