On July 20, 2010, the weather was fine. At 9 a.m., the bus departed again, carrying us toward Qinghai Lake, China's largest lake. The name "Qinghai Lake" has been familiar in middle school geography textbooks for a long time, and today I want to visit it in person, sleeping on the shore of the lake, and my heart is full of expectation and joy.
There are two roads to Qinghai Lake, one is along the 314 National Highway to the town of Dumping River on the Qinghai-Tibet Line, that is, the 109 National Highway to qinghai lake fishing grounds, about 87 kilometers; the other takes the Qinghai 204 Provincial Highway, directly to the Qinghai Lake 151 base, and intersects with the 109 National Highway here, this road is built on a high mountain, there are many detours, but the distance is short, only 47 kilometers. So we chose this short path.
Overlooking Qinghai Lake
After the previous few days of highland travel, I had gradually adapted to the climate of the high altitude area, and the uncomfortable altitude sickness left me, and along the way, although the bus crossed several high mountain passes, I did not feel tight and breathless. In fact, the gonghe county town where we stayed last night, as well as the Longyangxia reservoir in front of it, the altitude is below 2600, and the height of Qinghai Lake is about 3260 above sea level, so today we are on the plateau again!
Wolf poison flowers bloom on the mouth of Qinghai Lake
After driving for two hours, down to the edge of a mountain, three kinds of landscape intertwined pictures suddenly appeared in front of the line of sight: nearby, it was a hillside that continuously extended downwards, and the winding mountain road snaked and circled between the green carpet-like mountains; at the foot of the mountain, the golden rapeseed flower field formed a huge square, scattered on the vast flat, endless grassland; in the far low place, there was the Qinghai Lake, which was full of blue waves and water and sky, and the white clouds above the blue lake, and a slender sandbar loomed under the white clouds...
Scenery of Qinghai Lake
At the edge of the mountain, we stopped for 20 minutes, this time our camera was only aimed in one direction, that is, Qinghai Lake. I immediately became full of poetry and recited Haizi's very famous poem to the donkey friends: "From tomorrow onwards, I will live happily, feeding horses, chopping firewood, and traveling the world." From tomorrow onwards, I want to care about grain and vegetables, I have a house, facing the sea, spring blossoms..." Caused everyone to a sparse applause, haha, applause is not warm enough, it doesn't matter, anyway, I have traveled around the world to qinghai lakeside!
The bus finally reached the grassland at the foot of the mountain, and the road was closed just as it was about to enter the 109 National Highway of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway. Several police cars and some police officers appeared at the intersection of the roads, and barricades were set up at the intersection to prohibit the passage of vehicles. The police told us that the 2010 "Qinghai Lake International Road Cycling Race" will pass through here tomorrow morning, and now the staff of the organizing committee is setting up race signs on the national highway. We didn't complain in the slightest, but took advantage of this rare opportunity to get off the bus and enjoy the scenery.
At this time, the canola flowers on both sides of the highway are in full bloom, and the air is filled with the fragrance of cauliflower. On the endless sea of flowers, tall towers and transmission lines draw beautiful and smooth lines on the yellow-and-green "canvas", like Beethoven's staves sketched by hand, and the movement on the top is the natural sound of Qinghai Lake.
Stop at the intersection of Provincial Highway 204 and National Highway 109
After about 15 minutes, National Highway 109 resumed traffic. The bus drove us all the way along National Highway 109, where was the destination? I don't know! About in our eyes, because tonight to stay in the tent, it doesn't matter if there is a hotel where you stay, but it must be close enough to the lake, the scenery must be beautiful enough, and the population must be enough...
We gave the glorious task of site selection to the guy named "Cone", although he was always asleep like a pig and withered during the previous journey, but this boy walked more places and his vision was not bad, so he was given a chance to do his best and "make up for it"! The "cones" did not live up to expectations, and along the way his eyes shrank and narrowed, and the last glance was settled, taking us to a private ranch.
It's a small ranch with only four people and a dog. The owners are a Tibetan couple with a pair of minor children. The dog was chained and "exiled" on the grass far from the owner's tent, tall and fierce, and turned out to be a purebred Tibetan mastiff! It was furious at the arrival of us uninvited guests, staring at us with dead eyes, grinning its teeth, and barking incessantly.
Picnic on the shores of Qinghai Lake
After negotiating with the owner, he agreed to camp on the lakeside meadow near the ranch on the condition that we pay a camping fee of 10 yuan per tent. We immediately found the ideal camp, which is about 70 meters away from the shore of Qinghai Lake in a straight line, and about two or three meters from the height of the lake below, which is the shoreline of a lake basin formed after the lake water has dried up and retreated. Subsequently, 8 brightly colored tents were lined up on the high ridge full of wildflowers, facing the great lake, and the summer flowers bloomed.
Camp on the shores of Qinghai Lake
This time, I chose to be "isolated" and put my tent on the grass beach closer to Qinghai Lake under the high ridge. I believe in my eyesight and judgment, because although the grass where I camped is not as lush as on the high ridge, the ground is covered with pebbles, indicating that this place was once the bottom of the lake that was flooded by the holy waters of Qinghai Lake. I'm not a fish, but I can spend the night lying on the "bottom" of Qinghai Lake. They live on the shore at best! Sometimes, doing things really needs to be carefully considered, don't make a lifelong mistake such as "the tentacle is imminent, but it is missing", I did not make such a mistake on the shore of Qinghai Lake!
The author of this article camped alone
For hours, from arriving at the lake at midday to camping at sunset and savoring the delicacies prepared by the herders, the donkeys were in constant excitement. No one wants to waste this gentle and silky sunshine in vain, and everyone wants to take advantage of this sunny weather to view the beauty of the sacred lake on the plateau, feel the magical creation of nature, and appreciate the magnificent outline of the motherland's rivers and mountains. I am a reader, and I will naturally pay attention to more details of Qinghai Lake.
Blue sky and white clouds
Before leaving Guiyang, I carefully consulted the relevant information about Qinghai Lake and knew that it was located in the northeast of Qinghai Province, called "Wrong Wenbo" in Tibetan and "Kukunor" in Mongolian, which means "blue lake". Qinghai Lake covers an area of 4,583 square kilometers and has a circumference of more than 360 kilometers, more than twice the size of the famous Taihu Lake. The lake is long from east to west, narrow from north to south, and slightly oval in shape. At first glance, it looks like a fat poplar leaf. The average depth of the lake is about 19 meters, the maximum depth is 28 meters (38 meters), and the lake surface is 3260 meters above sea level, which is higher than the two Dongyue Taishan Mountains. Due to its high terrain, the climate is very cool. Even in the scorching summer, the average daily temperature is only 15 °C in the left center, which is an ideal summer resort.
Pure Land on Earth
Qinghai Lake is a vast area, vast grassland, many rivers, abundant water and grass, quiet environment, the thousand-mile grassland around the lake was once the traditional pasture of the Tibetan people's Prancing Horse, but since the 1960s, with the large-scale reclamation movement and overgrazing and fishing, the ecological environment here has suffered catastrophic damage. Humanity has paid a terrible price for this.
There are two precious "treasures" in the Qinghai Lake area, one is the naked carp swimming in the lake, also known as the Huangyu, and the other is the Przewalski's hartebeest running on the ground. However, we did not see even a single "treasure" on our trip to Qinghai Lake. Huangyu is the only fish in Qinghai Lake, fresh and delicious. During the famine of the 1960s, they filled the stomachs of countless people and are rarely seen in lakes today. Przewalski's gazelle is an interesting animal, found and named in 1875 by the Russian explorer Przewalski in the Ordos grassland of Inner Mongolia, they were widely distributed in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai region, but due to the influence of human production activities, the current habitat is only left in the Qinghai Lakeside Lake area, the number has been less than a thousand, is the world's most endangered ungulates, more precious than the national treasure giant panda.
A horse grazes leisurely
My donkey friends and I traveled back and forth between the tent and the lake, full of fresh curiosity about all the scenery of Qinghai Lake. The water of the lake is clear and blue, and water birds pass by from time to time on the surface of the water. In the breeze, the lake rolls up the waves, making a sound of hitting the shore. Between the lake and the grass there is a layer of white "gasket" that is 30 or 40 meters wide, just like the rubber pressure pad embedded under the lid of the pressure cooker, and there is a 360 km long "gasket" around the lake of 360 kilometers, and this "pressure cooker pressure pad" is really big enough! The "gasket" of Qinghai Lake is not made of eraser, its production materials are stone and salt salt, the original Qinghai Lake is a saltwater lake, the salt content is very high, after the water evaporates, the salt alkali covers the stone that exposes the lake surface, forming a layer of white frost. These stones on the shore of the lake have been submerged and floated out many times, and the salt scale on the top has formed a layer, removing these thick salt scales, revealing a deep red texture inside, which is the famous Qinghai Lake stone bar. I usually like to look at the stone and hide the stone, naturally will not let go of the opportunity to play in Qinghai Lake, picked up a few pieces of better texture "frost-wrapped stone" to bring back to Guiyang, is a big harvest of swimming in Gannan!
Piles of stones piled up by Tibetan herders
Qinghai Lake is the "holy lake" in the hearts of the Tibetan people, and every year there are devout Tibetans worshiping the lake, and it is said that it takes more than a month to surround the lake. More Tibetans come to the lake nearby to hold religious ceremonies. Therefore, on the shores of Qinghai Lake, you can see some piles of stones piled up everywhere, with flagpoles on them and prayer flags hanging from them, which are the religious dojos of the Tibetans.
Qinghai Lake gave me the biggest impression that she was not a lake, but a sea. In my subconscious, the lake has an edge and the sea has no end. Qinghai Lake completely subverted all my common sense of lakes in the past, in fact, the lake can be large enough, so large that it cannot see the edge like the sea. Qinghai Lake is 105 kilometers long, 63 kilometers wide, and has an area as large as a half-Guiyang, can you see the opposite shore of such a large piece of water? Standing by the lake, I had an inexplicable awe of this wide and deep lake, so much so that I did not dare to pull up my pants and go down to the lake to wash and play.
A landscape on the grassy prairie that caught my attention was the ubiquitous fence. These fences, made of cement columns, wooden poles and wire "woven", divide the fertile fields around the lake into countless "squares" of large and small sizes, no matter where you are, you can never escape these "heavenly nets". The establishment of fences is a matter that has only appeared in the past 20 years, and the functions of fences are twofold: one is to encircle grasslands and prohibit grazing; the other is to demarcate land boundaries. Each "square" is a private territory, "my territory is my master" within the "square", no wonder the previous ranchers had to levy camping fees on us! I disagree with the practice of setting up pasture fences in the name of protecting Qinghai Lake, because it not only divides the vast and flat grassland into pieces, but also restricts and blocks the free space for wild animals to roam and drink water. Today, poaching in the Qinghai Lake area is almost forbidden, but the tragedy of the endangerment of Przewalski's antelope continues to be staged, and the culprit is precisely these pasture fences, which cannot but be said to be a great irony.
Wildflowers bloom on the shores of Qinghai Lake
Go to Qinghai Lake, when the lake and mountains are full of eyes, then it is the turn of beef and mutton to feast. The cattle, sheep and livestock here can be called the "nobles" of the same kind, they drink the perfect supplement, eat cordyceps, sleep on the meadow sofa, so the meat is tender and tender, and there is no smell. For dinner we spent a lot of money and let the ranch owner stew a large pressure cooker of fresh lamb, with only water and a little salt to ensure the original taste. In order to make the mutton soup taste more delicious, they also bought a basket of yellow mushrooms they freshly picked at a high price of 40 yuan per kilogram...
Shop cordyceps collected by herders
The sun gradually set in the west, and the light of the sun was released freely on the huge drawing paper of Qinghai Lake, eager to dye every gap into a colorful color. We stood on a high hill, facing west, with cameras in hand, sending off the sunset, taking pictures of the sunset, waiting for the bright stars to fill the sky above us. At 10:00 p.m., I said goodbye to my donkey friends who were sleeping in Gaokan and walked alone to the "bottom of the lake" in Qinghai, not choosing suicide, but expecting to meet the little dragon girl. Outside the tent, there was silence, and only then did I know that there were no frogs in Qinghai Lake, and naturally there were no frogs. I carefully wrote a journal in the tent, and the only thing that disturbed me was the rustle of the grass on the floor beneath me. On the shore of a silent lake, this subtle sound is enough to make me realize that as long as I am not deaf, the world will definitely make a sound for you to hear.
Crystal clear lake water
In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a crackling sound. yes? It's raining! Wasn't it a few hours ago that the sunset was full of stars? How did it suddenly change its face? That's right! It's raining! This is the most peculiar place of the plateau climate, I have already seen it in the Nianbao Yuze Ice Field, and there is no fuss. Overnight in Qinghai Lake, lying down to listen to Xiao Xiao's rain. This is really a rare experience in my life, and I should feel fortunate that it is. Thinking of this, my mood became relieved, so I enjoyed listening to the sound of the rain hitting the tent and fell asleep until dawn.
Quiet nights
On the morning of July 21, at the repeated urging of my fellow donkeys, I lazily climbed out of the tent. Although the rain has been pouring down non-stop, we must say goodbye to Qinghai Lake, because today there is a long journey waiting for us to trek, and the next stop is Qilian, a county town named after the mountain.
Lie on the "bottom of the lake" in Qinghai and feel the stars on a rainy night. From this day on, I have more memories in my life that are worth remembering. Looking back at that starry rainy night more than three hundred years ago, the life of the sixth Dalai Lama Cangyang Gyatso ended here, leaving behind the desolate and mournful love song of "on the top of that eastern mountain", and I want to start from here today, not afraid of difficulties and obstacles, not afraid of the long road ahead, I am eager to measure every inch of the motherland with my footsteps, over thousands of rivers and mountains, I will be able to follow my wishes...