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.