Langmusi: Tibetan Amdo on the border of Gansu and Sichuan

There's a direct bus from Xiahe to Langmusi, but it leaves early in the morning, and often sells out; if you miss it, you have to connect in Hezuo, which is midway between the two. The bus takes about four hours, or slightly longer with stops. You can find a nice list of your bus options to Langmusi here.

Helit and I met a Spanish schoolteacher on the bus, and we ended up sticking together for the bus ride and our time in Langmusi. Other than us, almost all the rest of the passengers were excitable Chinese tourists. We stopped a couple of times on the way: once by a lake, where all the Chinese jumped out and rapidly snapped pictures and ran for the bathroom; and once on a plain near some Tibetan herders who were waiting for the bus and sold the Chinese tourists short horse rides.

A yak at the second stop.

I took pictures while the Chinese took short horse rides. I'm sure the bus driver got kickbacks from the herders cum horse-wranglers.

The sheep have horns. Unlike the sheep I would see in Central Asia, these are not fat-tail sheep.

Unlike the trip from Langmusi to Xiahe, it's not really that noticeable that you're going uphill, but the elevation changes from the 2,900 meters in Xiahe to about 3,300 meters in Langmusi.

We arrived around noon, and then searched for somewhere to stay. The Chinese construction boom had reached Langmusi, with both roadworks and hotel construction was in full swing, and tourism seemed to be booming. A symptom of this was that beds were in short supply, and it took a while to find a place to stay. We found a place in the Muslim quarter, and run by Tibetans. It had a nice front patio perched over the stream, and although the rooms were nice the bathroom facilities were even worse than the Overseas Tibetan Hotel: they positively reeked of ammonia. Thankfully, they were so ill-lit that you couldn't fully grasp how dirty they were.

I saw a couple of other hostel bathrooms in Langmusi, and they were no nicer, with with squat toilets that visibly flushed into ditches, and things like that. The Chinese very much take these sorts of setups in stride, which is hardly surprising given that even in major cities you can find bus-station toilets that are just tiled trenches a couple of feet deep, and everyone just lines up over them and squats, with "flushing" happening when water is periodically run down the ditch to wash the shit away. Bathrooms are dirty places where dirty things happen, and that's an accepted fact of life.

Anyway, after finding a place to stay, we set out on a hike to the Red Rock Mountain just west of town, which you pass on your way into town. We had seen some maps made by a tour outfit, and it looked like it would be fairly straightforward to circle around to the far side of the mountain and ascend it from there. Unfortunately, the map was wildly misleading and the road that was supposed to be the beginning of the path quickly deteriorated into an empty, unmarked field with no discernible path to the top, but lots of thick bushes. Stubborn as I am, I wasn't going to give up, so I pushed onwards up ever steeper and more hostile slopes while the girls turned back. I ended up having to scramble and crawl my way up through a steep section to summit one part of the mountain, only to have to retreat and re-ascend to get to the main mountaintop, as I was on a secondary peak.

The view from midway up the mountain, before things got tough.

If this is the view you get when you're climbing Red Rock Mountain, you're doing it wrong. I had just scrambled up and through a thicket of trees like you see on the left and bottom of the screen.

It wasn't that difficult, as Tibetans obviously make it here with some frequency.

The view of the town from the secondary summit.

Lanzhou & Xiahe: paranoia as you leave China proper

Lanzhou: welcome to the west

I had no idea where I would go from Lanzhou: on the one hand, I thought I might want to take a trip up the Yellow River to the Buddhas and caves of Bingling Si, and/or make the sidetrip up to the town of Xiahe and the Tibetan Labrang monastery there. I thought I would figure it out in Lanzhou.

I arrived at the train station in the morning, and headed to the the Lanzhou Huar (Flower) Hostel. They weren't in any guidebooks, but I had picked up a pamphlet in Shanghai (I think), and found instructions to them. It took about an hour to get there by bus because the directions weren't the greatest, and when I arrived I was curtly told they don't accept foreigners. This was really strange, especially since they had the English-language pamphlets on their reception desk! They said it was because of government regulations, and they weren't very helpful about telling me if there were any other cheap places in Lanzhou. I asked if I could use their bathroom, and they said it would cost 10 yuan to do so! Not very impressive (especially since it seems they had lacked the necessary permit to accept foreigners since at least 2011, yet were advertising themselves to foreigners during this time); I really don't understand the inability of people in hospitality industries to be helpful when they have to turn people away.

I backtracked to the station, and looked for the cheap hotels listed in LP. No luck, as they were either closed or not accepting foreigners. I figured that since I wouldn't be able to stay in Lanzhou that Binling Si was out, and that I would head to Xiahe. Unfortunately, the bus station listed in LP had been torn down. Well, at least the LP was still right about where the train station was.

I then tried to go to an internet cafe and see if I could figure out where to catch the bus to Xiahe and how to get there. Except the government requires you to swipe your RFID-chipped ID card in order to get online, effectively shutting out foreigners from using the internet. Thankfully, the owner over-ruled the attendant and swiped me in with her own ID card, letting me go online.

I managed to find the location of the new Bus Station as well as the South Bus Station, and determined that there should be buses running to Xiahe into the afternoon. I went the the new Bus Station (a couple of blocks east on the road in front of the station), only to find that the buses to Xiahe only run from the South Bus Station. I hopped a city bus to the vicinity of the South Bus Station, then got off and wandered around until I eventually found it, and got a ticket to Xiahe in the early afternoon—about 7 hours after arriving in Lanzhou.

Crossing the train tracks on my way to Lanzhou's South Bus Station (which is actually well west of the main train station, and near the Lamnzhou West Train Station).

Although Lanzhou is already at an elevation of 1500 meters, the road steadily climbs to Xiahe, which is at 2900 meters. The road starts out running through dusty, dry mountains, completely devoid of vegetation except for small fields and trees planted by farmers. Then the road begins to climb in earnest, and the scenery turns decidedly green as it does. Lush fields and trees become the rule in the valleys between the increasingly-high mountains, but the biggest surprise being the abundance of new and impressive mosques that seem to pop up every few kilometers.

As we push higher and higher, the valleys narrow but the scenery remains quite green if not as lush. We stop seeing mosques, and before we know it we're pulling into Xiahe. The bus station is in the Chinese section of town, and the Tibetan quarter doesn't begin until a little further up the valley, so the introduction to the town is familiar. The closer you get to Labrang, the more Tibetan the town becomes.

As I arrived late—at around 5:00—all of the hostels were full. The Redrock Hostel said I could sleep on the floor (albeit at full price), so I ended up doing that. I thought their bathrooms—although appearing clean—were a little smelly, but it would turn out that by regional standards they were actually quite good.

Xiahe

Xiahe is home to the renowned Labrang monastery, which is said to be the third-largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world. It once housed 4,000 monks, and although that number has dropped to an official 1,500, some claim that there are actually about 2,000 monks studying there. Regardless, it's big and there are lots of monks, and even more pilgrims.

A kora is a circuit that the devout walk around religious site, and you typically do it in a clockwise direction. Labrang has two koras: an inner kora that simply surround the monastery itself, and is lines with prayer wheels; and an outer kora that runs along the mountain behind the monastery.

After leaving my stuff at the Redrock Hostel, I went out to explore Labrang for a couple of hours before it got dark.

Tibetans reading notices on a dusty street at the edge of Labrang. While the Chinese section of town is all paved streets and newer buildings, the Tibetan sections are (or were) in a much greater state of disrepair.

Along the main street from town to the assembly hall.