Tibet travel log

Outline:
- Miss train, sleep at THU another night working on DL

- 19h train of DL + shitty sleep to Xining, Hui (chinese muslim) city (capital of Qinghai) in the tibetan plateau, had lunch at small shop in a big semi-wrecked mall by a mosque, visited another bigger mosque where people thought we were muslim.

- Bus to Qinghai lake, locals help us find a bike rental, we take tons of pictures and make friends with everyone involved. Lake and landscape are breathtaking. Every biome in sight: lake, fluvial riverside, desert, vast grasslands, titanic mountains <3 Biked a long way past many plots that were fenced off or being milked for touristy horse rides and yak pics. We found THE BEST place to camp after some downhill on our slick mountain bikes, completely alone on a big beach and a swing.

- Slept in until ~8, ate from our supplies and got moving to return our bikes. Had some extra breakfast with the people who ran (and lived in) the bike shop, took some more photos and headed off. Buses supposedly only ran twice a day and in the afternoon so we had to hitch a ride. Surprisingly, hitched one from a tibetan bus. The bus absolutely smashed the side of a van (no injuries) half-way through the 3h to Xining so we had to wait a hella long time to be picked up by the next bus. We made friends with a singing tibetan cop in the meanwhile. Couldn't take a pic because he's a cop I guess? Had lunch at a local fanguar' where we had a long (albeit very sparse in actual communication) conversation with a local man with the thickest accent in putonghua (common tongue - mandarin). Today we take the bus to Yushu, so we see to that while Alex tries to skype his thesis advisor on the move. Still get some work done on RL research for DL on the bus.

- It was surpisingly hard to sleep on the night bus, which was by all measures, much more comfortable than the trains. We get to Yushu ~10 and immediately get a bunch of tashidelei's (hello in tibetan) and business cards for passenger vans. We find a hotel on the run (the legendary 100RMB Hotel) and move past the "wanted" and CP propaganda posters to find a reception for a twin peaks/the shining type deal [insert pics], there's even little children with creepy smiles disappearing into labyrinthine hallways. We're taken on a quest for our room, knocking on occupied doors, passing wrecked rooms and flickering lights to find our room where nothing is aligned. The wallpaper is crooked, I love it. Can't really stay on the hallway for too long without feeling chills. Since it's still early, we decided to tour around until 16h and start working on our report then. We visited the big themple on a hill. It was pretty cool, we're getting "hello"s all the time as we're the only three foreigners in the whole 250k person city, and even the monks are curious. The temple was cool, mostly under construction/repair work, and seeing monks driving cars, motorcycles, using iPhones and wearing all-stars dispelled a few cliches we were holding. The work session was super productive and finally gave us peace of mind as we finally started seeing the results we expected. The report itself also got mostly written so we were all relieved. Celebration dinner at a restaurant beside the hotel, as some cops recommended. We started feeling kinda shitty about wearing Tsinghua hoodies everywhere. In Beijing is more okay as pretty much everyone is trying to flex all the time, but in Tibet it just feels like you're dabbing on people who aren't even in the race. Anyway, we made friends with a very curious local 11-year old that asked us all sorts of questions as we dined. Hen hao chi, btw!

- Got up early, we had two monasteries to see today. First, the one with a bunch of stones, and then the one with a heaps of flags. At the stone one, we walked around the site (clockwise) for a couple of times before deciding to have lunch at 10AM (jeez) at a place where they fry whatever you ask them to. Afterwards we bought one blue mala necklace each. We were embarassed to wear them, given the context, but the lady insisted and put it on us herself. From what I gather they're just meditation aids and wearing them is a reminder for mindfulness so from a meditation point of view I think I'm safe. [maybe make a bit more research]. The flag one was at a site of the memorial of the Tang-dinasty Princess Wencheng (she married the Tibetan King and supposedly introduced buddhism to the region) and it was absolutely surreal. We also saw a goat fight. Made friends with the monks there, took pics then came back to work on the report! It's almost done!! Tomorrow we go to Garze, our base for our biggest-monastery adventures

- Long 10h trip on a van from Yushu to Garze/Ganzi. Did some work, enjoyed the scenery and the trippy tibetan music on radio. On arrival in Ganzi, we were hounded by drivers even before we could leave the van. Found the hostel and the guy gave us good tips for sneaking into Yarchen Gar the next day.

- We took a taxi to the first checkpoint, sneaked around it, hitched a ride, and immediately got caught not even 2 minutes later. Police sent us back to the checkpoint and asked for ID. I didn't have my passport but we couldn't go back to the hostel and connect them to our sneaking, so we just played dumb until they got bored and took us back to town. We walked randomly just to make sure we lost them and then went sight seeing. It's always confounding how many temples and monasteries even small towns like Ganzi and Yushu have. Garze had 16k people in 2010! Maybe the temples are recent. Ah, we also saw a monk debate, it really is like a rap battle. Usually there's a group of 8 in a circle, 2 of them on their feet clapping their hands every time they make a point.
Man I'd love to understand what they're saying. I wish I could speak to the monks, ask them about their practices, the symbols and stories on the walls, I feel like I'm missing out. Doubly missing out by not speaking tibetan, and by being oblivious to buddhist/hindu lore. A quick fix for at least one of them would be to read up, but then I'd be wasting precious luyou time.

- It does feel like the roof of the world here, but I couldn't tell you why. Maybe it's how close the clouds are, or being level with the snowy peaks. I can imagine everyone else in the world down there, like I'm sitting on the terrace at grandma's house. It's surreal. The hills and grassland never end, hiding thousands of colorful, shining monasteries. It's an empire-sized epicurean community.
It's not just the monks, many use even their small corners of idle time to fire off a few dozen volleys of their mantras; no time to waste on the road to enlightenment. Also monks use iPhones, wear All-stars, and drive mini-vans, because of course they do.