Lanzhou and Xiahe, Day 8-10

hmmm.. something is off with my counting of days because this is actually day 10-13.. so apparently I lost a few days in there somewhere.. sorry about that. 

Arrived in LanZhou in the morning in time to catch the 2 PM bus to XiaHe, about 4 hours drive to the south west of the city.  Found the bus station without incident, but when I went to buy my ticket the woman kept jabbering about something I didn't understand.  Turns out she wanted copies of my passport.   I think my distress at trying to find a place to do this must have read in my face because a chinese girl who was also waiting took pity on me and grabbing me by the elbow forcibly led me outside to look for one.  Three blocks away we found one, where she copied them then dragged me back to the bus station to buy my ticket, all without a word of understanding between the two of us, sometimes I have faith in humanity.   

They put the goats and the bikes on the roof

On the bus I sat next to a nice muslim girl who spoke very good english and went to university in Beijing.  She was planning on studying abroad in Saudi Arabia next year and I gave her my email to stay in touch.  She fed me lots of candy the whole way. 

XiaHe is the second most important monastery town after Lhasa, so if you can't make it to Tibet this is a good alternative.  Until a few weeks ago it was closed, being one of the last to reopen to foreign tourists after the crackdown following the spring protests in Tibet.  At the hight of its glory the monastery housed over 6,000 monks but due to purges during the Cultural Revolution this number was reduced to the roughly 2,000 that live there today.  As you can see from the picture below, the place is massive. 

Lubrang Monastery 

Monks..

Monks getting in taxi... I wondered the whole time if they have to pay but then at the end I saw them exchanging money so I guess that they do. 

Nun from the nunnery above the Tibetan part of the town

Day 11: XiaHe

I tried to find the outer Kora path, which after lots of charades to ask people (most people are Tibetan and their chinese is as bad as mine), I found, the start being concealed behind a nunnery so it was very hard to see.    

I asked this nun if I could take a picture of her and she made this face.  All of the nuns were very nice and let me wander unhindered around their nunnery while I was trying to find the path. 

View of the monastery from the outer Kora. 

Prayer flags on top of a hill above the town

After hiking the outer Kora, which was probably only about 5k I went back into town and watched the pilgrims going around the prayer wheels.     Two tibetan girls from LanZhou broke off from the crowd and befriended me and we hung out for prob 45 minutes the whole time being joined by other pilgrims curious about the foreigner.   There was a great flurry of activity as everyone took pictures of me with their cell phones, etc.   Two chinese guys joined in the fun as well and took a great shot of the whole group that hopefully they will email to me.   

Two tibetan girls that befriended me

Us together...

Extreme close up...

Tibetan women talking after finishing the pilgrimage path

spinning the prayer wheels on the pilgrimage path 

After about an hour I extricated myself from the now large crowd and went to get some eats.  Pretty much every restaurant in the town was closed because it was the low season, but I found one that was open and tried to order momo: tibetan boiled dumplings.   Instead I somehow got a giant loaf of bread and after questioning the cook he insisted that momo and mian bao (bread) where the same, which they most definitely are not.  I realized I wasn't getting momo so I just went into the kitchen and pointed at some noodles, which turned out to be awesome.    While I was eating an old man sat down across from me and just stared and smiled at me while slurping his noodles.   He was with his granddaughter, but she was too afraid to sit with me because I am scary.  

After lunch I bought a teapot which turned out to be the envy of all of China it seems - even policemen directing traffic stopped to examine it and ask me how much I paid, and at the post office today when I was mailing it home the lady took it out and showed it to everyone in the office.   After my shopping spree I went to the internet cafe to try and catch up on emails and tell my parents I was not dead since last I had told them I was in Pakistan.   Most of the cliental were adolescent monks who were all either blasting things on Halo or looking at pictures of Jessica Alba in lingerie. It was very strange... I thought monks were peaceful and celibate... but I guess they are human too, and anyway, at least they have good taste, Jessica Alba is fucking hot. 

Day 12: Xiahe -> LanZhou

The bus for LanZhou left at 630 in the morning, so I woke up at 6 and tried to get out of the hostel but, much to my chagrin, that I was locked inside.    No amount of banging seemed to wake the owner up so I stared thinking of alternate ideas for escape MacGyver style.  After a good deal of running around on rooftops looking for a way down I found that the basement door was just fastened with a chain that I could easily undo. FREEDOM.  I made the bus with only two minutes to spare.    

All of the things that you can't do in XiaHe: Play trumpet or light cars on fire - I guess you can't go Matt

Kashgar Sunday Market to LanZhou Days 6-8

Day 6: Kashgar Sunday Market / get food poisoning

Day 7: Train to Turpan / feel like shit

Day 8: Train to Lanzhou / feel like shit

Woke up on sunday and was very excited to go to the livestock market, since that was what got me interested in Kashgar in the first place - the market was supposed to be one of the largest in the world. Unfortunately I also felt vaguely like shit because whatever I had eaten in Karakul was beginning to take its toll on my digestive system. I dragged myself to the market anyway, and I'm glad I did because the animal market was cool, although I don't know if I would say it was any better than a state fair or something, but there were an abundance of interesting Uigher faces so in that respect it was much cooler than a bunch of fat middle americans.

old Uigher man at the enterance

Entrance to the livestock market; the animals were mostly cows and sheep with a smattering of camels, donkeys and horses.

Old man selling Yak Nui Nai and bagels

This is how we unload sheep from carts.. poor sheep..

spray painting the sheep so that owners can tell whose are whose

After spending some time at the Livestock Market I went to to the "sunday market", with my health condition rapidly deteriorating, although I was still in denial and thought I was just tired. I was only there for about thirty minutes before it became apparent I had a fever and was actually sick. I left but was actually ok with my truncated visit because the market did not live up to my expectations in any way at all - it just seemed like any tourist market in a chinese city, which is the reaction everyone else I talked to had. It definitely did not hold up to the Grand Bazar, and Olie, the british kid who was in my room, said that all of the markets he went to in the Stans were much cooler. As I was crossing the road to hail a cab a little old lady latched onto my arm and used me as a shield against the oncoming traffic which was kind of funny.

I went back to the hotel and spent the next 24 hours extremely uncomfortable because I had given my last painkillers to the sick girl at Karakul so I had nothing to break my fever. Then I got on the train the next day and spent another 24 hours with a horrible fever bumping along from Kashgar to Turpan. My saving grace on the train was a girl who spoke perfect english and who got me hot water from the connecting car and fed me bread when I could eat. She worked at the university in Urumqi teaching english and we had a great discussion about the election (she was for Obama), government participation in China (it does not exist but may get better as people become more educated), and reactions to lesbianism in China: (completely fine in the younger generation, frowned upon by old people).

I had to wait 5 hours in Turpan for the next train to come through and accidentally managed to sit in the middle of a cluster of old Han chinese women, who were exactly like monkeys. They were grabbing things, chattering at the top of their lungs, spewing sunflower seeds from their mouths when they talked, and constantly lifting up their shirts to scratch their armpits - no joke. All of these traits are cumulatively what I hate in chinese people.

When I first got to China none of this bothered me...but the excessive pushing, shouting, talking with mouths full etc. kind of wears on you after a while - if I were to compare the average middle lower class chinese people to an animal it would definitely be to monkeys. This sounds incredibly harsh and sorry to all my chinese, chinese/american friends (none of you belong to the group of chinese people I am talking about anyway), but if you live here for a few months you will see what I mean about the vast majority being monkeys. I digress.

got on another 24 hour train to Lanzhou, and when I got off of that train I was starting to feel a lot better... but it was still 3 days of fever and not eating...brutal... I never want to get food poisoning again... especially since the whole time I was envisioning myself ending up in a shitty Xinjiang hospital from dehydration / whatever else you get from food poisoning.

It snowed on the train!!
Picture of the train to Lanzhou, hard sleeper. The train was so much nicer than the train to and from Kashgar... they actually announced things in english on this one!!