The Largest Lake in China…

 Today was a short 140k drive to the small town of Heimahexiang on the edge of Lake Qinghai, which is the largest lake in China. The lake is 4,500 square kilometres and 25 metres deep at the deepest. As it has dried up a lot, it is now slightly salty; although Alim tells us that it has being slowly filling for the last 50 years.

    On the way to the lake we made 2 stops; one beside a canola or oil seed rape field in full flower, where Chinese tourists were having horse and yak rides around the paddock. The second stop was a kind of market town selling lots of animal skins. Most of the skins were fox, dogs, rabbits, a few wolves and some sort of medium sized mountain cats; but thankfully no snow leopard skins. The surprising and sad thing was the stall selling 2 real small tiger skins. Also at this place we saw some very large Tibetan dogs that are also call Lion dogs. When you look at the pictures you will understand what I mean!

    After checking into the hotel and being able to use their laundry to do some washing, we went for a drive further along the lake to look for a track down to the water’s edge. After about 9k we turned down this track through a farm to get to the waters edge. The farmer came down as we pulled up to collect the entry fee of 10 yuan. He should be very happy today because as we drove Penny down there, six other cars followed us down to look at her. They all had to pay the farmer the 10 yuan as well. Some of them wanted to leave straight – away but all who entered had to pay!