Langmusi

Cho dey mo!

Stopping for our ritual pee breaks became a sacrifice, one cause our bladders felt like bursting close to the hour and secondly, the air grew so cold that we squirted tears too when exposing our butts! 3 or so hours into the drive and the snow started pelting.

After 5 weary hours we arrived to yet another tiny and shanty town, called Langmusi. Our hostel was very basic; intermittent hot showers, beds as hard as cardboard but at least we had a western toilet :) This time the view from the window was that of snowy mountains.

We dined at the local Snowland Restaurant, yet another Chinese style banquet. Catherine and I were heading to bed when Gemma and Kris knocked on our door and persuaded us to go to the 'cabaret' across the road. Off we went to the 'ninma' as it is known. Local Tibetans display their singing and dancing talents. We were welcomed whole-heartedly as prob the last, if any of the Western visitors to enjoy such a show. The owner sold us some beer and tea then handed us while katas to adorn the singer on stage, well, if we liked her, that is. Of course we all did.
A young handsome Tibetan danced a cowboyish song prob a traditional nomadic dance. After that all performers and some members from the audience gathered on stage to dance in a circle. The owner encouraged us to join to. We girls did and had fun trying to follow the others' moves while Kris took photos :)

Next morning....
We had a planned horse-trek across the Tibetan Grasslands. However, given the snow the previous evening and the cold we were risking it. Next morning the organiser rented some proper nomad coats for us. So they draped us in these massive fury, long-sleeved coats and hiked us up our horses. Off we went ..... to our luck the gray snowy weather turned into bright warm sunshine :)

It was a great experience. Firstly, I had never been horse-riding before, well once, but my horse was led. It was scary and fun all the way through especially when our 3 leaders whipped our horses and yelled 'hocha! hocha!' for speed up the pace. I felt I was about to slip off the saddle at any time. However, when we trotted along I relished the wonderful scenery; infront of us last the now brown coloured grasslands, spotted with yuk and sheep and the odd black yuk-skinned tent here and there. On our right, a splendid array of snow-capped mountains. I had never seen so many mountains next to each other. They were amazing.

We finally stopped at one of the tents where our lunch was being cooked by a nomad woman. But since she was running late we were off for another ride this time ending up in a field full of yuk and sheep. Back at the tent we gulf ed on a delicious meal of shredded cabbage and potatoes on top of boiled rice. Well, we could have eaten anything at that stage we were so hungry. We rode back to the tiny town just as dark black clouds gathered on our left. We finished off with a tea on the roof terrace of our hostel facing a magnificent view of the mountains.

Next morning...
Kalsang took us to the two monasteries of the town and to a sacred cave, with a sacred tiger statue and a sacred stream just outside of it. Once inside he showed us the sacred rocks against which the locals rub various parts of their bodies to cure various ailments!! The Sertri Gompa and the Kirti Gompa (monasteries) were lovely; equally adorned with colourful katas, mandaras paintings and chapels with various Buddha statues. And one thing perpetual about these monasteries is the strong scent of yuk butter used as wax to light candles.

Well, it's yuk yuk here and yuk yuk everywhere by now. It not only stuck in our nostrils but it also became part of us too!! :)

lots of yuk to all !!!!
Nicky
X X XXX

Xiahe & the Labrang Monastery

Cho dey mo!

Our sleeper train took us to Lanzhou. We stumbled off the train with our bags and all and clambered into a min bus. An 5hour journey awaited us. We tried to get some sleep in-between the hourly loo breaks. The loos or rather squats became worse at every stage, worse ever was the one one just at the 'gate' which marks the edge of the Tibetan plateau. But who cared we had made it ;) We were so excited we ended up taking photos of that disgusting but welcoming squat!!!!

We finally got to Xiahe. At 2900m above sea level, this tiny town tucked away just outside of Tibet. The were exhilarated and at really feeling 'hi' when we got at our welcoming guest-hotel. It was the first time we saw and met real Tibetans dressed up in their traditional costumes. The main street was busy with market stalls, shops, bikes, and pony carts passing by. If it weren't for the hotel stuff we would have never managed to carry our own bags up the flights of stairs to our rooms. We were breathless by the 3rd floor just by carrying ourselves!!! But we were in heaven or space or something of the sort as that's how it felt.

Sharon (our team leader) took us for lunch to a local restaurant just round the corner. There we tasted Tibetan bread (yummy), I dared the local porridge or tsampa which is wheat barley with yuk's butter, cheese and lots of sugar (yuck!) and yak meat dumplings or momos (mmm..so so. We also got to meet Kalsang, our local guide for the next few days; a hyper-energetic comical 32 year old daddy who speaks good English and is very patriotic, of course, like the rest of the comrades.

We were exhausted. Back at the hotel, Catherine, my room-mate and I tried to rest but we were too excited. We tool pictures of the mountains outside our hotel window, the colourful decorated internal yard and the the ceiling of our room !!!

Later in the afternoon we joined the others and Kalsang took us to the famous Labrang Monastery. Or well, that evening he made us do the kora, which is a 2hr walk around the Monastery turning the large prayer wheels as we went along. Now that felt like proper Tibetan life! I was as happy as a kid, joyfully spinning those wheels. As we walked the back of the monastery we also got to see Gelupka (yellow hat) monks gather for their prayers in the open yard. It was great - just like the movies :) The evening air grew colder so we sped our heavy pace back to the hotel and had dinner on the top floor of a new restaurant - another typical Chinese banquet (as Sharon likes to call it). I also got to taste the bo boa cha (or 8 treasures tea) which I didn't quite give a thumbs up despite the cheers!!!

Next morning...
The highly-spirited Kalsang quickly got us to our feet and let the way to the Monastery again. A monk toured us around the various sections of the huge Monastery; from the Medicine College (which essentially looks like at part of the Monastery) to the multi-coloured yuk-butter sculptures of the deities museum to another old Buddhism relics museum to the actual worship and monks' teaching halls. The latter are adorned with colourful frescos, gold-coloured Buddha statues and photos of past lamas on either side, hanging tie-shaped katas, storey-high selves with the old Sanskrit Buddhist documents and and rows of red cushions for the monks to pray, study and meditate on. As part of our responsible tourism we did not take any pictures inside. The monk then led us to the Monastery's most important area - the souvenir shop!!! After that he disappeared leaving us at the door of the largest courtyard which was also the entrance to the 'church' as you may term it, the place where the locals where allowed in to pray and prostate themselves as well as give offerings of white katas.

What impressed me most was a very old woman who could barely walk with her stick and a monk who arm-held her at the other end. She limped slowly towards the entrance mumbling soundless prayers. At times dropping her stick in an attempt to perform the worship act. The consists of folding 2 hands at the head, then at the mouth, then at the chest and lastly lie flat, face down on the ground. Tibetans repeat this act for 108 times, in an attempt to redeem themselves or rather their bodies from earthly temptations. Sharon who tried to help the old woman reach her destination, and I were pretty impressed by the devotion and adoration of this tiny hunched earthly being. Sharon even told me that such people come from afar just like the destination of a long pilgrimage.

It felt surreal being at such altitude, our heads spun with the thin air and all that was new our Westerners' eyes.

Having the afternoon to ourselves, Catherine and I climbed a short but steep hill to get a best shot of the Monastery. Happy as ever, we bought a few snacks and fruit for our next long drive. We finally joined the others and started our next 5hour drive to Langmusi.

all for now folks.......
nicky
X X X X

Xian

Ni Hao!

At 4.20pm we headed to Beijing's West Railway Station. We managed to squeeze ourselves into the narrow cabin train with our backpacks and all. The sleepers' compartment was split into sections of 6 bunk beds each, 3 on either side. There were no doors nor divisions so the tiny compartments led to a narrow corridor whereby people could get through to the toilets and have a smoke! We chatted, drank and nibbled till about 10.30, all excited as it was a first for most of us. Then the lights went out and we huddled onto our hard bunk beds in our clothes and tucked into the duvets provided. It wasn't an easy sleep (no wonder they're called hard-sleepers!!), obviously with the train stopping at various stations on the way too. But it was ok better than I might have ever expected. We also learnt to master pee- squatting on a moving train !! :)

We stumbled off our train at about 7.30am in Xian which is in the Shaanxi Province. Xian, is a modern city's and apart from the big shopping malls and Starbucks etc ...(!!) it has lots of historic attractions the main one however, being the Terracotta Warriors. We dropped our stuff at our nice hotel and after a quick tour and a dumplings breakfast in a tiny outlet in the backstreets of the city, we were picked up for our visit to the Terracotta Warriors. We good not stop feasting our eyes at the army that spread across 3 huge warhouses. Each of them are said to have a different faces and carry the name of the person who sculptured them. It truly is a marvel and a nation's historic gem. I couldn't believe I was standing infront of the very thing! That evening we had a chinese banquet dinner and also got to taste (well, I did, some others oozed it down!) of bo cha - an strong alcoholic drink which is drank like a tea ie warm, yuck!!! Anyways, after that and on our way to a 'pussy cat dolls' bar, we came across an open parade. People were dancing to the beat of huge drums waving multi-coloured umbrellas and fans. Our leader challenged us we'd join in...and off we went. A man handed me over his glittery umbrella and I kind of became a leader of the a trail of dancers. Oh well, not knowing what else to do I tried to follow others. Gosh we laughed so much. At first we got the nasty looks from the locals who glared at our intrusion and moreover lack of the dance knowledge and style. But then ended up joyfully prancing about with us and even taking photos of us :)

Next morning....
If it weren't for our hotel room's phone ringing at 7.30am I would have overslept. It was Gemma asking whether we would be interested in joining her and Kris to go to the South Gate park to watch people doing Tai Chi. Of course, I wanted to so I joined them within the next 10 mins. The city was misty from the morning fog or rather smog. The minute we got to the park, there was a group of elderly people dancing and beating on their little drums tied to their sides. As we strolled through the massive park we met loads of others here and there, most of them practicing Tai Chi; some individually others with their instructors. The latter demonstrated high skill especially with the swords. Of course, I was in awe. Their simple graceful gestures seemed to be so easy to follow....mmm after a few years of training, at least! At one point we came across an elderly man proudly playing his Chinese violin, which is made of two stings and played vertically instead of horizontally and called an erhu.



Further on we came across 3 pairs of badminton players and they asked us to play in turns with them, which was great. A woman and a few others were balancing a what looked like a big yo-yo. Taking note of my curious face she offered me to try it. I managed to balance it only once out of many but it was a good laugh for my spectators, who became quite a crowd by the end of my performance!!! I also got to do some leg stretching with some others too :) I must say they are very friendly people and even though we couldn't speak a common language we still enjoyed our walk in the park. Last but not least, another elderly man (well, at that hour you'd expect the younger generation to be at school or at work anyway!) was practising some Chinese calligraphy on the floor using which looked like a huge colour paintbrush the size of a broom. Pretty impressive.

Out of the park, our stomachs grumbled so we hunted for some breakfast and feasted on some kind of huge Chinese cookies; round filo pastries filled with dates and walnuts, mmm ...quite nice ;)

I then spent the next hours going through the open market in the Muslim area, which is situated towards the north of the beautiful drum tower. Having bought some souvenirs I went to the post office and posted the lot home, cross fingers the pack gets to Malta or UK!! Having picked my fresh laundry I decided to visit the mosque. Having gone through yet another narrow street market (which reminded me of Turkey) I finally found the way to the mosque, well, not quite it was a Chinese pagoda style building where muslims practice their religion apart from opening it up as a showcase for tourists, of course. Right I was ready for a foot massage at the blind's parlour. Not before bumping into Jory & Erin who were in the never-ending queue for permusan cakes. Apparently, this is a delicacy in this area so greedy and curious as we were we queued for an hour or so. The red coloured 'cakes' (made out of a certain type of tomatoe) with an very sweet filling of walnut and figs was well, nice but not to die for. I just nicknamed them Chinese doughnuts, cause so they were similarly made and fried. My foot massage was something I've had never done; one whole hour of massage both feet ....aaaaahhhhss and uuuuuhhhhhsss!!!!! but was so relaxing that I just flew back to the hotel to prepare for the next sleeper train journey.

There is no such thing as day of the week or dates when you're travelling, there's only the day that lies ahead of you; the objective or scope of that day which takes you to another step within the journey :)

ta for now, look out for more..... Nicky X X X X