It's been so long since I've updated this or even emailed anybody that it's going to be difficult for me to encapsulate our adventure, traveling from Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu, to Xiahe, home of the Labrang Monastery. But I will try.

We arrived in Lanzhou, after a 24-hour train trip, and were welcomed by a huge state-owned industrial complex and a nuclear energy plant. We thought that might be all that Lanzhou had to offer, but were plesantly surprised by the city that all guidebooks and China travelers love to loath.

Yes, I've read about how Lanzhou is one of the most polluted cities in China, but we arrived on a sunny day -- blue sky, few clouds and a nice warm temperature. It was a great change after Hangzhou, which had been going through some terribly polluted and rainy days when Rick first arrived.

I'm not sure what it was about Lanzhou -- the extremely friendly people, good food, diversity of residents -- but we were fascinated by the place. Old men walk around in these huge glasses made of ground crystal and most of them sport long, wirey beards and use canes to hobble down the street.

There is a sizeable muslim population in Lanzhou, and with that comes yummy noodles and great food.

We departed the capital about two days after arrival for our first stop -- me on bus, Rick on bike. I had all day, so I took a hellish minibus (all minibuses are hellish and I hope to never see one again) to Yongjing, a village where you can catch a boat to the Bingling buddha grottoes.

I wasn't sure where I was when I got off the bus, but some man who spoke completely incomprehensible Chinese (a problem here in Gansu) indicated that I should get off. Of course, being rural-ish China, there were no signs, even in Chinese, that said anything about the buddha grottoes, where to go, or what to do. So I found the nearest person and asked her if she knew how to get there. Not only did she know how to get there, but she and her 70-year-old mother were making a day trip there and I should come with them.

I spent most of the day with my new friend, the 40-something Chen Aihua, and her mother, who was much more energetic than we young whiper snappers. Although Chen and her mother spoke no English, we managed to communicate quite well with my beginner Chinese, lots of gesturing and me asking her to repete almost every sentence she spoke.

Chen got us a great deal on the trip to Bingling Si (50 yuan) and we spent about an hour and a half wandering along the cliff carved with buddhas. One of the buddhas, the centerpiece, was about three-stories high. The others were in small indentations. The only thing keeping Bingling Si from looking like something out of Indiana Jones was the shutters that protected the wall paintings and sculptures from the harsh desert sun.

Amazingly Rick found the "boat ramp" (really just a crumbling slab of concrete that descended steeply into the water) that I arrived at after my journey, and we found a very nice and cheap hotel in Yongjing. A village by Chinese standards, but a decent sized town by American standards, we spent our evening walking around and relaxing in the park across the street from our hotel.

Our next destination: Linxia. There were about two paragraphs in my guidebook about Linxia, and one of them said it took two hours to get there from Yongjing. Well, I have now learned to take the amount of time given in my guidebook and multiply it by three, then I will not be disappointed and frustrated when a supposed two-hour bus trip actually takes 6 hours. And yes, it took 6 hours to get to Linxia by bus, including the longest ferry ride across a reservoir. By my estimation, that means the bus traveled 12 miles per hour on average. (Rick had a much worse time, getting lost, traveling 30 miles out of his way, and spending all that time on a bike in blazing hot desert heat).

I arrived in Linxia, after befriending a 15-year-old Dongxiang (Dongxiang is one of China's minority groups) boy who was wearing a USA hat and who wanted to practice his English. He said he dreams of going to America and becoming an English teacher. We spent about two hours standing outside our awful minibus waiting for a ferry, staring at the absolutely barren hillsides. The area between Lanzhou and Linxia really reminded me of Nevada and other arid parts of the American west.

Linxia is literally the craziest place I have ever been in China. It was bigger than Yongjing, but probably had fewer than a million residents, all of whom seemed to be crowded near our hotel. Men operating fruit carts recorded slogans on loudspeakers and turned the volume up high as they slowly pushed their carts down the street. Horns honked non-stop, even though there were very few cars and buses. Tractors noisly spewed black smoke into the air. But it was a stimulating place. There is a huge mosque in the center of town and quite a few more sprinkled in various neighborhoods.

Rick arrived in Linxia late, and looked like a pack of dogs had attacked him. He had cycled 90 miles through dust and dirt. We spent an extra day in Linxia so he could rest before the climb towards Xiahe. We spent much of our time there checking out shops of knives, fur pelts (sad, there was a huge pile of hundreds of tabby cat pelts at one shop that looked exactly like my deceased cat), spices, chili peppers, tea leaves and sheep (yes, whole sheep). I saw my first sheep get gutted.

We were definitely the stars of the show in Linxia, everyone saying hello and waving. This happens in China often, but I've never experienced it at this level. And the people were even more friendly than in Lanzhou, which I didn't think was actually possible. We loved it there, but were happy to leave because the attention was starting to wear on us.

After a day and a half exploring the chaos that was Linxia, I hopped on yet another minibus to Xiahe. Rick planned to take two days to complete his bike tour and would meet me the next day in Xiahe.

The road from Linxia to Xiahe was magical -- I watched the landscape go from dry, barren desert to lush mountain valleys. Slowly the muslim population dwindled and I started to notice a few Tibetans among the villages of mud-brick homes. We passed what I would later find out was a small monastery, and before reaching Xiahe, about 25km down the road, two monks lay in the shoulder of the road on their stomachs, making their pilgrimage to Labrang Monastery, one of the six main monasteries of the yellow hat sect of Tibetan buddhism.

The transformation I saw along the road was the first sign that Xiahe would be different from what I had seen so far in Gansu. And it was.