One person and one car, 10,000 kilometers of self-driving travel in Northwest, Gannan, and Sichuan (2) Qinghai Lake, Gangcha, and Cliff

The glory was once so dazzling
Now it has disappeared from my sight
Even if I can never bring it back
That moment of lush greenery and gorgeous flowers
We will not be sad, but from the residue
Looking for a force

——Ode: "Declaration of Immortality", verse 10

During this trip, I woke up naturally every day without an alarm clock.

On May 20, I woke up at around 6 a.m. even though I didn’t have an alarm clock.

I'm not a person who likes to watch sunrises.

It’s past 6 o’clock in Qinghai Lake, and the sun has already risen.

Put on thick clothes and walk out of the hotel. The air is cool and the surroundings are quiet.

Under the morning light, the snow-capped mountains, lakes and grassland are like adding a layer of filters, creating a three-dimensional sense of light and shadow.

On this day, I passed Qinghai Lake Huanhu East Road, Gangcha (Cangyang Gyatso Cultural Square), Qinghai Lake Cliff, and Huanhu West Road.

Qinghai Lake East Lake

Driving on the Huanhu East Road, there are snow-capped mountains in front and snow-capped mountains behind.

Passing by a lakeside meadow with beautiful scenery, there was a parking space nearby. Locals charged 10 yuan for parking.

There are horses and white yaks on the pasture, there are birds on the lake, and the grass is yellow-green.

You can also ride horses on the pasture. Some herdsmen asked me many times to say, "Come on, handsome guy, let's ride a ride." But I didn't ride.

I stayed in this pasture for more than an hour without realizing it, just looking at the scenery, taking photos, and watching the horses squeaking and drinking water. It was not boring at all. If there hadn't been "Come on, handsome guy, let's ride it" over and over again, I would have stayed a little longer.

Going north along the Qinghai Lake Huanhu East Road, what I didn't expect was that in addition to grasslands, wetlands, and snow-capped mountains, Qinghai Lake actually also has the Gobi Desert.

I stopped for a while at the Xiaobohu parking area.

Xiaobo Lake has a touching story of ecological protection. In the 1990s, Xiaobo Lake was a tourist attraction in Qinghai Lake. Due to over-exploitation, tourists discarded garbage at will, and the ecology was destroyed. For more than 20 years, Tibetan herdsman Nanjia has been picking up garbage on the edge of Qinghai Lake, treating saline-alkali land, and restoring the ecology of the Xiaopo Lake wetland. Nanjia has restored the ecosystem of Xiaobo Lake through 20 years of efforts.

Please, stop littering.

Bring a trash bag with you when traveling to take your trash with you.

Gangcha County

Gangcha County is not my destination. From Huanhu East Road to Huanhu West Road, you will pass through Gangcha County on the north shore of Qinghai Lake.

The small town of Gangcha is clean and quiet. It has its own characteristics and tone. It has windmills, meadows, Tsangyang Gyatso Cultural Square, and the iconic building - the Compassion Wisdom Eyes Gratitude Tower.

Both sides of the road are being constructed and beautified, and large swaths of prayer flags are fluttering in the wind. It will be beautiful when it is completed.

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In order to commemorate Cangyang Gyatso, Gangcha built Cangyang Gyatso Cultural Square (free to visit), which contains Cangyang Gyatso's poetry wall. Today happened to be 520, and I reviewed the poems written by Tsangyang Gyatso. I don’t really like the typography on the poetry wall, it’s hard to read.

The first thing is that it’s best not to meet each other, so you don’t have to fall in love

Secondly, it’s best not to be familiar with each other, so you don’t miss each other

White samye rooster

Please don’t twitter prematurely

My childhood sweetheart and I

The outpouring of heartfelt words is not over yet

Not to mention the Ming Tsangyang Gyatso

Gone to find a lover

Just as you need

Others need it too

I was alone in the entire square, and the only sounds I could hear were the chirping of birds and the sound of the wind.

After resting in Gangcha and having a self-heating meal, the next stop was to Qinghai Lake Cliff.

Qinghai Lake Cliff

You can navigate directly to "Qinghai Lake Cliff" on Amap or Baidu Map. how to get to? Please watch 👆 the video above.

This is a niche attraction, and strictly speaking it is not an attraction. You can't find its information in travel books such as self-driving map manuals, but you may easily find it in Xiaohongshu and Douyin.

After turning from National Highway 315, the bumpy road is not easy to walk on. Cars should be careful of scraping the chassis. If it rains, it will turn into a muddy road with pits, so it is not recommended to go there.

The traffic video was shot by a sports camera with good anti-shake performance. The video does not look too shaken. In fact, the car was shaking around and you could hear the sound of bottled water and instant noodles shaking.

When the car is about to reach the lake, someone will stop the car and charge 10 yuan. This 10 yuan can only be spent wandering around the lake below the cliff. If you want to go up to the Sea Sacrifice Platform (cliff), some people charge 10 yuan.

In other words, it costs 20 yuan to go to the top of the cliff.

The cliff is at the prayer flag of Haitai.

The view here is very broad, but the weather is not very good, and it is cloudy and sunny. The wind was strong and cold, and it felt like I was at the seaside in winter.

Sometimes there are birds gliding on the water, riding the wind and waves.

The biscuits I bought in advance in Pingliang can be used to feed the birds. Feeding the birds is one of my favorite things to do.

People on the Internet say that this is the only cliff in Qinghai Lake. This is wrong. Because the next day, I accidentally found another cliff. It is free and no one charges money. There are natural scenery and cultural customs there. The scenery is richer than this cliff.

When we left the cliff, it was already past seven in the evening.

Watch the sunset and stay at Huanhu West Road

It's past seven o'clock in the evening, and I haven't decided where to spend the night.

How about going to Chaka Town? The distance is more than 160 kilometers and we will arrive at about 10 o'clock in the evening.

So we drove along Huanhu West Road, and the scenery continued to be picturesque along the way.

The scenery on the West Huanhu Road is far better than that on the East Huanhu Road. This section of the road along the lake is very long.

I watched the sunset in a parking area on Huanhu West Road.

It quickly became dark, and we were still far away from Chaka Town.

I could vaguely see that the scenery on the roadside was not bad, but I suddenly felt that I was wrong.

I shouldn’t let the beautiful scenery along the way be submerged in the night just to hurry up. The trip around the West Lake Lake Road shouldn’t end in the dark.

So, I decided not to go to Chaka Town tonight, but to stay at Huanhu West Road, and experience the scenery of Huanhu West Road the next day.

I booked a hotel on Huanhu West Road - Qinghai Lake Plateau Sapphire Hotel - on my mobile phone.

This is the best thing about traveling in the off-season. Hotels are easy to book and there is no need to book in advance, making travel more flexible.

We turned around, drove twenty or thirty kilometers back, and checked into the Plateau Sapphire Hotel.

Check-in hotel: Qinghai Lake Plateau Sapphire Hotel

Hotel price: 193 yuan

Recommendation index: Strongly recommended. The room is heated, the on-site restaurant is delicious, and the breakfast includes beef and mutton. The location is good, you can walk directly to Qinghai Lake.

I am very satisfied with this hotel and even a little grateful for it.

When I arrived, I was hungry and greedy. It has its own restaurant. I want to eat a large plate of chicken. In the past two days, some netizens have tipped me. The boss said that the large plate of chicken was too much for one person to eat.

When you go out alone, eating is really a problem. You always have to consider whether you can finish the meal.

I ordered a mutton stir-fried with green onions and a lettuce dish, and had three bowls of rice, all on a disc.

The mutton tastes great and the price is more than 60 yuan. It is stir-fried with onions, green peppers, cumin and pepper. It is fragrant and chewy. Now I am drooling just thinking about it.

I was healed by the food and felt happy both physically and mentally. I never thought there was a place in the "wilderness" where I could eat well and sleep well.

It is also a hotel by Qinghai Lake. This hotel is much better than the one yesterday. There are a few small details. It has free drinking water from Nongfu Spring, three sets of disposable toiletries, and the disposable slippers are thicker than the hotels I have stayed in before. The bathroom is quite clean and should have been newly renovated.

Here, there is heating, a water heater, WiFi, and a suitable table, chair, and computer.