Traversing the Silk Road (I)

Day 1: Hong Kong >>> Lanzhou >>> Xining

The first day gave us a taste of what's to come, lots of traveling by bus.... along the way from Lanzhou to Xining (in Qinghai Province), we saw Yellow Soil hills that were formed some centuries ago, when strong winds from Siberia picked up yellow soil and finally deposited them in Lanzhou.

That night, we arrived in Xining after 2.5 hours of traveling (but it felt longer, I think it's been too long since I've been on a road trip). We visited a local minority clan's home, they are supposedly royalty and we were served a dinner that they would usually eat. I don't want to dismiss their efforts in welcoming us to their home, but their food was really bad! It's not what we're used to, and to be truthful, all the food along the silk road was not very impressive... so I did not take ANY photos of our meals. (this is really unusual, as when I travel, local cuisine is a big part of my traveling experience).

However, compared to my previous travel experiences in China, the roads and hotel are a lot better than what they used to be. The roads and highways that we traveled on were all paved, and the highways were brand new and resembled those that you will use in North America. The hotels were clean and some were even really luxurious looking. This is definitely a plus! The only thing is that all the mattresses were pretty hard, so if you're not used to sleeping on a board, then you might have trouble sleeping.

Although I took a nap on the bus from Lanzhou to Xining, I had no trouble falling asleep right away on my board.

Day 2: Xining >>> Zhangye

The next day, we visited a local Tibetan Monastery. One of the interesting things about Tibetan Buddhism, is that they have this ritual of doing 10,000 bows. These "bows" are full body bows and each believer has to do this at least once in their life. Usually it takes them 2-3 months to do it. (I wonder if they are allowed to rest at night of it they have to keep doing it without breaks.) Don't know if you can see clearly in the photo, but the person must kneel down and then slide his/her whole body face down and then come back up into standing position. This actually is extremely difficult to do as you have to use your whole body and all the muscles to control your bow, you can't just collapse and count it as a bow.

After visiting the monastery, we began our 6 hour drive to Zhangye. To get to Zhangye we had to go through the Qilian Mountain Range (maximum elevation 5547 m above sea level). There were lots of winding roads going up the mountain and at about 3600m they had just finished a tunnel through the mountain. This was not a good day for me as I was not feeling very well after lunch, so all those winding roads just made me miserable!

However, the mountain range definitely provided some beautiful scenery. One of the perks of traveling this part of the silk road (btw, I only traveled one third of the silk road, the parts that are in China - will have to wait for another opportunity to travel through middle Asia and all the way to Rome), as I was saying, one of the perks of the Silk Road is that you will be able to see different sceneries and seasons along the way - Summer, Fall, Winter (spring will have to wait), green pastures, rocky mountain ranges with snow, bountiful fields of grapes and cotton flowers etc.

When we finally arrived in Zhangye, we were supposed to visit the temple of the largest indoor sleeping buddha, however, the temple had already closed for the day.

However, we did spot a truck selling grapes and persimmon, and all the ladies from our bus flocked around the truck. With the dry weather, and not wanting to drink a lot of water as none of us really wanted to use the restrooms along the road, eating fruits was a good way to quench our thirst.

Apparently grapes and other fruits are really popular and can be easily grown in the region, which is surprising, as I would think that with so many mountains around there's not much flat land and there's no ground water. But all the cities and villages in the region are fed with ice water from the mountains and because of the long summers, they can actually grow a lot of fruits.