Karma County

Parts 1 to 3

So there I was,  heading up to the Tibetan monastery of Labrang, high in the freezing mountains, with no clothes for very cold weather, except for my lone puffer jacket, which I threw into my overnight bag on a whim.

But my head was full of roaring excitement, and I was warm inside.

You know, getting around China isn't anywhere near as straightforward as it is in Southeast Asia. Firstly, my navigation apps are relatively crap here, particularly in towns and cities. Google Maps is useless pretty much everywhere here. The general longer distance road maps in my downloaded map apps are sort of ok, but when you're trying to find anything in particular, good luck. 'Cos they're just not there.

So I've been using a Chinese map app, Baidu, but of course it's all in Chinese, so when initially using it I was forced to use constant and tedious screenshot translations to get the info I needed. By now, however, I've sorta got a reasonable handle on the positions of the main icons in the app, and am starting to find places more easily.

I asked at my hotel reception how to get to the southern bus station to get a bus to Xiahe, where Labrang monastery is situated. After all sorts of language confusion a friend of the receptionist motioned for me to follow him, then put me on the back of his motorbike, dropped me at a local bus stand and told me which bus to catch to the main southern bus terminal. What a sweetie.

Clean and electric domestic bus

At the bus station I was informed that all the buses to Xiahe were sold out. So I grabbed a bus to Linxia instead, a large town on the way, hoping I'd be able to get a local bus from there to my destination.

After a couple of hours, as we approached the town, I noticed really interesting Islamic minarets around the place, built in a style that I'd never seen before.

Linxia is a Muslim town, with some super interesting architecture. I was dropped on the outskirts, and walked over to another bus station, to see if I could connect to Xiahe.

Downtown Linxia

Crossing the river

Sorry for the graphic detail. I just wanted to show you what all Chinese public toilets used to look like. When I first came to China in the 90s I was shocked at how filthy the public toilets were. They were even worse than Indian public toilets, which was quite an achievement back then.

And it would be now too.

The inside of public toilets in China used to consist of a series of little cubicles in a row, separated by half walls. You squat over a trench, which runs right between your legs, and is also connected to all the other cubicles. Every 20 seconds or so, a huge wave of water rushes through the trench under you, and you're gifted the pleasure of seeing everyone else's shit deposits rush past under you, between your legs, maybe even lovingly sticking to your own shit, and helping it on its journey to wherever shit goes.

So this mini toilet brought back many crap memories. But this is an exception here these days, rather than the rule. Public toilets are reasonably clean now.

And then luckily for me, when I got to the bus station ticket counter, I discovered that I'd calculated right, and managed to get a connecting bus up to Xiahe.

There was beautiful architecture on the way, both Islamic and Han.

We climbed and climbed.

Close to Xiahe, this Tibetan settlement was a sign of things to come.

Xiahe

Xiahe is home to Labrang Monastery, one of the most important Tibetan monasteries in the world. Labrang is one of the six main monasteries of the Gelug (Yellow Hat) Tibetan Buddhist sect, the same sect that the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of. (I mean, he's the spiritual leader of all Tibetans actually).

It's set high in barren hills at an elevation of about 3,000m. Which means it's bloody freezing at this time of year. The surrounding countryside is a moonscape, it reminds me a little of the bone dry hills of Central Otago, down near Queenstown in New Zealand.

I got out of the bus, puffer zipped to the top, and was immediately thrust into a little Tibet, with the architecture, the shops, the vibe, and of course the people, all completely different from the place I'd left only a few hours before in Lanzhou. It was completely surreal, and yet somehow totally familiar, as I've spent a lot of time in Tibetan places over the years, including over the past few months.

Historically, Xiahe was strategically situated at the meeting place of the Tibetan and Mongolian kingdoms, and the monastery of Labrang was built up there as one of Tibetan Buddhism's largest universities.

At the turn of last century the monastery housed over four thousand monks, and today is still the largest monastery outside of what the Chinese call the Tibet Autonomous Region, with around 1600 monks still living and studying there.

Traditionally Xiahe is part of the Amdo region of northeastern Tibet, one of the three main Tibetan regions, the others being Kham and U-Tsang. U-Tsang is the cultural heartland of Tibet, covering the south-central part of the Tibetan region, and is where the capital Lhasa is situated.

While the three regions significantly differ culturally and linguistically, spiritually they are all very connected, and their religious practices are virtually identical. Tibetans of all regions strongly regard themselves as one people.

The Amdo Tibetan region is nearly all incorporated into the current Chinese province of Qinghai, (with a few pockets in Gansu province, like this one).

My intention is to explore Qinghai on my bike, as I head northwest to Kazakhstan. There's some incredible ancient Buddhist sites there.

I'm not sure if you can see how many kids are streaming along the pavement after school, but I can tell ya the line was endless. Pretty much every single one of them said hello to me, and the brave ones even asked me my name or said, "nice to meet you." So cute. My waving hand got sore though, as it took forever for the happy smiling joking squealing munchkins to get past.

Amazing bakery. I bought sweets.

After a search through the back alleys, and asking directions from countless people, I finally found this little Tibetan homestay.

My host, Dukkar, is the sweetest, most beautiful man. We spent some very special time together, and even jammed, as he's a keen guitarist.

My modest room.

The view from upstairs. Rustic and homey. That's an m, not an rn.

Yeah, yeah, yet another Freudian slip. I don't care. Freud was a wanker with deep psychosexual problems.

I guess that doesn't say much for me.

Late arvo rest. If I'd thought of it I would've sculpted my fruit in a more creative way.

Another Freudian slip. I still don't care.

Don't ask me what this guy was trying to do, but he didn't move for the whole time I stayed there, and was completely unresponsive to my friendliest of approaches.

Heading across the Daxia River, strolling in to town looking for food.

[The funniest thing just happened. I'm sitting on a bus at the moment, and about 20 minutes ago loud jazz music started playing. I thought, "wow, that was the last thing I expected on a bus in rural Gansu." Anyway, pleasantly surprised, I enjoyed it for awhile, and then, when retrieving my phone from my bag behind me to research stuff for this blog, I realised that, actually, the jazz was booming from my very own phone. Perfect. Apple just decides to play me music every now and then, choosing from the far flung depths of my own music collection, some of which I've never heard before, just like the piece that's playing now. No one seems to mind though, so, hey, I'll leave it on. It's better than Chinese pop, or audio pollution from games on other people's phones. And it distracts from the loud horn my trigger-happy bus driver blasts every couple of bars.]

One edge of the monastery. It's all closed up now, I'll go exploring tomorrow.

The warm and cosy Tara Café, which turned out to be a fave.

It's icy cold outside. It was absolutely freezing walking back to my guesthouse after food, especially the biting wind, which seems to be able to pass through solid objects at will. A bit of a shock. And no hat, scarf, gloves or thermals to counter it.

Although luckily my puffer has a little hood.

Yak butter. I smelt it way before I saw it. The locals raise yaks here, and the temples and shrines in the monastery are full to the brim with yak butter lamps. The smell reminds me of beautiful experiences in the past, wandering around with friends in various Tibetan places, special connections with local people, Buddhist teachers and their teachings. I love how smells do that.

Artists creating masterpieces.

That ain't a light. That's the moon, and that's my homestay.

The ceiling view from my bed.

Labrang

I spent most of the next day in and around the monastery.

It was freezing in the morn

The main street near my place.

So many amazing carved doorways around

Even though Labrang is a living breathing monastery, there are tourist facilities there, and there's a charge to enter certain parts of the complex. But the fee includes a tour in English, and you can wander around to your heart's content after that.

Rather elaborate visitor centre.

There were some great historical pics of locals in there.

This series was taken in the 1930s

Girl band, playing traditional Tibetan stringed instruments, the dram yen and the sgra-synan.

There's a 3km long kora around the monastery, a sacred path circumambulating the whole temple complex. There's prayer wheels pretty much all the way around.

The whole place is low rise, all the buildings are separated by paved paths, with lots of open areas and squares throughout the complex. It has a real spaciousness to it.

My tour guide was a beautiful monk who's been living and studying at the monastery for 23 years. While we wandered around seeing the sights that he was required to show me he also talked with me extensively about Tibetan spiritual beliefs. But he did it in a typical Tibetan monk kinda way, in their true debating style tradition, by continually asking me multitudes of baffling questions that I couldn't answer. Like, "what is life?", "who are you?", and "who am I?"

And whenever I mustered some sort of what I considered to be a quite reasonable considered answer he immediately debunked it with some sort of obvious fact or approach that I hadn't thought about.

But the crux of the matter was that we really got each other, and connected in the most beautiful way. It was very moving to spend those couple of hours with him. We left as brothers, which, incredibly, happened on another two occasions later that evening.

That's the nature of the culture here.

This is some of the most incredible and intricate sculpted art I've ever seen. These sculptures are made entirely of yak butter. Yes, butter. The process to make them is incredibly delicate and time consuming.

The whole structure is made up of little pierces of yak butter of various shapes, each single one of which has been hand rolled, shaped and coloured with the most beautiful pigments.

What I couldn't get my head around was the detail. What an incredibly meditative experience creating these works.

Here, let me zoom in on that last one for ya.

And it all has to be created in a cold place, or the butter melts, and, as you could well imagine, the result would be a warped kaleidoscopic spiritual shitshow.

That does happen sometimes, apparently.

My monk guide told me that the monks actually create new sculptures at the monastery every six months. Absolutely unbelievable.

And there were so many of them too.

Photos were strictly prohibited from the inside any of the temple buildings. Once our little tour and philosophical deepdive was over, I wandered into this temple courtyard.

I can't begin to describe to you how incredible it was in there. Hundreds of monks were sitting on the stone steps outside the temple, clad in thick maroon cloaks and wearing tall fur-lined yellow hats, they were rocking from side to side in deep meditation, chanting their own chants individually, creating a cacophony of sound, and the most amazing of sights to behold.

The fragrant smoke of juniper leaves wafted through the air, and I was immediately transported to a new spiritual realm, somehow thrust into some deep medieval past, which was completely linked to the present moment.

It was so powerful, I can't really describe how overwhelming it was.

Dukkar happened to have a few related pics hanging at his place, to give you a tiny idea of the scene. But these pics are just a hint of what it was like, the actual scene was so much more incredible, there were so many monks, it was cold, the monks were rocking and chanting almost trance-like, devotees were prostrating everywhere, it was really powerful, and so trippy at the same time.

Then I followed the monks inside for more chanting, they chanted together this time, those deep deep Tibetan chants that seem to emanate from the primordial depths of the cosmos.

Then I did the rounds of paying tribute to all of the different icons, along with the hordes of devout pilgrims, who were all adding bits of yak butter to the thousands of lamps burning all over the place, prostrating, bowing, chanting, and completely immersed in their practices.

It really was incredible in there.

I eventually went home to rest for a bit, levitating above my bed in spiritual bliss and oneness.

Mobile dental clinic

Craft market

Very late lunch - fried spinach and onion momos

Brahminy ducks (also called ruddy shelducks)

My front gate

Spicy bread snack

Later I went back to Labrang, I couldn't get enough of it.

More priceless pics

Buying juniper for incense

I climbed the hill across the river to get a view

Instant Brotherhood

I went for food at a café and chatted with the owner, in English. We had the most easy beautiful connection, and he was very open about his culture, and it's ancient and modern history. I'll say no more.

But what I will say is that we both felt completely connected, in sharing a deep appreciation for his ancient culture and its importance. And regardless of all that, we just connected as people.

The same happened again in the evening, when Dukkar and I jammed and chatted for a few hours. It was beautiful, these guys are really something special, so warm, open, so easy to connect with, so genuinely empathetic and hospitable. It's a beautiful feeling to hang out with them.

Back To Lanzhou

So with the warmest feeling in my belly I reluctantly headed back to the city, to reunite with my bike and my gear.

I bought some pastries for my bus journey, including this delicious potato pie.

Prayer wheels and various temple paraphernalia for sale.

Brekky at the Tara Café. Yum!

Watching the morning world go by.

Eventually I headed down those many hills, back to Lanzhou, on a local bus.

Chinese men have super long penises, so the urinals go right down to the floor.

Oh, ok, yeah, that's right, it's because the men are mostly short around these parts. In the leg department, I mean.

Yeah, not the middle leg. I wouldn't know about that one, but I've heard rumours.

I found a place to stay near the railway station, so I could collect Bewdy and my panniers with a minimum of fuss. I'm happy to report that the good people at the freight company  transported her perfectly, despite the fact that she wasn't protectively wrapped in any way at all. Not a scratch on her, and everything seems to be working just as it should.

She still rides like a Merc.

A New Era Begins

So I'm all set to begin the next leg of my long journey - my ride right across the dry barren lands and deserts of northwestern China, all the way to the Kazakhstani border.

It's over 3,000km to there, the way I wanna go, so, given my visa situation, it's improbable that I'll be able to pedal the whole way.

But I'll pedal most of it, insha'Allah.

I'm so excited to get out there riding again.

I'm in different lands now. The fertile rice country of Southeast Asia and southwestern China are just beautiful memories, and the geography here is worlds away from there.

It's arid country, with a long and ancient Han, Buddhist and Islamic history.

I'm itching to get amongst it❤️

And btw, thanks for the title guys .....

https://youtu.be/tpaKahEVrIY?si=ZtMxqGyC6CRq3zUV

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