Xining

We took a train from Xi'an to Xining and then to Lhasa. Only 28h in total 🚂 🚂 🚂 🚂

We went past endless sand dunes, then past endless plains, spotted by so many yaks, goats, sheep, a few horses and camels (or dromedaries? 🤔), and lakes, such as the huge and beautiful Qinghai lake. We saw some seriously remote homes decorated with praying flags. We also saw a handful of cities, some rather big, all rather ugly. Still, that's max 4 or 5 isolated cities in almost 2000 km!

But the real reward for the hours spent in the hard sleeper compartment came at dawn. We saw the sun rise over the golden plains and the many small lakes and streams of the central Tibetan plateau, and started to see some snowcapped mountains in the distance. No photos could ever do it justice (especially taken through the dirty train window) so I'm not giving you any 😁 gotta come here yourself!

It was also the time of our lives where we felt more like aliens 👽 since we were in the middle class of train tickets, we were surrounded by local families. Eventually the ones in our corridor got used to us and stopped staring 😂 we tried to communicate with them and vice-versa, but we were very limited with zero language in common.

We finally arrived in Lhasa, which is bigger than we expected. The historical center is surrounded by ugly recent buildings. Today we just lay low and try to adapt to the 3600 m elevation, and tomorrow we'll start exploring.Read more