Day 8: Serendipity in Lanzhou

Lanzhou is a place you go when you want to get to other places.  It’s like community college.  We came here dreaming up big plans of taking a day trip to a small buddhist village called Xiahe (pronounced: Jah-hoo, with the J sound from “dijon” and the OO sound from “book.”  Sorry, that’s as well as I can explain these sounds.) and then going to Tibet.  Of course, in an effort to make the trip as exciting and unpredictable as possible, we didn’t bother to have the transportation for these trips reserved yet.