Qinghai: visit China’s unknown province.
You’ve probably never heard of it: Qinghai. A province almost the size of Turkey somewhere in the eastern centre from China. A couple of years ago my Chinese uni-mate and I wanted to go to Tibet. However, as a non-Chinese citizen I wasn’t allowed to travel without a tour group in Tibet. Hence we came up with the idea of going to Qinghai, which is one of the provinces right next to Tibet.
You don’t need to join an organised tour to visit Qinghai! In fact, you will hardly encounter any other foreign tourists. My friend and I took an overnight train from Xian to Xining, the (extremely ugly) capital city of Qinghai. From Xining we hired a driver to show us around. Here are the real reasons why you are gonna want to visit Qinghai:
Landscapes from a different planet:
Refreshing rivers:
Culture:
More landscapes:
Is this even planet earth?
There is also a small desert in Qinghai:
And this road leading to a giant lake:
And last but not least, this road leads to a massive Canyon:
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Visited Summer 2013. All photos taken with my analog Nikon FM2.
7 comments
Hi!
How do we come there? 🙂
Hi Lidianne, I took an overnight train from Xian to Xining. However Xining also has an airport, and can be reached by plane from most major cities in China. I stayed in Xining and visited all the places in the pictures above by daytrips from Xining. Enjoy!
It looks so great! In september I’m going to China, so it would be really cool to visit this place. How many days do you recommend?
Perhaps at least 4 days, depending on how much time you have. Qinghai is enourmous, but a couple of days is enough to see most of the above places. 🙂
Wow! So excited to see those pics again! Rmb those locals ask u to take photos with them
Haha, everywhere in China!
By any chance can you recommend a driver. We are looking for someone to take us from Xining, to Dunhuang and to Golmud over 4/5 days, late July, and trying to avoid expensive travel companies. Thanks