After a long sleeper train ride down from Xi'an to Lanzhou we met our bus, which was to take us to Xiahe. We stopped briefly for a Chinese buffet breakfast, which was good.. Pickled cabbage, rocket, beansprouts, celery, corn plus some of the hardest sponge cake in the world.. you could build houses out of it!

The bus ride was six hours with our driver for the next week or so, the to become legendary Mr Xu!...

We passed through loads of communities by they roadside.. lots of fruit sellers, and tons of constuction... I was suprised to see such a large number of muslin chinese, we had seen them in Xi'an where they have a moaque, but we were now chewing up miles and miles from anywhere.. and there were whole muslim towns. In contrast, our destination Xiha is almost totally buddist, being home to the Lambrang Monastery.

I took some great 'at work' pictures out of the window of the bus... one obvious thing was there is still a strong work group ethic, projects are undertaken by shear man power (and women) - I mean for construction, if there is a machine to do the job, or they could use 10 people... they will use the 10 people.. obviously it is China's greatest resource, but it is quite strange to see. Also they actually work on the roads - not stand around and discuss the hole. Small women are getting stuck in with Pick Axes, while the kids sweep up.. It is amazing. This efficiency is enabling china to build roads and hotels/offices at an amazing rate. For road projects, the workers live in tents by the side of the road, they stop for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.. and must manage 18hours work a day.

We stopped for lunch at a 'local' transport cafe. Which made us the center of local attention.. especially the girls! - more staring! Here were were cheerfully ripped of for the local specialty "Eight Treasures Tea" which consists of 'stuff' like Dandelion, sugar - and random things i haven't got a clue about.. I took a photo though... We also had two dishes to choose from - Lamb or Beef.. and it came with like a flat pasta noodle thing.. very ermm 'hearty' I think the spices were by design to disguise any specific flavours.. :-)

Mr Xu had disappeared to get a new windscreen for the bus.. the crack wasn't going to survive the bumpy roads ahead of us.. so after lunch Lucia taught 'Dapo' a crazy drinking game (minus the drink) along the lines of four of a kind plus table musical chairs.. You have four cards each, and pass one to your right, recieve one from your left, if you get 4 of a kind shout dapo.. everyone has to pick up a bottle top, but there is one short.. the one without - drinks.. {Ed. This game crops up again with the evil which is Beijiu!}

Soon we were back on the road, and a few hours of death defying driving my the Xu-meister - we arrive in Xihe...

This is a tiny town, with one long 'high street' which runs into the Labrang Monastery, we have now taken a nice leap into the rural. We stayed at the Overseas Tibetan Hotel, which was nice, very basic - hot water only for a couple of hours in the evening, plus basic rooms.. but I was actually suprised how nice it was.. Throughout this trip the standard of comfort has been considerably higher than I was expecting.

It had been a long bus ride, but we had a couple of hours before dinner, so we went around the prayer wheels which completely encircle the monastery grounds (see pics - ofoto.com). Pilgrims travel to spin these wheels, and walk around the whole circuit spinning prayers out to the sky.
The place is really colourful, we have driven up to the Tibetan Plateau about 3000m so for the first time the air is clear and blue - no polution... This is contrasted with the Deep Red robes the monks are wearing, and all the gold and bright temple colours... I love this place!

Dinner was at the hotel, and it was again really execellent local food. We then went up onto the roof, and sat drinking evil Great Wall wine washed down with cheap local beer - nice !...

It was a real bonding night... I came out... I showed my PA, some dark secrets were shared (no names - to protect the guilty).... it was good. After a few hours - it started to get cold - it was so nice to be cold - after the sweaty mess which was Beijing and Xi'an... anyway as people headed off to bed, Mickey, Adrian and I headed to the hotel cafe/bar to source more alcohol... The fridge was locked! how rude...!!

We joined a group of randoms already there.. a chinese policeman on holiday with is new wife.. who was so drunk. he kept getting up and throwing his badge away saying "I hate Police"... and a dragon of a Canadian lady, who wouldn't let Mickey stop drinking... plus another english guy, and a german. Once we had shouted our introductions, the focus turned to beer.. and Mickey worked some Guanxi(local contacts) magic with the night caretaker, who the policeman had already asked - but Mickey Mike managed to get him to go and find a crate of beer... and he did - quite happily!

A little while later, the night ended in good style - we got told off by the management... "others are trying to sleep" - "get them here for a drink" came the reply from some random.. so MM had to be the responsible leader and head off - so we called it a night too...