This Can't Be Kosher...

After a breakfast of sweet bread, tea eggs, and chicken sausages (for me!), we headed towards Ta'er Si, or Kumbum Monestary.  Like Labrang Monestary, Kumbum Monestary is also one of the six most important Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist temples.  Located about an hour's drive south of Xining, the monestary complex was built to honor Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism.  The monestary was built where Tsongkhapa was believed to be born.  Like the Lonely Planet said, Kumbum today resembled more of a museum than an active monastary.  Compared to Labrang, it was obvious that Kumbum lacked the energetic buzz of devout monks who acted more than just ground care keepers.  However, that being said, Kumbum was still a very unique monastary due to the high amount of unique, beautiful artwork that is displayed throughout the complex.  The beautiful door friezes were especially note worthy, as does the yak butter wax carvings.

 

After visiting most of the monastary rooms, we decided to entertain Adam by finding the highest peak around the monastary and then climbing it!  That lead us to the kora above the monastary, where the devout walk or prostrate.  It offered a very nice view of the monastary below, as well as a haven from all the other tourists.

 

When the kora led us back down to the bottom of the town again, we decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream (which turned out to be more like frozen blocks of ice.  Whatever) and then climbing halfway up another hill to eat it!  And Adam complains that we don't do enough things for him!  ;-)

 

We returned to town for a late lunch, early dinner.  It was then that I made one of the best decisions all trip.  I finally convinced the 3 Brits to go for hotpot as Michelle's farewell meal (she was leaving early to go back to work on Thursday).  We walked into a restuarant that I saw yesterday, near the night market street.  Thinking it would be regular hotpot, we were all very surprised when they brought out a huge hotpot already filled to the brim with mutton, pork, beef, meatballs, mushrooms, tofu, noodles, cabbage, and an assortment of other yummy food!  We again ate till we can eat no more (which was most of the pot).  Towards the end, it even became vicious when people started fighting and sabotagin eachother for the last potatoe or mushroom.

 

We rolled out of the restuarant, saw Michelle off to catch her airport shuttle & went to the bus station ourselves for our overnight bus ride to Jiayuguan.

 

The bus ride from Xiahe to Xining was memoriable for its beautiful scenery.  The bus ride from Xining to Jiayuguan was memoriable for its many near death experiences.  Again, a very packed bus, we weren't even 20 minutes into our ride when the bus driver pulled a swerve of death on us, almost losing control of the bus as we tumbled along a dirt path.  As night fell and we ascended the high mountain pass around Xining, it started snowing (!) and became increasingly foggy.  Because the three of us sat in the front of the bus, we had to pleasure of witnessing that the bus driver had, at some points, zero visability in front of him.  But when you're in a situation like that, what can you do?  The only option was to sit tight and pray that you will make it out of the night alive.  Thankfully, this whole situation lasted maybe an hour, which was not that bad, relatively speaking.  Again, we settled in for another night of bumpy sleep on the east-bound bus.