Blogs from Xining, Qinghai, China, Asia

Xining has a center very crowed, full of shops, especially Mobile phones. I visit two Buddhist temples that are pretty hide in town. I was surprised to find one of them just surrounded by a Shopping mall and the police stations. Then I entered to a local market where I bought fruit and vegetables. Here the stores for fruit and vegetables are different ones. I also bought some gojis and some kimchi of onion, garlic and other vegetables. Then I have not done much here, I have being sick in Xining for the last 2 days, and it sucked but now I am better. The drastic change of weather from where I was coming for, the air condition in the train, and the shower here with cold water, impacted me and got a cold. I ... read more

In this TravelBlog #132, Part II of my visit to the Province of Qinghai, I am introducing the "GREAT MOSQUE" of Xining, Qinghai's capital city. After some research, here is some additional information about this least visited and poorest of the China's provinces: Qinghai is bordered by Tibet, Xinjiang, Gansu and Sichuan at an average altitude of more than 13,000 feet on the Tibetan plateau. Here, summers are hot and winters are cold and dry. The province is home of a mix of minority peoples, mostly Hui Muslims and Tibetans, along with Kazakhs and Mongols. Geographically part of Tibet and historically a distant and obscure region, Qinghai for centuries supported nomadic herdsmen. Later it found fame as a distant "Gulag"! The central government is making great efforts to develop the capital of Xining, infusing much money ... read more

From Chengdu we travelled further to north, currently we are in Xining. Here the weather is really wintery now, freezing nights, mountains, we can really feel the proximity of the Himalayas. Our mission in Xining was to acclimatise to higher altitude (currently at 2200 m) and to arrange our travel permits and tour to Tibet. They say the closer you arrange the trip to Tibet the cheaper the price gets. Yes, this is true. Yesterday we applied for all the papers, and tomorrow we are to be on the train to Lhasa, which is Tibet's capital. We will take the famous trans-Himalayan railway, which goes at an average altitude of 4000 meters with the peak of 5000 meters at a pass (don't remember the name, but will give you precise details in our Tibet blog entry). ... read more

Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, turned out to be already more wild than expected. It was far less modern than the other cities. The most obvious sign for this were the missing chain stores of Mc Donalds, KFC and Starbucks. We arrived after a comfortable night on the train. Chinese sleeper trains are of good quality with open 6 berths compartments and clean bed sheets. There is also a wake up service from the attendant in each carriage. The youth hostel was closed and we ended far outside of town in a kind of 4x4 car club accommodation. It had a certain American Wild West bar atmosphere with plenty of 4x4 decorations and route pictures. I struggled with the very kind, but confused receptionist to understand where we were and what would be our ... read more