Thursday, October 6, 2011

Ponies and Expresses (Gansu Trip part 2)

 Welcome back!
...turned out JR was just a RedShirt and no one knew him anyway. You didn't know this was LOST did you?
Our hotel. Probably the tallest building in the city.

The next day in Xiahe was less religious and informative and more fun. It was more about meeting real Tibetans and seeing how they lived, but that didn't really happen. We went into the valley to some grasslands to a small community. We saw yaks and it was cold. AND WE GOT TO RIDE HORSES! When I heard that, I was so excited. I love horses, but haven't gotten the chance to ride one in a very long time. Unfortunately they don't train horses in Tibet the way they train them in America, so I couldn't drive my own pony, he had to be led up the hill. But it was kinda nice anyway.

After that we sat in a traditional Tibetan tent for some snacks. The kind of large tent we were sitting in used to be where entire families would sit, eat, sleep, and generally live. Nowadays, they live in more modern tents with TVs and everything. A lot of the girls were a little shocked when we went into the tent because they told us that the girls had to sit on one side and the men on the other, with a fire pit between. This normally wouldn't have bothered anyone (let's face it, boys are smelly) except that the men's side was obviously superior to the women's side. The men's side had a carpet and table and seats. The girls' side didn't even have a carpet. We were told that we weren't allowed to go to the men's side, but after a while we said, "F THAT," and sat with the boys.
Girls on the left, Boys on the right.

The snack that the Tibetan family gave us was a little strange, but tasted pretty good. It consisted of milk tea, flour, yak butter, and sugar all mixed up in a bowl. If you put enough sugar into the mixture it tasted a little like cookie dough...a little. They also served us yak yogurt with our yak-butter-tea, and that stuff was so delicious!

Meals on the trip were pretty mediocre and gave you dejavu every time you sat down to eat. My friend told me we kept being served the Tour Group Menu. But despite the lack of creativity in the restaurants, we found some pretty good street food. That region of  China has tons of sheep--quite a few herds got in the way of our bus on our travels--so we decided to eat some of them. Lamb kebabs are quite good. We had some other quite interesting sheep snacks, but I will save that story for another time.

When our time in Xiahe was through, we hopped back on the bus for the 5 hour drive back to Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province. There's not much to see in Lanzhou. The city is big, but not particularly pretty. We saw an old water wheel, a statue of the Monkey King, and a statue where a baby represented the minorities of China. One worthwhile thing we did in Lanzhou was float down the Yellow River on sheep-skin rafts (so many sheep they make them into boats). I felt kinda bad because this little old man was paddling us down the river, but it was pretty fun. Other than that, though, Lanzhou is so boring that looking at an ugly steel bridge that isn't even very old is one of the main sights to see.

After we saw the numerous and thrilling sights of Lanzhou we hopped on the train headed for the desert. America doesn't use trains very much anymore, but most of the rest of the world does. China is known for it's super fast bullet trains that they build in, like, a day. Their all aerodynamic with conical noses and luxury interiors! ...We were not on one of those trains. Our train ride was 13 hours. But it was ok because we had beds! Heh. But I've gotten used to giving up my creature comforts and privacy since coming to China, so it wasn't so bad. We sat around and ate junk food and played cards until they turned out the lights and yelled at us to go to bed (hey, I didn't know my dad was on this train?!). In the morning they played Chinese national tunes over the intercom to wake everybody up. Who do they think they are?!
Like the Hogwarts Express except not magical. At all.

And then we were in the desert.

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