We enter the Tibetan Plateau

This morning we entered the Tibetan plateau. We are not yet in Tibet, still in Qinghai province, but out here it really feels like we are on the top of the world. Everything is beautiful here -- the miles of grassland erupting in the corners into mountains cut across by meandering streams, the yellow fields of rapeseed flowers, the lazy herds of yaks, the alluvial plains, everything fluttering with prayer flags. Ping says it'll only get more beautiful from here.

We stopped first at the Sun and Moon temples outside of Xining. It was very foggy in the morning, and just majestic. Tourists can visit the Sun Pavilion, and the Moon Pavilion is for local Buddhists to make offerings and prayers.

Inside the Sun Pavilion

This was the first place that we have seen prayer flags like the ones that inspired the Kinship of Rivers project. They're quite beautiful. 

There were thousands of them

Of course, there were tons of booths surrounding the temples selling tourist crapola. Some of it was a little more macabre than we had seen before.

And there were some adorable Tibetan Mastiffs lounging around.

The next stop was Qinghai lake, the most beautiful lake in China. It is a holy lake and monks will walk around the entire lake in prayer. It takes them a month or more to walk the entire lake. There were lots of prayer flags

We hung ours up alongside

In this picture, I'm wearing this awesome hat my mom made for me in 7th grade. It doubles as a puppet, and as soon as I put it on, I started getting mobbed by locals who thought my hat was just the coolest thing they'd ever seen. More about the hat later.

Every two years there is an international poetry festival at Qinghai lake. There will be one this year in a week or so, and we'll be back. Here is the wall of poets. Along the top are pictures of famous poets from around the world, and on one side are the signatures of contemporary poets who've been honored at the poetry festival. Maybe we'll have ours carved into the wall this year.

The "keep off the grass" signs at Qinghai lake were hilarious

After Qinghai lake, we continued over 600km to Maduo. I got the worst headache I've ever had in my life from the XXXXm altitude, so the argument that proceeded when we found out our hotel had sold the rooms we reserved to someone else. While I was laying on the couch in the hotel lobby moaning, apparently the chief of police in Maduo showed up, carried everyone's luggage to his cop car, and drove them around until they found a hotel that wasn't booked solid. During the argument, one of the points that arose was that Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand really had to take a shit. The folks at the front desk said that wouldn't be possible because all the bathrooms were in the rooms and all the rooms were booked. We said that this wasn't our problem because we were supposed to have a room. Finally, the folks at the front desk opened some very startled guy's room and let Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand in to use the bathroom. Ariel and I slept in the front desk people's beds behind the front desk. 

Next up, the Source of the Yellow River! Until my mobile internet card picks up another signal, says Voice of Rivers Wang Ping.