Half way to the roof of the world

We are in XiNing (西宁市), which means Western Tranquillity. With our lot, we don't even dream that it'll be like that. It's on the Eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, at the modest height of 2250m above sea level, so stopping here for a couple of days will help us to acclimatise a bit for the much higher altitudes in Tibet.

I would bet that not even 0.1% of people in Europe have heard of this place, even though it's a bustling city of 2.5 million and the biggest city on the plateau, being more than 2.5x the size of Lhasa.

What makes XiNing interesting is that it's a cultural crossroads. 75% of the people are still han Chinese, but there are substantial numbers of other ethnicities like Hui, Monguor, and Tibetan, so you can see some different faces and people practising budism or islam There is a huge and active budist monastery called Kumbum, on the edge of the city, and a large mosque in the city centre.

We visited both those places, and the monastery is particularly impressive and very definitely active.

We arrived here from Beijing on the high-speed train yesterday. 10 hours for 1700km, though the stange mix or green tree filled mountains and multiple big Chinese cities with their innumerable high-rise appartements. Tomorrow, we carry on the journey to Lhasa, a mere 1920km away. It'll take 19 hours, but at least we have 4 soft beds and two seats. It will climb as high as 5072m, but we shouldn't feel it because the train is pressured a bit like an aeroplane.Read more