Cutest announcers ever

Adorable. They spoke in Chinese, which I could infer because I picked out one of the three Mandarin words I know. Also, I saw their notes.

You will be treated to an insanely long blog post since the lights on the overnight bus don't work so I can't read my book, and it's officially too dark to look out the window meaningfully.

Almost no one could understand any of the Tibetan I tried to use, except one thanka painter from Lhasa who proposed to me. I feel like this is par for the course in any Tibetan area.

I also hiked to a temple with the name "1000 chicken temple." I saw decidedly less than 1000 chickens, but took some great photos of the town. From the top, you can see the two sides of Shangri-La. One side looks like a city-it's built up with restaurants and hotels and places to buy cell phones. The other side is still a village. It's mostly green with some houses and one road. They haven't finished the road over the hill connecting the two sides of town, but from the temple you can see the huge contrast in living conditions.

I also visited the largest monastery in the area, and I think in all of southwest China. It houses 600 monks and has a lot of temples. I scaled a wall to reach a far-off sputa, and a lovely old Tibetan lady had to help me down because I misjudged the height of the wall. Oops. Hopefully I'll have learned my lesson by the time I reach the great wall.

The square in old town hosts Tibetan dancing every night, so I watched that. During the day, people sell trinkets, and there are barbecues set up everywhere. I tried grilled yak and peppers, which comes served on a skewer with a spicy, tangy sauce. I would love to replicate the recipe for my family but I'm pretty sure it contains MSG and am not at all sure I could find yak meat anywhere in North America. How different are yaks from bison?

I met many, many travelers and expats. Apparently there are 12 expats in the whole city, which I thought was a lot because it's a pretty small place. I also met a woman from New Jersey! She lives off exit 135. Yes, she asked me what exit I lived off of, even in China.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9