Posts Tagged With: qinghai

We spent the evening chatting with other travelers and sharing our stories. One of the cooler stories was the guy that traveled to N. Korea, a very interesting perspective of a place most people don’t know. Without going into details, it just sounds like a very interesting place to see about how the govt can treat its people, but I’ll keep those stories for another day.

Rising early again but not for the sunrise, but instead we headed over to the Labrang great hall to listen in to the monks’ morning prayers. For those that haven’t had exposure to the Tibetan school of buddhism, it is full of prayers and chanting, similar to Gregorian chants but with more bass! Apparently the head of the monastery was actually out in another city, and it is also the ‘summer vacation’ season for the monks when they would go out into the prairies and sing, dance and do whatever monks on vacation do. So the only monks left were the older ones, but the session was still very intensive.

Our next stop was Tongren, which is famous for its tongka drawings and it being a Tibetan town. When we checked into our hotel, we actually found out one issue…..THERE WAS NO WATER. Continue reading →

The inevitable finally happened, one of us got sick… The skies were gloomy and the streets were empty, so we found a nice little boutique hotel, or a cooler way of saying a small independently owned hotel with a nice garden that’s next door to a paint shop and an auto mechanic.

We settled in, did some laundry and watched The Voice… of China. Seriously, the people they put up on that show is INCREDIBLE. There’s this blind street performer from Taiwan, or this 11^th generation prince of some minority group that looks a bit prehistoric. Thank goodness for wireless internet!

So resting up for a couple of days and eating some decent halal food that resembled Korean stone bowl soups, we’ve planned out our trip for the next couple of days and are excited to get back on the road!

Hopping on an early morning bus, we headed over to the canola-flower capital of Qinghai. The bus ride was a bit scary as we had to drive zig-zag up mountains reaching 3800m, but the driver kept passing other trucks on the outside while driving uphill! Note, this is a barely two-lane road with not much room between the cliff and the bus. The only way to ease my fear was to sleep it through. The distance was short, but the roads were tough so 150km ride took over 3hrs, so I had a good nap.

What I woke up to was a breathtaking view from above, overlooking the glowing yellow fields down below! It is pretty amazing, like a giant piece of farm field tapestry. Apparently, these plots of land are owned by local farmers, so they plant whatever they like without much care for how it looks, but it sure looks cool. For the ridiculously large plots of yellow, it was said that they were all planted by the inmates of the local jail….

The city takes you into a rural and very nomadic environment, with bee-keepers on the side of the roads (flowers don’t pollinate themselves! makes for dangerous picture taking sessions though), and old men herding their livestock, with little shapes of houses dotting the foothills of each mountain….

Woke up early at 5:10am to catch the sunrise by the lake, we were already beaten by the old Tibetan couple who ran the hotel as they were up making breakfast. Nothing wakes you up like a bumpy bike ride at 3200m above sea level, I promise. Our bums were still sore from yesterday’s ride….When we got to the lake, there were about 30 cars and hundreds of people with their decked out cameras and tripods all ready to take in the sunrise. We were the only ones on bikes though!

Afterwards, we hopped on a taxi to the next scenic spot, Bird Island (鸟岛), which was 70km away. Apparently, we were told that the route to Bird Island was one of the most scenic parts of the lake, but we realized our mistake. 1) There were no birds as the season isn’t right 2) There is no way for us to get out of this Birdshit Island 3) The route was not even that scenic!

Then came time for us to become true backpackers: hitch hike. We tried our way around the parking lot for about 2hours, asking tour buses, random families and taxi drivers. Most people were nice, but were unable to help as they weren’t going in the right way. We managed to hunt down a really nice couple who took us to the next big city so we can get a bus ride back to Xining. We shared with them our travel plans and a bit of our backgrounds, and they were rather skeptical of our travelling methods, especially learning that we’re not actually college students…. Either way, we got to our destination and walked to the bus station at 1:58pm, JUST managed to catch the 2:00pm bus.

 So after a long day, we finally got our way around Lake Kokonor and back into the city…. Now, it’s time to take a shower.

Note 1: People of Xining and Lake Kokonor, from fancy sales people to shady taxi drivers at the bus station, everyone would actually help if you ask, and have no attitude!

Note 2: Somehow, a lot of places in China have solar-powered water heaters. As environmentally friendly as that sounds, there is one severe problem…. you have no hot water when you have no sun! Also, our hotel had no lamp in the washroom (in addition to no hot water)… Don’t judge, you won’t shower in that circumstance either.

Moving deeper into the Tibetan Plateau, we set our sights on Lake Kokonor (青海湖)! Today we finally saw the fields of blooming canola flowers! This lake is actually at an elevation of 3,205m above sea level, as a reference Mount Robson is at 3,959m above sea level! It’s a sacred lake of the local Tibetan people, and looks an amazing blue, melding itself into the horizon as one with the blue skies.

 A popular activity lately is to do a round trip bike ride along the lake side, there’s also an international competition that was held just last week! We contemplated doing the tour, as it is a very popular activity amongst tourist, but we just aren’t sure if we can handle 360km of bike rides while 3000m above sea level!

We did manage to rent a bike to tour around the area, and took a ride down to the lake side! It was very exhilarating, but also quite scary as trucks and SUVs would whizz by you and the turbulence would sway your bike!

More pictures, as promised: