Yak butter tea

All there was to do today was driving, so there's not much to say. We did meet this family, though, who gave us some yak butter tea and yak yogurt.

They ran a little convenience store on the side of the yak business.

I tried on a Tibetan coat

Which was a little big

Our poet takes a look at the yak butter.

It was like the best thing ever.

This guy had a great face

And when we went back to the car we found out that a goat had been eating our stuff the whole time we were inside.

Here's some bonus pics! The road across Qinghai province to Tibet is called "The Road to Heaven." I'm not sure if I mentioned that yet.

Here's our driver, Mr. Ha, chilling out.

And an antelope

Bye.

Source of the Yangtze, and the prayer flag bonanza

Here we are breaking into the monument signifying the source of the Yangtze, the Lancang river, and another source for the Yellow river

Here's the monument

And by the time we were done with it, it was festooned in flags

All the flags we didn't hang up at the Yellow river source, we hung here

 Turns out we started a trend. Soon after we climbed the fence, other folks started doing it too to see what it was we were doing. Even some army men climbed over and had some fun banging on the drum.

 We got about ten other folks who'd broken into the park with us to make some flags. At some point a truck pulled up, and someone got out and started hollering at the army guys, and that meant it was time for them to go, so no flags from them.

Here's some pretty flowers. We picked some of them to make some flower prints on the flags.

And I made one too! Here's me with my flag

Now we thought there were a lot of flags hung on this bridge when we saw it too, but wait'll you see what we had ahead of us!

Next stop was down a road made mostly of potholes with a few stray piles of gravel to keep it interesting. This was the bumpiest road yet. At some places there weren't even potholes or piles of gravel, there were just slightly fewer trees and boulders than on the sides. This was the most beautiful place yet. Just about every single stone in this entire valley was carved with Buddhist sutras in the Tibetan language and some in Sanscrit. Some of these carvings date back to the reign of Princess Wenching who taught the local people how to read and write.

And here's Princess Wenching's temple. Think this is cool? Wait'll you see the prayer flags hung around it.

Some offerings to Princess Wenching

And here's where we started to see some prayer flags. This was a prayer flag bonanza. There must have been millions if not hundreds of millions of flags on these mountains. It was unbelievable. They looked like giant holy tent caterpillars had set up shop on these hills, netting them entirely in strings upon strings of prayer flags.

And folks were hanging more and more by the day!

On the way back we passed through some gorgeous scenery. No surprises there, but this time I got some shots of some yaks.

Wiz kid videographer Alex Howard setting up another gorgeous shot.

This was a hoot. A giant Buddha statue in the middle of nowhere and folks were coming in from all around to dance the Qinghai line dance. Our River Poet learned the steps to it and did pretty well. Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand and I tried our best to the amusement of the locals, and Wiz Kid Videographer Alex Howard got the whole thing on camera.

That's all for now folks! Today (the 29th, the day after all this stuff happened,) we're just driving, and driving, and driving. Next stop: Tibet!