Qinghai Lake

Today we drove with our program director, Renchen Dhondrup, about 2.5 hours to Qinghai Lake, China's largest lake. The lake and the drive to and from were breathtaking! The grasslands and mountains that surrounded us were absolutely stunning. The lake was a gorgeous milky turquoise and the sky was filled with dramatic cumulus clouds. We saw yaks and Tibetan goats for the first time, and a few in the group had a chance to ride the yaks! We both rode ponies at the water's edge.

The area surrounding Qinghai Lake is largely Tibetan, and after spending some time at the lake we had an authentic lunch in the nearby town. All patrons of this restaurant dine in tents or small one-room buildings with large windows. We opted to eat in of the tents and sat with Renchen and three of his friends. One was a nomadic herdsman, one was a Tibetan Medicine doctor, and one was a herdsman and a doctor. As it turns out the two doctors were Renchen's classmates at medical school in Lhasa.


Lunch was quite an adventure! We tried mutton, yak, local greens, cucumber, bread, scrambled eggs, soup, and tea. As we ate, the Tibetans taught us how to say everything in their local Amdo dialect. Some examples:

mutton: li ha
yak: gam ha
bread: go ri
tea: cha
garlic: gam bo
delicious: shim go ri

After lunch we walked around the beach for a bit and then headed home. On the way back we saw several goats and yaks all over the hillsides. Renchen explained that every summer for about 5 weeks, all of the nomads head to that one area with their herds.