Blogs from Qinghai, China, Asia - page 2

At the Beginning "Wo Pu Tong." Means I don't understand (or something like that). My friend Yla often uttered this whenever it became too hard to understand what the locals were saying. Me? "I don't have a clue what he just said." The language barrier is so thick that it hindered us from maximizing our sojourn in Shanghai. First stop: Shanghai. This is where we boarded the Qinghai-Tibet Train going to Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. The fantastic urban planning, road design, and efficient and well-developed railway system are difficult not to notice. Our local city engineers and chief executives could learn a lot from Shanghai urban planners. Manila's traffic problems would be a thing of the past if only we have similarly well-designed structures. The cool weather is a welcome respite from Manila's sweltering ... 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

Qinghai, the west province of China, the path to Tibet, also known as "Heaven path", and the land of Tibetan also. So the natural beauty is main sight as usual. The Qinghai lake is the most famous there. Qinghai lake, the biggest lake of China, also known as West sea in the past, because the lake is huge, and the people thought that was the sea or ocean. I went to the Qinghai lake in the end of May, that was the end of Spring and beginning of Summer in China, but there was a incredible event, while we were surrounding the lake, we met the snowing, raining and sun, just like 4 seasons all together, I never imaged the snowing on May is possible, there is a popular saying in China, "Snowing on May" means ... read more

Shane flew to Beijing in September as part of his new job with USGS (Patuxent Wildlife Research Center), working on a satellite telemetry project of waterfowl migration in Eurasia and Africa. By placing transmitters on the backs of ducks and geese using little harnesses, we can track the migration of individuals around the globe. A specific focus of the project is determining how wild birds may be contributing to the spread of avian influenza (bird flu), which spread prolifically from Southeast Asia and China into Western Asia, Europe, and Africa since 2005. We would be working at Qinghai Lake in Central China, which sits at over 9000 ft on the Qinghai/Tibetan Plateau and was the site of the largest outbreak of bird flu virus in wild birds (over 6000 birds perished in 2005). I traveled with ... read more