On my third attempt I ended up at 07:00 on a bus headed for Xinghai - a town actually on the Tibetan Plateau. Once the bus left Xining itself - a massive city, I'm tending to believe the 8.6m population estimate - other statistics became apparent. For the last 10 days of so, Xining has held the dubious distinction of having the worst air quality index among all China'a major cities - a difficult challenge, but one that Xining has been up to meeting. As we started to gain even a little altitude the air quality was noticably improving.
Seeing things for the first time on this trip, was like a parade of "Welcome Back" flags. Starting to climb onto the plateau: the first sight of snow on the mountains: the ascent up what I thought was the pass, but turned out to be the false pass onto the upper part of the lowlands: the first herd of yak: the first herders on horseback: the first Kham men - quite distinctive in their height, their colouration, their looks, their costume, and their fierce countanance: the first prayer flags: the first stupa: the road into the pass proper: the very first touch of greening of the landscape: the landscape itself - no vegetation more than a foot high: the first permanently snow covered mountains (not entirely sure about this - as far as I remember the permanent snow line is at about 6000m - these lumps may have been a little lower than this and still not lost their winter snow. The pass onto the Tibetan Plateau itself. The increase in altitude - the bus had started at 2200m and by the time it was up on the plateau we were at about 3400m. My estimate for the pass was that it was comparatively low - probably only about 4000m. Of course not all the welcome back flags were positive: I had forgotten just how what a long winter in the same clothing; the same bedding; and no washing can do to establish the personal charisma of (for instance) the person sat next to me on the bus. Also the Chinese control, in the form of roads; check points; communication networks; regular guard detachments and PSB compounds, lies on the land like a barbed wire corset.
And so on we travelled to Xinghai - a total distance of 270km. The fare had been the stunningly high price of 53.50Yuan - about £5 for this jouney on a local, regular, twice (at least) daily route. Arrival at Xinghai proved it to be the protypical Tibetan town - a crossroads, the four arms of which each have buildings on both sides running for about a kilometre in the appropriate direction, and then stopping. There only seemed to be one hotel, which evidently had to register foreign aliens so long ago that it had forgotten how - judging by the fact that the forms they pulled out as examples related to people who had stayed in that hotel in 2003. Equally their idea of fulfilling the requirements of the PSB were to copy my (necessarily empty) exit form, over my personal details, and then getting me to fill out the copy three times by hand, with incomplete information. Then an argument about the room rate, which they had claimed as per room, then when it came to hand over the money, claimed it was per bed (and there were two beds in the room). Finally the room itself. As I am not a good enough writer to fully describe the memorable features of the room; a representative sample will have to do. The electric kettle did not work, and there was no service to provide boiled water. This may sound trivial, but such a source of water is often the only way of finding potable water in these parts; and travellers expect it to be provided, and constantly on hand as such a source. It's a bit like finding a body under the bed; being told it's alright, it's only Auntie, we haven't got round to dealing with her yet. While an exaggeration, it is much less of an exaggeration than I would wish. Then, in the land of prophecy, it is often taken as a bad omen, when the telephone broadcasts through its speaker, the electric noise being made as the cables connecting the phone to the mains, move about under their own volition.
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