After breakfast on 24th July, I managed to rent a bike and went in search of the Xiahe Hotel at the other end of town, in order to change some dollars into RMB (Yuan). This hotel is supposedly only place in town that will change foreign currency, and they let me change $10, which is enough for now.

Later I went for lunch at what had been described to me as a very ethnic restaurant. It was on a street corner just down from the white Stupa near the monastery.

I propped my bike outside and went in. I stayed for well over an hour, just people-watching. I had somehow expected the people all over communist China to look “Chinese” and, if not be wearing Mao suits, to at least all wear similar clothes. However each person who came in to eat, looked totally different, in terms of facial features, clothing, and ethnicity…

If I hadn’t known I was in China, I wouldn’t have been able to guess my location from the people I saw. The waiter appeared to have an Islamic cap, and only one person looked Chinese. Outside was a similar story…

I again saw women who, if I had seen them in Bolivia 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have given a second glance. The combination of hat, pigtails, and colourful dresses look so Andean that I wonder if I’m actually still back in South America, and that everything since then has just been a dream…

The elderly people don’t look Chinese at all, nor do they look what I expect Tibetans to look like.

Eventually I headed back to the hotel to find Rachael having a row with the hotel staff about the hotel payment. I took advantage to have a row about the clothes that they were supposed to have washed and have ready in the morning.

Things finally simmered down and later on Rachael and I headed out to eat some rather poor quality noodles, for which they tried to overcharge. Perhaps if I hadn’t been with Rachael I wouldn’t have realised they were overcharging, and if the café people had realised Rachael speaks Chinese, they wouldn’t have tried to overcharge in the first place!

On 25th July it rained all morning, but it eventually eased a little, and Diana announced she was going to try out the Sichuan restaurant which someone had said has good food, although with no English menu. I went along with her, and over what was indeed a tasty lunch, we got talking to a group of curious travellers who were talking about the “energies” of Xiahe and the surrounding hills.

One of these esoteric people was a Dutch lady called Klarie who had also been out hiking in the hills the previous day, and was keen to do more. I asked if she wanted to team up for a longer hike the next day, and she said “yes”.

Mid afternoon the rain stopped and I decided to go for another solo hike, on the south side of the river.

I was quickly able to get high, with good views of Xiahe and the nearby peaks.

Since the hiking is first class, and I expect to be here for several more days exploring the hills, I decided to start making a hiking map of the area. I used the notebook that I was given at the Spanish school in Antigua Guatemala for writing Spanish vocabulary!

The map is basically to help me plan the following day’s outing by mapping the ridge lines I can see from each high point, that will make a circuit in each new unexplored section. The notation is rather non-standard, and I doubt if it’s of much use to anyone else…

In the evening a big group of us headed out for a meal. The first café we tried (by the hotel) was clearly trying to rip us off – and we voted with our feet. The second place appeared honest, and we stayed there. It was actually more of a tea house that served food, and we decided that we were having a “tea party”. Beer did, however, appear before too long…