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Chengdu

We made it to the capital of Sichuan province. So far I've been impressed with this city. It's clean, friendly, and has interesting culture. The people here are laid back and love to eat out. Therefore, many streets are lined with all kinds of restaurants. When you think of Chengdu, you think hot pot. What a great communal way to share a meal with friends and relatives. Unfortunately, we weren't prepared for this level of spiciness. Thats why we had the hot pot that has the soups separated betwe...

Manigango-Dege-Ganzi-Tagong-Kanding

Ok, new approach here. I have a lot of catchup to do and so this posting is a summary of several western Sichuan province towns which we visited. We stayed at each for one night only. Here's the recap.  Manigango. Visited beautiful Yulong Lake just outside town but the morning fog obscured the mountain scenery. When the temps went up the fog burned off enough for a few good photos. This tiny town itself doesn't have much in terms of amenities. There wasn't much in terms of hotel choices. No heat...

Shiqu (Sershul)

We left Yushu by bus and crossed into Sichuan province. Apparently, foreigners were not allowed into this part of Sichuan province during the Olympics. The checkpoint police wavered between letting us through or turning us away. Since we don't look like foreigners, he allowed us through. When we arrived at old Shiqu, we were dropped at the Shiqu monastery. There is actually another Shiqu town which is newer and located a short dirve away from old Shiqu. The monastery is one of the largest in th...

Back to Yushu

We caught a shared car back to Yushu from Nang Qian. Boy does it feel like coming back to a major city! This time we finished seeing some of the sites. We visited the Princess Wenchen temple which is on the outskirts of town. This site has a historic temple that is nestled between two rocky mountains. The mountain that is directly behind the temple has a hiking trail that requires a 45 minute hike. The entire mountain is covered in Tibetan prayer flags. This is a spiritual place for Tibetans and...

Gar-Er Si

From Nang Qian we hired a driver to take us to Gar-Er Si which is a monastery about 3 hours drive outside of Nang Qian. Really, it is only about 60 km but the drive was almost completely dirt and gravel roads which cross many mountains, streams, and primitively made bridges. When we arrived at Gar-Er Si we drove up to the school. The children were already in class but we met a teacher outside who gave us some background about the village. The school and living quarters for the monks are in the v...

Tibetan Music in Yushu

Our first night in Yushu we heard loud music from the banquet hall below. It was a local Tibetan group that is tremendously popular here. Although we didn't get to see the performance, the music intrigued me. It turned out that the same group was playing at a different hotel the next night. We bought tickets and found a seat at a table with some young Tibetan men. The banquet hall was huge and full of Tibetan families, young men, monks, women, and children. Many in the audience were eating sunfl...

Nang Qian

This morning we caught a ride to Nang Qian which is a smaller town 3 hours to the south of Yushu. The method of transportation was to get a mini van from the bus station. The driver charges 50 RMB and can take up to 7 passengers. The three of us (H+G and another friend) were the first passengers for the driver we found. We had to wait a while for more passengers but once the van filled up we were off to Nang Qian. The drive was through the rolling mountains. The man that sat next to me was an ol...

Yushu Part 2

We hired a minivan to take us to the Batang Hot Springs which is just outside of Yushu. Normally, visitors to the park can rent horses to take them into the mountains where the hot springs are. It is a two hour hike on foot over some rough terrain. Our guide promised that we could get horses and suggested that if there are no horses available he would provide a motorcycle. When we arrived we realized that the horses were not available and therefore we needed the motorcycle. Now, we had two guide...

Yushu (Jyekundo)

We left Xining on the 3:30 pm bus to Yushu also known as Jyekundo in Tibetan. The bus was a sleeper bus which basically has rows of beds throughout the bus. Passengers lie down the whole trip and when you wake up you are at your destination. Seems simple right? Wrong! First off, this ride was 16 hours through some of the roughest roads in this region. It almost seemed like half the trip we were going over rumble strips and speed bumps. Imagine the motion sickness from your head bouncing up and d...