Xining to Lhasa: Altitude Sickness

Sun Jan 15 XINING.
Xining is the capital of Qinghai province. I slept late due to not having an alarm. Woke up at 11am. When I went out, I saw what was hidden by the darkness the night before -- magnificent gigantic mountains right behind the train station. Very beautiful. Xining was a little colder than Lanzhou but again I was dressed warmly so not bad. Then I went out to find the minibus stand for Tai'er'si (temple). Got to Ximen and then walked down the street until I found the minibus stop. The route was short to the temple (25 km) but the bus was so slow (1 hour). I was the only non-Chinese on the bus or the temple and was stared at the entire time. These two 50-year old men wearing Muslim hats kept staring and smiling at me and looking at the photos in my China travel book. The temple was very interesting - like a whole city. It is a Tibetan temple - but really like a maze/city of buildings. Met a 12 year old boy who did not speak English and we went sightseeing together. So we only communicated in Chinese. He spoke it well (no accent). He was from Xining. Afterwards I got back and waited for a bus to fill up. It went really slow - stopping to pick people up every 5 feet. I got to the train station at 5:43 but made the train just fine. Now a 14 hour train ride across Qinghai. Once on the train, my stomach started to hurt a little again. So I decided to eat something - maybe it was hunger. I ate some spicy noodles I had bought the day before for the Lanzhou train. Bad idea. After three bites, my stomach hurt worse. I tried to sleep but had trouble. Woke up many times. In the middle of the night, I looked out the window and believe I saw Qinhai Hu (lake). I decided not to visit the lake because transportation is difficult and because the best months to visit are in the summer - not in winter.

Mon Jan 16. GOLMUD (GO-ER-MU).
Arrived in Golmud around 7am. Golmud is the Tibetan name, Go-er-mu is the Chinese name based on sounds. It is a city of 130,000 in western Qinghai province. Actually, it is the second biggest city in Qinghai after Xining.

Instead of taking the CITS bus which costs 250 kuai for Chinese and 1860 kuai for foreigners, I went in a jeep with 6 other men. They knew the foreigner price is very expensive so they had a lot of negotiating power with me. I was able to negotiate down to 700 kuai. We left at noon on our 18 hour journey. The bus usually leaves at 2pm and takes 24 or more hours. Anyway, the road is good considering there are almost no cities for between the two and considering the high elevation. Buses usually make the trip in 24 hours, jeeps in 18. Golmud has an elevation of 3000m (9750ft), Lhasa 3700m(12025ft), but the road in between reaches 5700m(18525ft) according to the man sitting next to me. (In comparison, Mt. Everest is about 8900m (29000ft) and Pikes Peak is about 4300m (14,000ft). So this is like a road trip across mountains and God-forsaken territory that was about the elevation of the top of Pikes Peak the whole way. The problem is that at high elevation, there is not as much oxygen and so it cause altitude sickness. (Usually it takes 5-15 days to acclimate to the high elevation. The body does this by producing more red blood cells to carry more oxygen. Or so I read in my book.) He liked to drink Bai Jiu every 10 minutes and kept pouring it into a little cup to drink from. The road was bumpy in parts and on one occassion he spilled it all over the seat, his pants, and a little on me. Oh well. He was friendly anyway. He kept sharing his cigarette smoke with my face. No, actually he was very nice - he looked my China book and we spoke some in Chinese but he spoke with an accent. He also told me "Tibet girl very good. Only 100." I didn't comment on that one. After two days of stomach pains (actually on both Sat and Sun the pain was in the afternoon/evening - not in the morning), I was afraid that another one might come. After 2 hours into our journey, I felt a little bad thinking - oh no not again. But actually it was just the bumpy road and me bouncing up and down. I thought to myself - I've only come 2 hours - how can I make it. I want to go back! But I persevered. After another hour I was fine. The problem came later - about 9 or 10pm when we reached high elevation. My head hurt - a lot. At least it wasn't my stomach! You never know how much to appreciate not having pain until you endure it. We travelled all night.

Tue Jan 17. LHASA.
On Tuesday (today) at 6am we reached Lhasa (Lasa). I got a dorm bed at the Yak Hotel (on Beijing Lu (street)) for 20Y per night. Nice hotel. Laid down for a while because my head still hurt. Saw the Potola Palace and went to Norbulingka Park where the past Dalai Lamas had homes. I saw the ones of the 8th DL (1700s) and the 13th and 14th DLs (1900s). The last one (built for the 14th one) was built in 1956. He left Lhasa in 1959. Nice park. There were a few times today where I thought I had a headache of felt lightheaded but it was pretty rare. Lhasa was warm (relative to Tianjin, Lanzhou, etc). with a blue sky and sun/sunshine. Only a few clouds until late afternoon when it became more overcast. Discovered an interesting street behind the Potala Palace with lots of vendors. The city is nice and appears like everything on the main streets are new and appealing. It is in the back alleys where you see more interesting things though - markets, praying, etc. Lhasa only has 200,000 people but I must have seen at least 6 car dealerships. I wonder how many there are in total. But there are many beggars too. I've never seen so many. So it appears that some have profited off tourism and can afford nice cars and jeeps and others are really poor. Also saw the Jokhang Temple. It was very active with many worshippers. Very different from anything I've seen at any other temples. Overall, Qinghai and Xizang(Tibet) remind me much more of Mongolia than of Eastern China. There are fewer Han Chinese and more darker skinned Tibetan/etc people. Clothing, food, religion, etc. reminds me a lot of Mongolia. I remember that Ghengis Khan (Chen ge Si Han?) conquered Lhasa in the 1200s and as a result most of Mongolia today has the religion of Tibetan Buddhism. So I think there are some strong cultural similarities. Now I am in a net bar across the street from the hotel. I need to go back there now and sleep. :-)