17th May – Lanzhou to Xining

Today we have a 330 km drive to Xining with a lunch stop at Ta er Monastery or Kumbum Monastery which is a Tibetan Buddhist Temple. The drive this morning is through dramatic Yellow mountains that are in stark contrast to the lush green mountains we drove through yesterday.

At our morning tea stop we are asked if we can have our photo taken with some locals.  The faces are starting to change as we head west.

To the south of us we glimpse snow capped mountains and the air is certainly getting colder as we travel at over 2,000 metres.

We arrive at the Kumbum Monastery & have some lunch before going inside. There are many Tibetan people who visit here and there are about 900 monks living here. Kumbum Monastery is one of the 6 greatest monasteries of the Yellow sect and is the birthplace of Tsong Kha-pa the founder of the sect and it is very important to Tibetan people.

There are people praying out the front of the Monastery and inside the complex out the front of the various halls. We’re unable to take photos inside the halls but the Great Sutra Hall is massive with brightly coloured embroidered flags and wonderful carpets decorating the inside.

  

There are prayer wheels outside each of the temples and a special tourist one.

There is a hall containing Yak butter sculptures that are kept in refrigerated glass cases.  These sculptures are made by the Monks every Tibetan new year.  They are very colourful and have an incredible amount of detail in them.  Quite amazing! The hall is painted in very bright colours and every surface has been painted.

On the way to the hotel Green asks the local police for directions to the highway, which is a new road & isn’t on her Garmin.

Driving back to the hotel we see many people planting trees on the side of the road.  This afternoon the air seems to have cleared and the snow capped mountains are much clearer.