tibet?

after way too much time on trains with disgustingly loud snoring men rousing homicidal feelings in both kt and i, one hour in lanzhou (my only opinion was "big, grey, city; yuck"), and then another cramped busride, we're finally in the first place that i really liked upon arrival. when i told kt "this place seems nice", she nearly fell out of the open-air taxi we were catching to our hostel. she informs me that's the first time i've said that since we left australia. surely not!

apparently so. but, thus far, xiahe has been nothing but lovely. we found a sweet little hostel, courtesy of dave, who we met back in dunhuang, and shared our find with the couple from brisbane we met on the bus. after checking in, we headed into town for some much-needed food.
the menu was in english, the waitstaff spoke good english, and the food was tasty. what a change from most of the other places we've been so far! it's been quite overwhelming the amount of english spoken in the restaurants so far. i guess we've been frequenting quite tourist-y places, but there's not actually many other places to go. there's only one main street in this town, and it's lined with people selling all sorts of beautiful tibetan wares, from brilliantly-coloured fabrics and these awesome warm full-length jackets that absolutely everyone wears (kt bought one today), to beads and bells and leather stuff and knives and shoes and all manner of pretty things. and food, of course. not so much of the plastic fantastic we've seen everywhere else, either, which makes a nice change.

it seems to be a fairly quiet town, but there's quite a few tourists. apart from ourselves and the other aussies, we've met a couple of tour groups (one from germany and one with mostly australians; totally bizarre), an israeli guy, and a frenchwoman called isabelle who's sharing our dorm. the population here is 50% tibetan, and the streets are full of monks and nuns from the nearby monastery, just wandering around wearing their beautiful robes, which range in colour from a bright fuschia to deep burgundy. the local people are also bedecked with colour, wearing the wonderful jackets i mentioned earlier, which are generally lined with fur. the women wear skirts made from the same sort of material, and both are trimmed with brightly-coloured woven fabrics. they typically have two very long plaits (most seem to reach past their waists, and are tucked away carefully), and big earrings which stretch their earlobes down. they are really beautiful - lots of jewellry, too, and often a kind of scarf thing around their head, or over their neck and mouth; it's a knitted tube to keep out the cold wind. the men are a little less fantastic-looking, but some very cool younger guys can be seen riding their motorbikes around with their long hair blowing in the wind, their jackets draped around them and a certain "devil-may-care" look about them.....haha.

we went to the monastery today and took an english tour with the two tour groups i already mentioned, as well as isabelle. it was an amazing place, full of beautiful artwork and buddha sculptures. so peaceful. walking through there with our monk guide telling us about various different buddhas and so forth, i felt so ignorant. buddhism is a faith that has interested me for years, yet i know hardly anything about it. no time like the present to find out, i suppose.

after our visit to the monastery, we had a long walk in search of the nunnery. we managed to walk through a lot of farmland and beautiful agrarian scenery before we realised we must have passed it. we went back to the little village and had another look around. after being invited into someone's home and trying to talk a little to them, we finally managed to find the nunnery. one very silent nun invited us inside, and showed us the temple. the nice thing about this temple was that many of the statues were of tara, the one female boddhisaatva. it gave the place a much more feminine focus.

tonight we bumped into ben, who we met back in urumqi, and saw in dunhuang. he seems to be following us! after a nice dinner where we shared funny stories of nightmare housemates and various travel tales, we said goodbye and headed back to our hostel for a bevvy with our new australian friends, helen and damien, and then to bed. it was a lovely first day in the peaceful town of xiahe.

---

---