Qinghai Tours
Qinghai is the province travelers cross to reach Tibet and rarely stop to explore, which is exactly why it rewards the ones who do. It holds the largest lake in China - Qinghai Lake, a 4,300-square-kilometer sheet of blue ringed by grassland at 3,200 meters - and Chaka Salt Lake, whose saturated brine holds a reflection so perfect that Chinese travelers call it the Mirror of the Sky. Kumbum Monastery, birthplace of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, anchors a living monastic culture in the east, while the Regong art towns of Tongren keep a 500-year thangka painting tradition that UNESCO recognized in 2009. West of Xining the Qaidam Basin opens into an inventory of superlatives: Chaerhan, the largest salt lake in China; the emerald brine pools of Dachaidan; and the Wusute water yardangs, the only yardang field on earth that rises out of a lake. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway climbs from Xining toward Golmud and the Kunlun Pass, and the July rape-flower seas of Menyuan turn the Qilian foothills gold. Xining Caojiabu International Airport is open to the 240-hour visa-free transit policy, and the city sits on high-speed rail from Lanzhou and Xi'an. Our private Qinghai tours run from two-day Xining breaks to eight-day grand loops, always with a licensed English-speaking guide and a private car.
