Ah, where to begin. Let's see, geography first. To the north of the Himalaya there is a huge plateau at an altitude of 12.000 feet. To the north-east of the is the city of Lanzhou. That's where this begins. We met a student there who told us he'd been protesting along with everyone else the year before during the Tien an men protests, and he was still busy with grafitti and stuff. His english was excceptionally good for a chinese, so it was nice and easy the talk to him.

We told him we'd heard of a place called Xiahe in chinese, or Labrang, it's original name. The road to that place was officially open, but tourists were not allowed to buy bus tickets. Being as pragmatic as a chinese can be he bought the bus tickets for us and the next morning we were ready to go.

The bus was there, right where it should be, and we got in. Since Labrang is a very remote place the people on the bus were pretty amazed to see a couple of white bignoses climb aboard, but that wasn't the first time. After an hour of climbing the plateau a man came round to check the tickets, and when we showed him ours it was obvious there was something wrong, in his opinion. We gathered it was the fact that we were foreigners, and not supposed to be there, so we did as if we didn't understand and cheerfully held out our tickets. After 15 minutes he gave us a note (in chinese)...

The 13 hour drive through the mountains is one I'll never forget. Mountains on the right, abyss on the left, and a dirtroad slightly wider than the bus which it traversed at 50 Mph. The holes in the road were large enough to launch you against the ceiling. And in the mean time there was this one chinese guy who obviously had never seen westerners before, because he spent a couple of hours (literally) turned around in his seat, staring at us with his mouth wide open.

When we finally arrived in the hamlet of Labrang we first looked around to see where we had gotten to. It was pretty cold, and the landscape was barren, but the atmosphere had something very pleasant.

You can imagine our surprise when a second bus stopped shortly after our arrival, with another dutch couple in it. After a little chatting we decided to follow the tips people had given us before we left and started walking towards the other end of the temple complex. And, as promised, there we found our hotel . The room was exceptionally simple, and we had to share it with the other couple.

On our way back to the village we had to cross a river where the local women were doing the laundry . In a field just across the river there was a large tent, resembling a mongolese one, and there were a lot of children playing there. When they saw us they immediately circled around us. Fearing being pick-pocketed or something we were very careful, but it soon came clear there was absolutely no reason for that. They merely wanted us to sit in their tent, and exchange trinkets with us. I've never had so much result handing out lighters and stamps.

It was time to have something to eat and go and discover the temple and the village the following day.

The thing that struck us most was the tranquility of the place. There was an extremely benign atmosphere about it that I find rather hard to describe. In spite of their hardships the people seemed to be very happy, and immensely friendly.

The monatery itself was about half a mile from east to west, and a quarter of amile from north to south. A large portion of the pace inside was taken up by small living quarters for the monks. The rest was filled with squares and official buildings, beautifully decorated. We'd heard that freedom of religion in China was non-existent, but this complex was in total denial of that information.

Some 95% of the people in Labrang were of 'Tibetan' ethnicity. The occupying chinese were a minority that you hardy saw.

Labrang is the largest Tibetan monastery outside of what we currently know a Tibet. This region was conquered by the chinese several hundreds of years ago. Since it has such a high religious value people from all over the region come to Labrang on a pilgrimage. They walk around the wall surrounding the temple complex, constantly touching small plates containing prayers that are set into the wall. Depending on how religious they are they will walk around the temple up to 12 times, which pretty much takes them all day.

Another way of expressing their belief is to walk around the domed shrines. Every other step they will slap two wooden planks they have tied to their hands together, fall on their knees, lie on their bellies, and get up again. They take two more steps and repeat the whole thing.

One of the more impressive things about this culture is the inventive way in which people pray. There are wheels, varying in size, with a piece of paper containing a prayer inside them. As they spin the wheel, the prayer is flung into the world. These wheels can be very small, ornamented with gold, or very large with colourful paintings on them. The ones on the picture to the left are 5 feet high.

There are also really small ones that are fitted on a stick, with a weight on a piece of rope. Holding the stick in your hand and swinging it will make the wheel on top spin. Once we were sitting outside a little resaurant and an old woman came by asking us something we couldn't understand, obviously. We agreed with whatever it was, and it turned out that if we gave her money she'd spin her wheel, thus saying our prayers for us. Not aware of the local rate for prayers we gave her the equivalet of a dime and she nearly spun her arm off during the next 15 minutes.

An other aspect of the place was the obvious poverty. These people had next to nothing, and yet they did not seem to mind - they did not even beg. The times that someone did ask for money, there was always a favour in return.

At a certain point we concluded it was time to explore the area around the village. At this altitude it was hard to climb, but we managed to walk a good way up on the mountains south of the village. The view was magnificent, and birds of prey were flying high above us. When we were on our way back down, however, we heard a strange noise. At first we thought it must be cows or something, but since we hadn't seen any we concluded this could not be the case. When we came in view of the temple again we noticed that it definitely was not cows we'd heard. It was the sound of monks blowing huge horns.

They did this every other day or so. It was like an open-air concert. Some monks sat on the other side of the river listening to the music. All in all it was a very odd situation, the mysterious sound of these horns in a place like this.