Source of the Yellow River

Throughout our trip we have taken care to eat only at the highest quality restaurants. As three is a very auspicious number in Chinese culture, the Chinese food inspectors reserve C, the third letter of the alphabet only for the few restaurants who comply to the highest standards of Chinese food service. Similarly, the color red brings good luck. Ergo the red, satisfied looking face adjacent to the rating.

They do this in China too

We saw several adorable animals, including this Tibetan Wolf, a rare sight.

And a Tibetan donkey

An eagle

And another one of those adorable Tibetan Mastiffs

The landscape out here was simply spectacular. It was just too enormous to fit into a single frame. Take a look at this photo. Those white shapes in the background aren't animals. They're houses.

This is the vehicle which took us two hours over roads made mostly of piles of gravel and potholes to our destination, the source of the Yellow River. It takes incredible skill to operate at speeds reaching up to 80 km/h under such conditions. Note the Toyota hood ornament fixed above the logo for the Chinese auto producer which made the car. These automobiles feature no suspensions systems whatsoever.

Prayer flags are hung in the tallest and most holy places around so they can be as close as possible to heaven. As the wind tears and tatters away the flags, pulling them apart string by string, the prayers are carried into the sky to heaven.

There are five colors of Tibetan prayer flags to represent five elements. Blue, sky; white, clouds; green, grass; red, sun; and yellow moon

The flowers that grow here are incredibly bright

This is the monument marking the source of the Yellow River. The shape represents the horns of the yak.

We hung about a thousand of our own prayer flags at this monument. You can't see them in these pictures, but as we were doing this, a troupe of Chinese tourists joined us. They thought our prayer flags were just the greatest thing they'd ever seen. They must have taken more pictures of our flags than the Tibetan ones.

Our Mississippi Bluesman performed some of River Poet Wang Ping's poetry which he'd set to music.