Travel to China, Gansu, Mati Si.

In my second day at Ma Ti Si I rode to another grotto, 13km away. The Tibetan guesthouse owners had told me there was a road to go to Guan Yin Dong. What they didn’t tell me (or did I miss it?) was that the road was unpaved and VERY bumpy! It took me 90 minutes to cover the 13km. The scenery was splendid though! I took (too) many pictures and I imagined building a little summer mud house for the future…

Fields were covered in blue-purple flowers (I don’t know what they’re called, but I’ll find out) and I only ran into a couple of tractors and local farmers on their motorbikes. The only noise was that of cuckoo birds and bees: soooo relaxing!

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Travel to China, Gansu, Xiahe.

I enjoyed the atmosphere around the Labrang Monastery so much that I ended up spending 6 days in Xiahe. I stayed in a fun guest house held by Tibetan monks where I met some young Chinese tourists, a few foreigners (in China to teach or study), a Chinese teacher who works with orphans, Tibetan men who openly talked to me about the difficulties of being a Tibetan in 2013, and many monks who enjoyed talking about the Dalai Lama but also football and Tony Parker...

It was nice to park my bike for a couple of days and go off for long walks in the mountains and through the narrow alleys of the monastery. But I also enjoyed getting back on it and riding to the grasslands of Sangke and Gangia. I think I did about 60km on the first day out and maybe 90km on the second.

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