Blogs from Xiahe, Gansu, China, Asia - page 2

In 2006 I travelled across China into Tibet and over the border into Nepal, on a truck along with 23 other people, two crew members, a Chinese translator and then in Tibet, a Tibetan translator. Since then, I’ve sporadically kept in touch with Dave and Nola from Canada, who were on that same trip and next week we’re meeting up in London - after nearly five years. The six week trip across 2 countries (if you count Tibet as China’s) was the start of my major wander lust which I’ve never lost. And, whilst in my dad’s garage yesterday, I dug through my boxes to find my diary from that trip. At the same time as traveling, I was in love with a boy and we kept in touch whilst he was cycling across Europe and ... read more

Burial practices are always fascinating to learn about in other cultures, and I got a little taste of the Chinese way of doing things when we stopped off on the way to a little town called Luidan to bush camp in a Chinese cemetery. We were surrounded by big pyramid mound graves all around, most built close to large doorways leading to no where- a few quite intricate, some more than others, depending on the family budget I suppose, with thick sandy brick walls sloping down on either side; symbolising a path leading the dead to the afterlife, and looking at them, you almost expect to see another world through the doorway. All of the graves were surrounded by charred wood, broken bottles, bones, hoofs, horns & the dried out guts of goats, left over from ... read more

Following a bit of procrastination, I decided to head North from Songpan through Gansu province up to its capital Lanzhou. I'm not sure what attracted me to Gansu. I think it was the desire to get off the tourist trail somewhat, and also the opportunity to visit "Tibet" without having to go to the hassle of actually visiting Tibet - Southwest Gansu being comprised of Tibetan grasslands and monasteries. It may also have been not wanting to face the arduous trip back to Chengdu. The journey was very bus-dependent, but the scenery was unlike I've seen before - grasslands bordered by mountains, yaks blocking the road, masked nomads riding horseback across the grasslands. All coupled with the assorted medley of objects that accompany you on bus journeys here - a 10 foot bamboo pole, baby ducks, ... read more

herzliche weihnachtsgruesse aus xiahe in tibet! nun ist es wiedermal einige tage her, dass wir uns gemeldet haben. inzwischen ist mal wieder einiges passiert. sind von lanzhou aus, wo wir heidi und jutta (am 22.12.) getroffen haben, am 23. mit dem bus nach sueden richtung tibet gefahren. zu weihnachten in buddhistischer umgabung, viel schnee und hohen bergen, haben wir uns so gedacht. aber wie immer sah die realitaet anders aus, wenngleich viel schoener und atemberaubender als angenommen. erster stop nach lanzhou: bruetenhitze, muss den fliess offen tragen. unfassbar, mitten im dezember und fast 15 grad! am spaeten nachmittag ankunft in xiahe, dem ersten tibetischen dorf aus sicht des noerdlichen chinas. finden ein nettes guesthouse, symphatische betreiber, tolle zimmer, nur ein haken: kaltes wasser und die zimmer lassen sich nicht richtig heizen, der kohleoffen im zimmer der ... read more

A day full of surprises Okay so when I got up and looked out the window something didn't look quite right, so I opened the door and stepped outside into the snow. Yeah, it snowed over night, its kind of cold here. Anyway, after the excitement of the snow wore off it was off to the monastery with a French guy I met the night before, we were to take a tour of the monastery with a monk who spoke English. The Labrang Monastery in Xiahe is ranked as one of the 6 glorious monasteries of the yellow hat sect of Buddhism and is the home the third highest ranking Lama in all of Tibetan Buddhism. During a certain period of China's history (which cannot be mentioned on the internet), a lot of the monastery was ... read more