No, this is not Tibet; we were still in eastern Qinghai Province, nine hundred miles away.  This day, our drive - the longest on our trip across China - would span over half of that.  This photograph of a Tibetan woman, in absolutely stunning dress, was taken in a small town west of Xining; I believe the town was Riyue Shankou.  I don’t know why we stopped here - we had departed Xining just an hour earlier, and our morning stop at Qinghai Hu was only a half-hour further - but this one photograph made the stop worthwhile.  A number of my favorite photographs of the trip would be taken today.  Look at that dress!

Along the main street running through town, the buildings were obviously very new; no other village we passed the rest of the trip looked nearly this good.  Though officially still far away, we had basically entered Tibet at this point; as mentioned on an earlier page, much of Qinghai Province used to be part of Tibet, and most of the people we would see from this point on were Tibetan.

Checking out the scene below; we were quite a large group for a town this size.  We were getting some serious elevation under us now: Xining was 1½ miles high, and our destination today, Golmud, would add another quarter-mile to that.  No one was feeling any effects yet, but we were all starting to think about it.

This cute little guy, darting around us with his friends, was even more mischievous than he looks.  After leaving this town, we would see no more villages of significant size the rest of the day.

Qinghai Hu.  The highly cooperative sky made this photograph one of my favorites.  This is China’s version of Utah’s Great Salt Lake; on average, they’re about the same size, but this lake is less salty.  Abundant fish can be found here, and on the far side of the lake a hundred miles away is a huge breeding ground for migratory birds.  That breeding ground is the lake’s main attraction, but we were told that an illness (not bird flu) was going through the bird population at the moment, so we would not be able to visit.

A rapeseed field, with Qinghai Hu in the background.  Canola oil comes from this plant, which flowers magnificently here during the month of July.

Rapeseed, utility poles, heavy weather.  Those are some of our many traveling companions in the distance, wading through the field to get their own pictures.  We would see miles and miles of rapeseed fields along the southern edge of Qinghai Hu this day.

A rapeseed farm further down the road.  The salty lake’s elevation is two miles, so any trees we saw this day, like these, were being consciously cultivated.

Roadside scenery near Heimahe, southwest of Qinghai Hu.  Reaching this elevation, everything starts looking a little different - the way the light hits the ground, the way the clouds form and move across the sky, the way the treeless landscape seems rich and barren at the same time.

Horses grazing near Chaka, west of Qinghai Hu, with snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Where rapeseed wasn’t growing, sheep pastures sparsely dotted the landscape.  Our vehicles radioed one another in warning when the occasional stray sheep wandered into the road.

Hundreds of miles further west, rapeseed fields could still be found.  By now it was early evening, but the sun was still high in the sky.  China has only one time zone, even though sunset comes two hours later in this spot than in eastern China.  Within minutes, the scenery changed from the rapeseed fields, grasslands, and sheep pastures we had seen all day...

...to this.  Welcome to central Qinghai Province, where agricultural development has yet to take hold.  The landscape for the rest of the trip to Lhasa would remain about this desolate.

Our last stop before driving the final hours into Golmud.  This restroom facility was the only structure for many miles; it had no running water, and holding one’s breath was necessary, but it existed, and that in itself was a surprise.