Blogs from Qinghai, China, Asia - page 2

Travelling along Qinghai provice is one of the trips that I absolutely recommend, to experience, while travelling in China. This time I have visited Qinghai lake. I stayed actually in the city of Xining which is about five hours away to the western side of the city. I was quite impressed to see that even in this part of China the cities have been transformed and the construction sites, I found in this city, were massive. Luckily, I discovered a little and cozy guesthouse slightly detached from the horrible concrete hub of the place. It was still traditional with all the ancient decorations and that inimitable ambiance that it is only found in the authentic part of this ever changing country. I loved that room with a bit of dirtiness, those feded curtains and sand stained ... read more

Xining It was another cold day, but no rain. There was a huge traffic jam getting out of town due to a car-truck crash blocking most of the road. Then there was the slow Chinese Army convoy of about 500 trucks going down the road. We spent about 40 miles passing the trucks. The road crossed high yak pastures and two 12,000 ft. passes and a 12,200 ft. tunnel. There was new snow from yesterday and the temperature on top was 36 F. Fortunately, we traveled a day ahead of schedule, or we would have been caught in the next snow storm. This area is near Tibet, and the terrain and people look like Tibet. Xining is a large city with strong Tibetan influence. We visited a Tibetan style monastery with huge golden Budas and a ... read more

Hi All, Again nothing much to see as the monastery was being rebuilt. It was hard work walking up to the monastery but it was worth it. The view over the town was something else. I also found some buildings that were still standing from the earthquake. In the evening we went out for a meal in a Tibetan restaurant. We had a yak dish, a tofu dish and a potato dish. We also had yak butter tea. The food was lovely but I must admit I wasn't too keen on the tea, a bit sickly. On the way back to the hotel we saw a fight in the street. Well I say fight, a lot of pushing and shoving and chasing people up the street. Nothing pulls a crowd like a street fight. It gave ... read more

Hi All Just outside the town there is one of the largest mani walls in the Tibetan world. Mani are stones with buddhist mantras carved or painted on them. This is certainly a sight to behold and there are lots of pilgrims walking around the stones and chorten. After a spot of lunch we went to find the monastery that we could see when we arrived at the bus station. Little did we know that it was a building site. New temples and monasteries and convents were in the process of being built. As we were walking around we bumped into some young guys who were doing the decorative paintings and they took us into the main hall and showed us around. They took us all the way to the top. I just cannot believe how ... read more

Hi All, I've done my fairshare of travelling on trains but I must admit that this was one of the most incredible train rides I'd ever had. It was a long trip, nearly nine hours, but just looking out of the window was entertainment enough. We saw yaks, yurts, Tibetan cowboys, prayer flags, mountains and deserts. The railway also passes near to Qinghai lake, it took over an hour to go from one side to the other. The train terminated at Xining west station and getting a taxi was a trial. There are no taxis outside the station but in a car park where parking chaos ruled. After we'd finally sorted a price we set off, with another two people in the taxi. The driver seemed to take us on a tour of the city. We ... read more