Final Phase

The train ride to Lanzhou was the most uncomfortable of our trips. We spent the first few hours trying to negotiate with other passengers in order to get a full berth to ourselves. It took a while, an a lot of weaving our way through train cars, but we finally managed to amass the tickets we needed through bartering, trade and cajoling. By the time we all got into the same berth, we had a few beers and fell asleep.

We woke up in Lanzhou and spent the minimum amount of time getting from the train station to the south bus station. From there we began a 3 hour long bus ride to Linxe, a mostly Muslim town to the west of Lanzhou. We had a brief layover in Linxe, before we caught another 3 hour bus to Xiahe.

Dapanjie... literally the best part of Linxe. Literally translated it means "big tray o' chicken"

The terrain on the way up to Xiahe reminded us a lot of Kamloops. Dry hills, lots of rocks and the odd patch of green conifers. However, the yaks, the mosques and the hills blazing with red, orange and yellow fall colours broke the illusion from time to time.

Could have been the interior of BC.....

.....Although there are fewer mosques and fruit stalls in Kamloops.

Fall colours were in abundance.

We got into Xiahe in the afternoon, and walked from where the bus let us off (the side of the road) to our hostel. Immediately Paul began to feel the effects of the altitude, and pretty soon everyone was feeling a little loopy. Xiahe is 3000m above sealevel, and the thin air can sometimes make you feel drunk (or give you headache, cramps, nausea or violent vertigo... luckily we were only mildly affected).

Xiahe is the home of Labrang monastery (or lamasery if you want to get technical) and a few thousand monks call it home. These are monks of the "Yellow Hat sect" of tibetan Buddhism, and it was pretty clear from the get go that we were in a special part of China. The town has an interesting mix of people: Han Chinese run many of the shops and businesses, the "Hui" or "Uigher" people (Chinese Muslims) make up a substantial portion of the town, and Tibetan people make up the rest. As we approached our hostel, we started to see more monks in their robes, and more and more Tibetans in their traditional clothes.

Monks have to get their robes somewhere.

Stylishly dressed pilgrims arrive to worship just as the monks in their yellow hats are taking off their boots in order to enter the building. We felt underdressed.

That evening we took a walk (clockwise, as the lamaist tradition dictates) around the shorter pilgrims path - or kora- that circles the monastery. Along the way, we spun the prayer wheels (wooden or metal wheels with prayers on them... spinning them in a clockwise motion is supposed to be the same as saying a full prayer) and so accumulated good deeds. We made some friends with the grubby but oh so cute Tibetan kids running around, and listened to the monks chanting on thier rooftops.

Spinning the prayer wheels.

Making new friends.

Eventually we made our way to a traditional Tibetan restaurant for some local cuisine. We tried momo (dumplings made of yak meat), tsampa (barley flour balls), paale (fried veggies inside a quesadilla like barley shell), Tibetan bread with milk and butter dip and chomdi (rice with tibetan herbs and yak butter). The food was.... interesting. Unfortunately we also ordered the local specialty of yak butter tea which was basically tea... with yak butter and salt in it. Pretty soon we all had our fill of the smell and taste of yak butter, and left to find our beds.

Yak butter tea is even less delicious than it sounds.

Tsampa on the left (with a bowl of dipping sauce), momo on the right.

The next day Paul and Will woke up early and set off to do the 6km outer kora. They wandered their way to the Tibetan village on the far side of the monastery, and poked their heads down alleyways until they found the tiny path that led them up the hills that circled back to Xiahe. The hike was amazing, as the sun rose over the mountains, breakfast fires burned in the mud lined houses, prayer flags danced with the wind horses and the sounds of the monastery awakening drifted up from below us. It was an experience that rivaled any Paul has had on any of his other trips, and was worth the lack of breath and the early morning.

Tibetan prayer flags and paper thankas (sacred art) were everywhere on the outer kora.

We spent the rest of the morning in Labrang monastery. You can only enter the monastery with a guide from one of the monks, so we met up with some other foreigners and an "English speaking" monk met us to show us around.


This young monk (we couldn't pronounce his name) was crazy. I am willing to give people a lot based on cultural misunderstandings, but this guy took the prize for most eccentric dude I have ever met. He spoke extremely fast, in varying volumes and with a thick thick Tibetan accent. We would catch about one in every four of his words clearly and then would have to guess at the rest. He would look at us and start laughing hysterically. Not only was he odd, but he took a fancy to Paul (and to a lesser extent Will) and took every opportunity to touch, stare at and rub him. Needless to say, Paul became a little uncomfortable as the tour went on- especially when he was invited on a special tour down a curtained hallway that no one else could come on (he declined this special offer).

Just starting to feel uncomfortable....

Paul's tibetan phrasebook didn't have a polite translation for " please stop touching me so much or I may be forced to punch you in your f#*%ing throat."

Despite the oddness and innappropriate affections of our guide, the monastery was an amazing place. Pilgrims were continously circling the monastery, prostrating themselves as they went. They brought bags of fragrant juniper boughs and burnt them in special offering furnaces around the monastery, so the air was redolent with the beautiful smells of their incense.


The buildings were covered in paintings and statues of apsaras and boddhisatvas; yak butter candles lit the pictures of holy lamas and saintly monks; some rooms were full of yak butter statues and displays made each year to honour a certain festival; precious gifts from donors of ivory, ancient texts, jewels and weapons were on display in one room, while traditional tibetan medicine was practiced in another. Bells, gongs, singing bowls and other instruments lined the walls, and monks walked around everywhere in their red and yellow robes.

We were priviledged enough to be allowed into the grand sutra hall while the majority of the monks were gathered together. The sound of their combined chanting, the throat singing of some of the elder monks, the soft clang of bells and the deeper bong of the drums combined with the juniper incense and the light from yak butter candles bouncing off of colourfully painted statues to create one of the most awesome and powerful atmospheres we have ever had the priviledge of witnessing.


We spent the rest of the day poking around in shops, purchasing prayer flags, yak wool and silk scarves, meeting locals and watching Tibetan medicine perfomed on the street. Eventually it was time for us to head back to Lanzhou in a minivan that we had hired for the trip back.

Kristen ignored Paul's suggestion for a souvenier and instead opted for the wool of a yak... in the form of a scarf. He still thinks that they would have gotten more use out of his idea.

Practising traditional Tibetan medicine on the side of the road. The fellow in the sweet hat is hacking a piece of a big cat's foot off with a saw. Nothing like a little piece of endangered species to cure what ails you.

After a night in Lanzhuo, we gathered ourselves together and flew back to Beijing and on to Dalian to rejoin the rest of our fellow teachers and to start planning for our next break.

Phase Four

Or Dunhuang: Part Deux


Our second day in Dunhuang we spent enjoying the dunes. We decided to do the Chinese tourist thing and go to the Ming Sha Shan (Singing Sands Mountain) Park. Basically someone decided to set up an amusement park with the megadunes as the central attraction.The big draws for us- besides seeing all the Chinese tourists lace on giant orange boots - were the mechanized toys that were available in the park, and the views of a true oasis.

Orange boots and a cowboy hat.... wow.

As soon as we got there we knew we were in for a "China Experience". One lady approached Morgan and told her through hand gestures and grunts that Morgan should cover her bare arms or risk getting tanned and never finding a suitable husband. We paid the admission fee (expensive by China standards) and entered the gates to find hundreds of Chinese people paying for orange boots to keep the sand out of their shoes. We opted out of the boots and instead put the money towards an atv ride.


We have mixed feelings about the ride. On the one hand, we had a "guide" who rode with Kristen and Paul (on an atv clearly designed for two people). He tried to steer while we were driving, and took over whenever he judged that the terrain was too "risky" for novice drivers. On the other hand, we got to ride through the desert on a freaking atv. Coming down the dunes was a hair raising experience, as we ripped down the side of an incredibly steep drop, sand flying everywhere and then had to make a hairpin turn to avoid shooting over the top of another dune. Kind of awesome.

Take a look at that hard hat. Safety first.

Just being hardcore in the desert.

At the top of one of the dunes was a... ride? Someone had created a track out of what appeared to be grey camel hair, but was probably synthetic polyester and people slid down it on inner tubes. You could also slide down the sand  itself in what looked like big carboard boxes. We paid a few kuay more then we wanted to and slid down the polyster camel slope.

Will and Morgan ripping down the side of a megadune.

Awkwardly getting ready to slide our way down a hill at top speed.

After our tour on the atvs we took some pictures with some monks on vacation, jumped onto a passenger car shaped like a group of elephants making love to a train, and made our way to the oasis. The oasis is like something out of Aladdin. A tiny cresent of water -appropriately called "cresent moon lake"- with some well kept grass and what appeared to be a former temple (that now sold overpriced art, yogurt, apricot leaf tea and beer), the oasis sits in between two mountains of sand.

What is that little one on the side doing???

Apparently Chinese monks have no problem talking to or touching foreign women... who knew?

Crescent Moon Lake- a real oasis in the desert.

We hiked our way up to the top of one of the bigger dunes to get a better view. Can I just reiterate that this is no easy feat. Climbing a dune is so much harder then climbing an equivalently steep and high mountain. Your feet sink into the sand with every step, and the sand itself slides off the side of the dune as you step. Making it to the top called for a rest, and we spent a good hour playing around on the top of the dune and in the valley on the far side.

Paul going heads over heels for the dunes.

Eventually we ran down the dune (as fast as possible) to grab a beer from the former temple and made our way over to the primary reason we came to this particular park. All day we had watched as ultralights made big loops above us. Now, as the sun was setting, we paid up and were taken up into the air above the desert.


For those of you who don't know, an ultralight is like a handglider. With an engine. And some wheels.

Morgan sitting in an ultralight.

We got taken up for only a few minutes, but for the equivalent of $40 cdn, the experience was worth it. Paul was flat out nervous heading into the flight, and was shaky when he made it down, but Kristen was possibly the happiest she has been in China. She refused to get out of the ultralight upon touching down and demanded that Paul pay for another flight!

The only proof that Paul actually got into an ultralight.



Think Kristen is happy?


We made our way back into town for some more kebabs that night, before crashing in our little garden cabins.


On our third and last day in Dunhuang, we walked into a little camel raising village near the hostel. The villagers raise camels for the park, where hundreds are needed to take the hordes of Chinese tour groups on little jaunts up the hills. It was cool to walk through a part of Gansu that quite obviously didn't see many (if any) tourists. We threaded our way through the mud plastered houses, the ladies making bricks from mud and camel dung, the pens for goats and sheep, the drying corn and the date trees until we made it to the desert on the edge of the village.

"Herc" in the Megadunes...

Walking on the dunes is sweaty work.

Here we traipsed around on some virgin sand. The dunes here see few tourists and none in the last few days (as evidenced by the lack of prints in the sand). We climbed, chased lizards, sweated and generally tried to get our fill of the desert experience. One last run down a huge dune, and then it was time to shower and head for the train ride back to Lanzhuo.

Running down sand dunes IS this much fun!

Phase Three: Dunhuang

Waking up to the sounds of a Chinese sleeper car, looking out the window and seeing a beautiful sunrise over the flat expanse of the Gobi desert was a little surreal. We were all pretty quiet, until somebody peeped up with the comment “ I feel like I am living someone else’s life right now.” It was pretty easy to agree with that sentiment as people squeezed by chattering to one another in heavily accented “Gansuese” and we sat chewing on pomegranate seeds for breakfast.

It was bitterly cold as we stepped onto the platform… surprising some in our group and prompting all of us to bundle up in our jackets as we bargained for a cab. We shared a taxi into Dunhuang with an older couple who had sold all their possessions and were travelling around the world in their retirement. They shared stories with us about our next destination Xiahe, which got us pumped about our choice of itinerary.

Our hostel was actually outside the “city” itself, close to the megadunes (in fact there was one literally in the backyard of the hostel). We had booked one large dorm room, but when we got there, we were told that that was not available and we would have to split into several rooms. We eventually managed to convince the manager that we wanted to put three of us into two of the cottages out in the garden. It was a good choice of accommodations, as we felt like we were really immersed in the whole experience. Whether it was getting woken up by a Chinese family harvesting dates from the trees above our cabins, having goats run by our front porch, or cuddling up together on top of the one electric blanket during the middle of the cold desert night, the place added to the feeling of  our escapade.

You only have an unheated cabin in the desert you say? We'll take it!

A peaceful resident

Dates were drying everywhere, one of this area's bigger exports (along with bottles of sand)

We made our way back into town, and after brunch and some planning, we moved out again to go to the Mogao Ku. The Mogao Caves are a UNESCO world heritage site and are a repository of some of the best Buddhist art in the world. More than 1500 caves were carved out of the rock at this site from 300 AD to around 1900. The wealth generated by its position athwart the Silk Road transportation route meant that Dunhuang had plenty of wealthy donors who put up a hell of a lot of cash, at times employing thousands of artisans and monks to help create some of the amazing cave art.

The caves are famous in China, and more than 10,000 visitors can visit the caves each day during the National Holiday. We had to wait until there were enough foreign visitors gathered together for the site to send an English speaking tour guide with us into the caves. The word cave conjures up dank, musty places full of bats, but these caves have all been heavily reinforced and restored so that no further damage can be done to the centuries old statues and paintings. Two of the largest caves had “Future Buddha” figures that were over 35 meters tall, which should give you an idea of the immense size of some of the artwork there. Painted apsaras, bodhisattvas, Buddha statues, and the thousand Buddha motif were everywhere, and it was a pretty amazing place to visit. Obviously it would have been a little more fun to have the place to ourselves and to enjoy the caves in relative quiet and at our own pace, but this was the National holiday in China, and we were just another bunch of tourists.

Looking Epic at yet another UNESCO site!

Stolen pics!

This is the past Buddha

Catherine and Paul, ready to Spelunk the shit out of some caves.

When our tour was over, we jumped onto the next bus and raced back to Dunhuang. We were running late for our next adventure that we had booked earlier that morning, and we wanted to grab dinner before heading out. Being the efficient group of travellers that we are, we split up and some of us tracked down some grub from Charlie’s café (the same Charlie that owned our hostel and who helped book our evening excursion- he had his hand in almost every tourist venture the town had on offer).

We made it back in time to chow down some grub before we were picked up and whisked off to meet our guide for a four hour camel trek to watch the sun set over the dunes. All the taxi drivers in Dunhuang were wonderful- safe, cautious and courteous – but this fellow was the best of the bunch. He was chatting with us, offering us smokes and laughing at our refusals and he even called his friend to tell them that he had a load of “spicy white people” in his car and would be a little late!

We got dropped off at the edge of the desert, where our camel drover was waiting with our caravan. We got to ride Bactrian (two humped) camels which are almost extinct in the wild, so Paul was pretty pumped.  The camels lie down for you to get onto the saddle which is constructed of wood and pillows filled with beans (or maybe rice?). You sit in between the humps, and the camel stands up and takes of as if you were not even there. The ride is much more of a side to side motion then with a horse, but (depending on your saddle) it is not altogether that uncomfortable. Most of us did end up with sore backsides and some even had saddle rub on our bare legs, but the experience was worth it.

Our caravan consisted of the six of us, plus Elena, another Canadian teacher from near Shanghai who we picked up on the train, and two Chinese women. We rode past cotton fields and out into the desert proper, where we made our way through a traditional cemetery. After about forty minutes of riding, the two Chinese women parted ways with us, to join a group that was going on a several day long camel ride through the desert (COOL!). Our drover then took us up the megadunes to try and catch the fast approaching sunset before it was too late.

A face only a mother camel could love



Clearly having no fun



Alice the camel had 2 humps......

Since every villager owns a camel they brand them with the family name

Mini silk road perhaps? Nope! Chinese burial grounds

The megadunes are just that… mega. The tallest reach over 1500 meters and are made entirely of sand. The camels made it over half way up one of the large ones before it became too steep and we had to continue climbing on our own- a challenge because of the steepness and because the sand slides out from under you as you move.

Paul launching himself off the megadune

(L - R) Morgan, Erica, Will, Kristen, Catherine and Paul

Paul kept saying, "if we photoshop in another moon it could be Tatooine".

The stair master at the gym is for wussies, if you want a real workout run up a megadune!

We rode home elated. The sky was clear, the moon out, and our camels cast shadows as they found their way over the sand back to the edge of the desert. Altogether the experience was one of the coolest we have had in our travel to date.

We had spicy kebabs (“chwar”) of mutton, chicken livers, potato, vegetables and tofu from the night market that evening. The spice was considerable, so we cut the burn with fresh yogurt and milk tea before heading out to admire the silks, carving, polished desert gemstones, dried apricots and grapes that were being sold. After a few minutes of bargaining and chowing down on delicious food, we tumbled into taxis and found our way back to the freezing cabin where we bundled into bed and slept the sleep of the happily exhausted.