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About Xiahe:
Xiahe is a small Tibetan town high up in the mountains of Gansu. It boasts of the Labrang monastery, the biggest yellow hat sect monastery outside Lhasa and houses more than two thousand monks. The kora walk (pilgrims walk) goes around the monastery and it will take an hour to walk around it as you follow the Tibetan pilgrims on their daily kora walks. In addition to the numerous temple halls, Living Buddha residences and living quarters for the monks, Labrang is also home to six colleges for monks namely the institute of Esoteric Buddhism, the higher and lower institutes of Theology, the institute of medicine, the institute of astrology and the institute of law. Besides visiting the temples with the guided monk tours, you can easily spend several hours just walking around the monastery and taking in the atmosphere. Xiahe has two nunnerys on either side of the town. Around and beyond the town are large expanses of open grasslands, where the Tibetan nomads graze their yak and sheep herds. The Sanke grasslands is 14 kms away and does get a bit crowded during the holidays with local tourists. The Ganjia grasslands is 34 kms on the other side and the countryside is better and less crowded, there you can also visit the Takkar gorge and the small Takkar monastery up a mountain top. Another 25 kms from Xiahe towards Lanzhou is this small sacred lake called Tarzang lake, high up a higher mountain, you can make a lovely picnic and walk around it in half an hour. The tourist season is from May to October, July and August being the best time to visit with the greenness of the vast grasslands and the wild flowers out. A stone throw away from our hotel there are a couple of mountains to hike up and enjoy a birds eye view of the monastery and the valley
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