Monestary Hike

This morning, we woke and walked to an internet cafe to publish my blog.  The cafe had excellent cinnamon rolls which tasted good compered to all of our recent Chinese food.  I am getting to the point where I feel sick after every bowl of Chinese soup!  On our route form the cafe to the hotel, we saw Buddhists, holding prayer beads and chanting, walking around a temple in the center of the old town of Lhasa.  We watched extremely serious Buddhists repeatedly throw themselves to the ground on their bellies, faces and hands in order to get really good juju.  Next to these people walking the Khora, there were ubiquitous Tibetan shops selling all kinds of goods.  In every corner, policemen and soldiers in riot gear with big machine guns guarded with stern expressions. 

Back at the hotel, we met the rest of the kayak crew for lunch. After lunch, we decided to go for a hike with one of the boaters named Catherine.  We took a taxi to an old monastery at the base of a big, steep, cliffy mountain. 

 

We started our hike behind this monastery, on a long stairway up past beautiful paintings of Buddhas and Tibetan script.



Our goal was to hike up to another old monastery built high up on the cliffs.




We climbed our way up through prayer flags and bushes and small cliffs. 



The hike was long and hard with barely any trail. When we finally arrived, tired and sweaty, we found this place deserted.  It looked like a mixture between a monastery and somebody's house. 

 

The only life we found was a lonely dog and thorny bushes.  We explored the buildings for a while, then found a well developed trail continuing from the monastery around the mountain.




It was late in the afternoon, but we decided to follow the trail rather than to go back down the cliff.  The trail took us to an old man’s house where we were invited in for tea.  He had a beautiful house with flowers and his own prayer room.  In the prayer room, there were many golden Buddha's, stands containing burning candles, and paintings of Buddhist figures.  The old man served tasty tea and hot water. 



Soon we had to be on our way.  We walked through one more monastery on the way down the mountain. 



At the end of our hike we caught a bus to the same restaurant we went to last night.  We had a lovely dinner and I have returned home for the night.

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The Long Trian Ride

The last day and a half was spent on a long train ride from Xining to Lhasa.  The train ride was super fun.  We spent our time playing cards, playing guitar, looking out the window, eating, and watching movies, not to mention sleeping.  I always love sleeping on trains.  We are rocked to sleep by the train car moving along the tracks.  The food on the train was nasty.  Our first meal, we tried pointing at random items on the menu, written only in Chinese, and got some sort of tripe.  Tripe is stomach or intestinal tissue of an animal.  It was very hard to eat and we couldn’t finish it.  The second meal, we pointed to someone else’s food that looked reasonably O.K.  This was some sort of meat and lima beans.  The meat was inedible, but the lima beans were good!

Dining Car Scene

Our Compartment

The Outskirts of Lhasa

The Outskirts of Lhasa

We arrived In Lhasa this afternoon and have met some of our kayaking group for the next week.  I am super tired from the day of travel and am excited to explore more of Lhasa!  There is no internet in the hotel, so we will be publishing in the morning from an internet cafe.  Also, over the next ten days we will be camping and boating so there may be no blog.

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic! 

Goodbye Xining

I am the Egg Man!!

This morning we happily woke up before 9:30 and I was allowed to eat breakfast.  We ate at the hotel’s breakfast buffet and I had three pancakes, french fries, and bacon.  I thought the breakfast was exceptional.

When breakfast was over, I was assigned a math test.  I gave it my best and earned a score of ninety three percent.  I did not have to retake the test, so we journeyed out of the hotel to mail a couple of packages.  This took a while, given that China is somewhat disorganized. (I humbly apologize to the Chinese government official drinking his coffee and reading this blog right now.)  The first post office we tried only mailed through out China.  A women at the first post office lead us to a second post office that mailed world wide.  They spoke almost no English and we speak no Chinese. This made it hard explaining where in the world we wanted the packages to go.  After the long session of communication with a translator on a cell phone and lots of hand signals, we succeeded  in mailing three packages.  We are dubious that the packages will reach their destination.

The Eating Hall

Having completed our one task for the day, we were all hungry and had earned our meal.  We rediscovered the underground local eating area we had found yesterday, a long corridor of small restaurants with tables filling the central walk way.  In the restaurant booths we saw chicken feet, unknown meat on skewers, soups, fried cakes, and giant prawns. We ate at one spot that looked reasonably decent where the salesman was friendly and welcoming.  We ate some sort of soup filled with small whole eggs, crunchy brown noodles, seaweed, and squares of a jelly-like substance.  We also tried some spicy, fried potatoes that were delicious and a hot meat filled bread.  We decided to stay away from the chicken feet!  For dessert, we shared a fruity yogurt drink.  We all left feeling refreshed and feeling the best we had in ages. 

Super Mom eating ?????

On the way home, we stopped by the grocery store to get things for our movie tonight.  We bought candy, wine and pop and headed home to get an early start on my blog.  Tomorrow, we will leave Xining and take an overnight train to Lhasa.  This train will take us up high into the mountains where we will begin a kayaking adventure.  There will probably be no blog tomorrow evening.

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!                

We Love to Eat!

This morning, I slept in only to miss the hotel’s breakfast.  To make it worse, I gave my parents lip so they made me skip any breakfast we would have had outside of the hotel.  My parents, however, did errands the whole morning and skipped breakfast themselves, which made the punishment easier on me.  While Mom and Dad did their errands, I was assigned math work back at the hotel.

Soon, it was already time for lunch.  We ate some lunch on the street, and then found a cake and pastry shop where we stuffed our faces.  We were still hungry, so we journeyed off to the market where we ate heavenly meat pastries last night.  They were just as good today as they were yesterday!



On the way out of the market, we discovered a Tibetan shopping district, where we all bought sets of Buddhist prayer beads.  The shopping area was filled with Tibetan nicknacks sold by Chinese people.  It was kept relatively clean compared to what we saw in Surmang.  I felt hot, tired, and had a bad headache, which made the shopping less enjoyable for me, but I really like my new set of Tibetan prayer beads. 

Our route back to the hotel was interrupted by an accidental discovery of old people dancing.  Under a big tented roof in a plaza, musicians sat in a large circle, in the center of which, sang and conducted a Chinese lady.  The musicians were playing traditional Chinese banjo-like instruments.  Around the circle of musicians, pranced legions of old ladies and men, with colorful fans and happy faces.  Around this outer circle, people watched and some joined in.  My parents tortured me by jumping in with all the old dancers.  They somehow got ahold of fans and exaggerated all the movements with ecstatic smiles.  The dancers enjoyed their efforts and participation.  I felt silly to have such weird parents.  








At our arrival back to the hotel, the evil thought of math popped into my head.  I worked on math for the rest of the afternoon, until dinner.  When we entered our room after dinner we saw the same thing as last night.  The lights were on, the water was boiling for tea, and the towel was between our beds.  This time, on the towel were two pairs of slippers, and in the light switch socket (where there should be a key card) there was a piece of card board to keep the light on.  We think house keeping did this as a kind gesture for their guests.  We are glad to have the mystery solved at last!  

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Xining and the Scare

This morning, we woke up bright and early with plans of extending our Chinese visa.  Our trip in Tibet will keep us in China for two and one half months.  We currently have only a two month visa.  A man named Mr. Deng, who attended the Surmang Health Festival, agreed to help us today.  We drove down to a visa office near our hotel.  The official behind the counter said it was too early to get our visa extended.  This was, however, our last opportunity to go to a visa office.  We are still contemplating what to do about our lack of a long enough visa. 

We then shopped for some needed supplies and explored some more of Xining.  Soon Mr. Deng had to leave, and we headed back to the hotel.  We hung out for many hours in, what was for me, mostly complete boredom.  We soon headed back to the city for some food and fun. We achieved both in our afternoon outing.  We wandered to a small market filled with many Chinese Muslims.  One Muslim man was chopping up some sort of raw animal liver or heart.  We saw pieces of flesh cooked on sticks, hole in the wall restaurants, fruit and vegetable stands, fresh pastries filled with meat and Chinese nick nacks.  For dinner, we had noodle soup, meat pastries, and a meat sandwich all for about four dollars total.  On our walk home, we saw a big grocery store.  Inside, was the heavenly ice cream we had all been desiring.  We brought a pint of green tea ice-cream back home and on our return we had a little scare.  The lights of the hotel room only work when the door lock card is in the light switch of the room.  If the lights are on when you take the card out, five minutes later the lights will turn off.  When we entered our room tonight,  the lights were on, but no card....  Also, water was boiling in our tea pot and a towel was placed between the two beds on the floor.  To this moment, we have not yet figured out the mystery.

Xining

Our Hotel

Muslim Market

One of Our Three Small Meals

Meat Pastries In The Making

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!