One of the many mani walls (of slates carved with sacred mantra) (right)
Moon over the sacred lake / En route back to Xining
On the train to Golmud - the vast northern Changtang desert
24 hours on a train passing through a desert can seem a long time...
Glorious Golmud (11 200 feet)
Despite our very best diplomacy the Public Security Bureau would not allow us to continue to Lhasa
It took 6 days to get back to Hong Kong for our flights home
(train to Xining - train to Xi'an - flight to Guangzhou - train to Hong
Kong)
It would have been much more challenging had the country not been
devoid of the usual many foreign tourists due to the Tiananmen affair...