I am sitting in a tent right now typing this, though if you are reading it that means I published it when we got back to internet somewhere (update: we are still in the tent, it is the morning of the next day and I am posting this using the hot spot from my cell phone, but my coverage is weak so I’ll add the pictures later!). We are staying with a nomadic tribe on the side of Qinghai Lake. Qinghai Lake is the highest lake (or maybe just the highest salt water lake) in the world. We are at about 10,000 feet right now. We are adjusting to the altitude well, though we still get out of breath easier than at sea level. To test the effects I decided to hold my breath. At sea level I know I can hold my breath for about two to two-and-a-half minutes. Here I was really struggling at the one minute mark!
The encampment we stayed at by Qinghai Lake
This is the tent we stayed in
Today we saw breathtaking vistas, herds of yak and sheep, nomadic peoples camped besides their herds, beautiful lakes, and snow-capped mountains. It was definitely our most exciting day since we left Beijing.
We started the day in Xining where our tour group picked us up. There are six of us tourists and then our driver who is driving us around in a Buick mini-van. Our driver is a bit crazy, as far as his driving goes that is. He reminds me of a Kosovo driver to be honest. Now for those of you who don’t know what a Kosovo driver is like, basically think of disregarding all traffic laws, driving wherever is convenient (e.g. shoulders, the lane that goes the other direction, etc.) and passing cars often so close to oncoming traffic that you force oncoming traffic to pullover into the shoulder or the passing car has to forcefully switch back over to his lane.
Other than that our driver is a very nice guy. He gives us lots of advice about the different sites and what to do at them and keeps us on schedule.
So as I was saying, our day started out in Xining and we first drove up into the mountains to a Buddhist temple/monastery. This temple was called Ta’ersi (there is no real translation, it’s pronounced like tah-are-suh kind of). The temple was interesting to look at, we saw several people who had come on pilgrimage to pray at all the different locations within the area. We also saw lots of monks, even saw one using a camera phone.
After that we went to lunch in a Muslim district of town. The restaurant we ate at was across from a large mosque. The food was delicious, we had noodles that kind of tasted like pho (a dish I’ve had with Hmong friends in the past, but I think it is Vietnamese?), and it tasted really good when I added the hot sauce that is traditional in China. We also had garlic broccoli. Speaking of that, I feel I should comment, you know how in the States you always have salt and pepper at tables in restaurants? In China (not just Qinghai, but everywhere I’ve been in China) there is never salt or pepper, but you always have this hot sauce stuff (it looks kind of like those red chili pepper flakes you put on pizza mixed with oil to make it a paste) and vinegar at the table.
Anyway, next we started venturing further into the mountains where we saw herds of yak and sheep, and I think some goats. We stopped at one area to look around a bit and checked out some white yak that were lying around. We also climbed to the top of a hill for a good view and to take pictures. Of course the peddlers all targeted me, the only foreigner in the group. This is a theme for all of China, peddlers try to sell their wares to everyone, but they are particularly persistent with foreigners. Luckily we don’t really have space to carry any souvenir type stuff, not this early in the trip anyway. We don’t want to be lugging that stuff around the rest of the trip.
The views from the hill were beautiful. We got a bit out of breath going up the hill, though not too bad. We are getting more used to the altitude, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post. The mountains around us were snow-capped, at least quite a few of them were. The smaller ones weren’t tall enough to still have snow on them. The hills were covered in green grass and dotted with white yak that stood out against that background. The sky was a much brighter blue than I’ve seen since we came to China.
The weather throughout the day was decent, it did rain on us for a bit, but that ended soon after we left that first temple. So after we climbed back down from the hill we got back into the van and headed for Qinghai Lake. Qinghai Lake is the second largest salt water lake in the world. It is not as salty as the Great Salt Lake in Utah so it is home to many types of fish. It also doesn’t have that same smell that the lake in Utah does.
Qinghai Lake is at about 10,000 feet above sea level. The lake is huge, you can’t see the opposite side of the lake from the shore. This is where we are right now. We walked along the lake for about an hour, taking lots of pictures as we did. We saw horses grazing along the shore and some locals holding the reigns of some horses trying to sell horse rides to tourists.
After the lake we drove to another salt lake, this one was called Chaka Salt Lake (Cha means tea and ka means card, but maybe together they have a special meaning, I’ll have to ask my wife later, she is asleep at the moment). Chaka Salt Lake is much saltier than Qinghai Lake. It has salt flats around it just like the Great Salt Lake does, and it has salt refineries there as well. At the entrance there are several large statues carved from the salt, we walked along some train tracks to get out to the salt flats and the lake. We took several pictures and walked across stones a wood sticking up in the shallow part of the lake to get out onto the salt.
One interesting thing was wherever there was a hole in the salt it was filled with water looking like there was water under the salt, but I guess it could just be that after a hole was formed and the water seeped into it to fill it. We spend time playing out on the salt and then we headed back Qinghai Lake where we are staying for the night.
Okay, so I described it like we are really roughing it out in the nomadic tents, but this is definitely a site set up for tourists and not locals. Our tent is on a concrete foundation and has electricity in it. We have electric blankets to keep us warm and they have hot water for us. Still, there are no showers or bathrooms and our bed consists of a wooden pallet with blankets on top of it. Oh, and at night you can see so many stars out here! For the first time since I’ve been in China I’ve been able to identify Scorpius and Sagittarius in the night sky! We could even see the Milky Way stretching clear across the sky! I’m normally lucky if the sky is clear enough to find the Big Dipper!
My wife has never been camping, so I guess this is a good first step. The tents do look similar to the tents the actual nomads use though. They are white canvas tents with designs on the outside and they have steel pipe frames. So even the nomads have upgraded over the years. Speaking of which I saw several nomad encampments with cars next to them, apparently they follow their herds in style.
Well time for bed, in the morning we will be getting up to see the sunrise over Qinghai Lake and then we will be heading out to see more of the scenery.