School was busy by the end of April with marking and writing student report card comments. Then we were off to our one week China's May holiday.
Before the holidays, it took me and Matthew a while to pick our destination. Places that I have considered were:
1. Qinghai Lake - Qinghai
2. Meili Xue Shan - Yunnan
3. Lugu Lake - Yunnan
4. Siguniang Shan "Four Girls Mountain" - Sichuan
All those places are famous for their beautiful scenery. We both enjoy outdoors and travel to see different parts of China. There aren't any historical sites or museums - but the locals, the food, and the scenery are what we look for in our trip.
With some hard consideration, we have decided to explore Qinghai - part of the Tibetan Plateau, known as the Rooftop of the World, situated right next to Tibet and North of Chongqing. With the travel restriction of Tibet, Qinghai makes it our best choice to experience some Tibetan culture.
As diligent planner, I usually plan out my trips by the day. However, there are very limited information on Qinghai. Using available resources online and old edition of LP, I have only looked up information on this 4-days bike trip around Qinghai Lake and some information on the capital, Xining as to where to take long distance bus to other towns.
Before departure, we have also checked the weather forecast of the week. It didn't look too promising. So I was a bit worry as if the weather wasn't any good, then the trip would not be as fun. Once we got to Xining, right after we got off the plane, the first thought I have had was that it reminded me a lot of my last May holiday trip along Silk Road with my family. The airport is small but quite new and it is not packed with people. We are welcomed by blue sky, sunshine, big and barren mountains all around us. It is surreal to be out of the ugly city and being in the rugged beauty of China. We then had lunch at a street Muslim noodle restaurant. The people were nice to us helping us to get our orders and the noodle we had was better than the ones that I had close by Lanzhou train station.
After we had lunch, I convinced Matthew to do the 4-days bike trip around Qinghai Lake. Then we hit the bus station and went to stay at the town, called Xihai Zhen to get rental bikes.
There are few places to rent bikes.
Here's one of them http://www.qhhb.gov.cn:88/
We rented ours at 221 骑吧
It was a long traveling day when we got to the town around 4-5ish (we were up since 7 am that morning). It took Matthew a while to pick his bike as he is not of "human" size in China. The biggest bike they have is of 19 in. and he had to settle with that. After we picked our bikes, then we went wondering around just as usual. Not for about 10 minutes, we got surrounded by local police (really thanks to Matthew's good look). They told us that we got to the town without a valid travel permit and so we have to stay at a specified hotel for the night and leave right away the next morning. I didn't know that the town is so sensitive to foreign visitors. The police didn't really give us a good explanation but mentioned a bit that it's because it used to be a military base for the nuclear bomb testing ground. So we had a house arrest on our first night in Qinghai with a slight headache due to the high altitude.
The circuit around the lake is about 360 km. Every July, there's a big cycling race. Qinghai in July is said to be the most beautiful season to visit with blue sky, aqua blue Qinghai Lake, and with yellow mustard flowers everywhere. But we can only be there for the May holiday and luckily we have had pretty good weather to see the rugged side of Qinghai Lake. With crispy cool air, blue sky, songbirds, countless herds of yak and lamb, and nomads, endless vast lands, we rode on steady for 3 days averaging 90 km per day. On Day 2, we even rode by snow covered land. I felt I was in another world. On the last day, we were really beaten down by strong, forceful headwind that it was difficult to push on - we got a ride for about 30 km. Throughout the trip, we stayed at small villages around the lake and had tons of noodle as Muslim restaurants are very popular there. By the end of the bike trip, we were both glad that we did it and we were also glad to be able to take hot shower and be back in civilization.
After the 4-days bike trip, I was pretty tired - we decided to just head to small towns around and take it easy for the remaining vacation. Originally we want to go to the town, called Maqin, where Mount Amne Machin, one of the sacred mountain is located. But all long distance bus tickets were sold out. So we just decided to head to towns closer to Xining. We then went to Tongren where is famed for Tibetan religious art painters. After Tongren, we stopped by another town called, Jianca before headed back to Xining. The bus rides to these towns are wonderful as we passed by some of the most spectacular scenery. For our last day in Xining, we just enjoyed ourselves with great local cuisine of BBQ lamb on the stick and Muslim noodle and yogurt.
This turns our to be a long post for a "short" summary of my trip.
I hope to write about the trip more in detain in the near future for anyone who is interested in visiting Qinghai.
Here are some pictures of Qinghai:
Here's the route of our trip:
| Chongqing - Xining - Qinghai Lake - Xining - Tongren -Jianca - Xining - Chongqing |
