This was the monastery set up by Tsongkapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat Sect in Buddhism. The story goes that the original sect - the Red Hats - were not really living up to the Buddhist ideal in Tsongkapa's eyes, taking drugs, women and generally getting up to no good. The Yellow Hats I guess are the " fundamental branch" (bingo - there goes my blog access in the TAR...). Anyway, so this place was his monastery. To be honest with you all, I did not enjoy it as much as the Labrang monastery in Xiahe as it was very busy - I know I am a tourist after all, but there is only so much pushing and shoving you can do to see a Buddha! After that we came back to!
Xining and checked out the local Mosque - I mentioned earlier the whole region has numerous minorities, and this mosque was on the big side. There was a picture from the last Ramadam - around 130,000 people out the front: chaos it looked like!
And then, after a trip to the local supermarket for provisions (and an impromptu game of snooker on the street - I kid you not, there is a photo of me nearly potting something) we hit the train station for the train to Tibet. Well, where do you start: it was superb - everything and more that I expected it to be! I was like a little kid on the platform when the train came, totally carried away! Once on the train, I got stuck into international diplomacy with the Chinese in our carriage, having an extensive conversation about where they were from and where they were going - stupid question - until I realised it was the extent of my Chinese! Silence ensued... :)
So, what do you do on a train for 26 hours.... you find the restaurant bar, stupid! I had bought provisions, but let's face it - hard bread and crappy industrial cheese was going to be no match for the delights on offer in the restaurant car.
And so it was, I was ensconced there with our tour leader and some members of the tour for the better part of the evening, drinking and sampling the delights of Chinese rail food fare. I can tell you, it was not like BR fare (English railways, my foreign readers - well until privatisation, but that's another story...). We had a great set of waiters, one of them was called - wait for it - Pigeon!
We all managed, I don't know how, not to laugh when he told us, but Pigeon was the top man on the restaurant car - going to the extent of holding table reservations for us and making the Chinese and Japanese wait! Class. We tipped well for this, even though he initially refused. Seemingly, he got the habit this lunchtime as he took 150 for a 100 bill and disappeared! Good lad.
So, what else. Well the views, the views of course. It was fantastic, you are on a plateau with mountains either side. We reached the highest point - the Tulanga (need to check again) pass at around 10am this morning: 5072m to be exact. I was chatting to a Hong Kong family as I recharged my mobile at the time... such trivial things at times like those.
A pleasant afternoon was spent in the restaurant car, having the same we had the night before, drinking beer and playing cards. And then we arrived.
Lhasa. We are staying right next to the Jokhang Temple, but the hotel is a bit dodgy - the room I am sharing smells like there is either a mouldy sock under one of the beds or something has died 5 times over :) Lovely. But hotels ain't what I came for, let's face it.
Having said that Lhasa seems to excel on the smell front, lots of yak butter and infrequent shower users - be they "extreme" tourist trekkers or monks - take your pick!! It's very touristy - lots of tacky shops all around the temples - and I committed major faux-pas walking anti-clockwise around the temple looking for the bank - lots of bad karma for me then :)
Ok, so now it is late and all the other sensible people on tour are in bed, so I should go too. Three days in Lhasa now, before returning to Beijing on Saturday and picking up the second part of my travels, the scary bit I have to organise by myself ;) And already some changes, of which more later.
Bye for now
Rob
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