On Thursday we went to Qinghai Lake. It is located about 100 km west of Xining on a plateau at 10,515 feet above sea level. It is the largest lake in China, somewhere around 2200 square miles total. Like our Great Salt Lake in Utah, rivers feed into the lake but don't flow to the sea, therefore, salts get trapped there. This lake did support a fishing economy but that is past. Because of changes in rainfall and water uses on the streams flowing into the lake, the lake has been shrinking for several years. This billboard gives you a sense of the terrain around the lake. If you want to see a satellite image, wikipedia has a good one from 1994.
Char and I spent some time in a nomad encampment on the grasslands south of the lake in 1995. It was very nostalgic for me to be back in this region; I just wanted to get on horseback and travel up into the hills again!
The Tibetans in this area take most of their livestock up into the high mountain ranges during the brief summer season. They raise mostly sheep and Yaks (you do see the occasional flock of goats and some cattle hybrids too.)
This area also produces a lot of canola oil during its brief growing season. Canola comes from rapeseed which has the most beautiful yellow flowers. There are many fields near the lake that are covered in them. A great example of one of those will be in the next post of Tibetan scenes.
I chose the following picture of rapeseed fields on a mountain top to demonstrate what I experienced on the grasslands in 1995: we would be in the grasslands, looking at mountains off in the distance. When we finally arrived at those "mountains" and climbed them, we would find that there were actually flat grasslands on top of those extending off in the distance towards other mountains which, when we climbed them...well, you get the picture. The fields on top of this mountain are part of the grasslands we were leaving behind us on our way back down to Xining.
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