Urumqi 29th - 1st May

Less 1st aid scissors and our hip flask of 56% rice wine, we made it tho customs and joined the scum down to get our stuff. The constant ritual on whatever form of transport that you take is always the same - fight to get on, off and too collect your stuff. Its quite liberating really when you are used to the p's and q's of the U.K. Taxi guys where hawking again, while leaving david with them and the bags I had a written chat (they lady had forgetten how to pronounce) in english about how to get to the city. The buses had stopped and she informed me taxi's should cost 30Y, a mile from the 80 they wanted. She also took us to the taxi rank and bartered for us - another of the many random acts of kindness that we have experienced in China. Once at the hostel (that two groups of people walked us too, more random acts!) we collapsed and had a beer.

Urumqi is another massive city! Thankfully the buses where easy to work out and we explored the city, it's shopping opportunities and where the bus station was. I needed sunglasses and a hat - David needed glasses (he'd lost his in Lanzhou) and a hat, we both needed suncream. The change in temperature here is crazy, it's about 28C.

Here you can feel the change in ethnic minority again, the west of china is largely Muslim, with an arabic feel.

David got to watch Chelsea V Man U with some other guys, beer flowing and finished with a meal at the muslim restaurant next door.

Lanzhou - again

This time in Lanzhou we achieved boring stuff, we extended our visa at the PSB and made arrangements for our next journey. With golden week (a weeks worth of national bank holiday where the population of china goes sightseeing) looming we where anxious if we'd get our train tickets to Urumqi. The west of China is less popular with the Chinese to visit, (they prefer the touristic sightseeing cities) we hoped we'd be saved from the train choas as the population moves round the country - wrong. Forced to arrange a plane ticket or stay in Lanzhou for 5 days (not happening) we went over budget for the first time. We flew out of there that night.

Xiahe 23rd - 29th April

As this original Tibetan town is small didnt walk far to find a bed, it was not long before we came to the Overseas Tibetan Guesthouse. This place is excellent as it has a roof top where you can sit and watch the world go by right on the walls of the old town with all the prayer wheels, which is extactly what we did for four days sit and watch. We chilled either on the roof or at the Nomad cafe which was a popular hang out for all the monks, drinking Tibetan black tea (kinda like a cup of twigs and dry berry things with loads of sugar) all day. Being here is a great break from the bustle of Chinese cities.

Xiahe was exclusively tibetan but since the chinese have had interests in making the area accessible there is a distinct cleavage in the town, one half tibetan and one half chinese, as I understand when the chinese government makes people homeless they 'rehome' people to areas that are not vastly populated - like Xiahe.
Faces are different, the dress is different, customs are different. Religion is a key element to life here.

The landscape here is awesome, the village is stuck between mountains dotted with green pines. The mountains are not green yet as it is too early in the year, the brown earth contrasts well with the abundance of prayer flags. Prayer flags are techinquically illegal in China and some villages have suffered for their believe, as Xiahe is in the tourist eye I think they choose to turn a blind eye. Large brown birds circle in the sky above us, on our walk up the prayer flags we were walking with the birds! I guess sky burials must be something here.

We hired bikes to get to the grasslands that lay 14km west of Xiahe, just one road out of town so we didnt get lost! It was beauitful out there. We had two inviations from locals to have food with them, one lady had completley gold teeth! The ride took 1 and a half hours, slowly up hill in glorious sunshine, the return however was not quite idilic. Black clouds were forming ahead and we could hear distant rumbles, the 45 min retreat was wet and miserable, yet exciting the storm was great! Frozen and numb we warmed over yak butter tea and Mo mos. It rained and rained on a couple of occasions sleet even and you could tell, even tho you couldnt see the mountains for cloud, that it was snowing up there.

When we bumped into the belgium couple they gave us tickets for the Labrang Monestry. Here 8000 monks of the yellow hat sect live and study. The atmosphere was absorbing - the place smelt of yak butter candles and you could here the monks chanting in the background.

Back through the gullies and valleys of the mountains, we bumped our way back along the river to Lanzhou, refreshed from a cold but serene break from the cities.

I also encountered the worst toilet in my life, so far - watch this space!

Lanzhou

Travelling to Lanzhou under a little more train experience made it far pleasurable. To start we got in to the fine Chinese spirit of queue jumping to make sure we had suffient bag space in our sleeper. We met the two peps we had seen previously in Xi'an and Pingyao, they planned too, to use Lanzhou as a point to get to Xiahe. The music on trains here is very strange, once borded at 22.00 lullabies where played over the speakers!?
Arriving at Lanzhou was pretty painless, we had taken a hostel address from the recent L.P (as ours is from 1991), turning up only to find it was now a 5 star hotel...oppps. They very kindly reccommend a budget hotel nearby for us.
Lanzhou is not particularly charming and is a thiving industrial city. Fortunatly the city plan (a 15km long road) forms a natural wind tunnel that frees the city from the polluting clouds that can be seen at the far end of town - nice. We have spoken to local people here about the smog, they don't seem to or want to register it, often we have been corrected "the fog today is bad".
In Lanzhou we discovered the chinese supermarkets - a delight for any keen shopper, 3 floors of everything you could imagine, poor Dave.
On finding the correct bus station (there are two each at the opposite end of town) we got our tickets for Xiahe, we leave tommorow. There was rather an awful campaign that caught our eyes at the station, infact you couldn't really escape it. Graffic pictures of the aftermath of road traffic accidents were displayed as public information - what the point was to providing this information we couldn't work out yet, we now felt very uneasy about the 7h bus trip to Xiahe!
We left Lanzhou for Xiahe at 08.30 the next morning in an old minibus, the bus filled up along the unsurfaced road, through various towns collecting anddropping people off, bumping along more cratered road. After 7h of playing chicken round bends and cliffs we arrived at a bus station we suspected was our destination but, not extactly sure where we were. Our hunch was sure confirmed when we spotted the beady eyes of taxi men waiting for us like vultures!