West China 中国西部 April & May 2005 孔思义 & 黄亚萍
 
GANSU & QINGHAI PROVINCE  甘肃 青海省 3
03 May Xining to Zhangye  西宁市－甘肃张掖
 
Nigel drove 340 km over two mountain ranges to get to the Hexi corridor 贺西走廊, at the eastern end of the Silk Road. The road was under construction most of the way.
 
Roadworks
 
There was 40km of good road, followed by 200km of road under construction. We stopped at the checkpoint at the Qinghai/Gansu甘肃 border and some of the people hanging around pointed out that one of our tyres was losing air.
 
Checkpoint Charlies
 
Nigel was keen to try out his tyre repair kit, so the checkpoint staff were treated to the sight of two burly “laowai” 老外 using a device like a corkscrew trying to stuff rubber and glue into the cavity in the tyre.  Eventually we gave up and put the spare on. We didn’t realise it at the time, but Nigel had sprained his left wrist badly in the process.
 
Shepherdess, Gansu Province
 
The last 100km into Zhangye 张掖 was on a good surface. In town we booked into the Honghao Hotel (RMB110) for two nights.  On a sunny evening we walked through the open main square and I saw a TV weather forecast on a huge open-air display. A spectacular cold front was coming down from the northwest.
 
 
04 May Zhangye - daytrip to Horses’ Hoof Temple (Matisi)
张掖市－马蹄寺
 
We found somewhere to get the puncture repaired (RMB20) and set off for Matisi马蹄寺, about 60km to the southeast, at the foot of the Qilian Shan 祁连山. Described in the guidebook as a pleasant temple set in beautiful, wooded hills we thought there might be some decent birds to be seen there. It began to rain, gently at first, in an area that plainly doesn’t get much precipitation.
 
We got to the main temple and decided it all looked rather busy and headed off east 9kms to Guanyin Tang 观音塘.  We had gone from 1900m elevation in Zhangye to about 2500 metres at the edge of the hills.  We stopped for a party of Pine Buntings (race fronto) and noticed that the sky had grown grey and cold. We parked below a temple carved in a sandstone cliff face, and, apart from a few sheep, had the valley to ourselves.
 
Horses’ Hoof Temple, Zhangye, Gansu
 
As we walked up we had scrub and pines to the left and cliff faces with excavated grottoes to the right. A party of Blue Eared Pheasants was disturbed. Beautiful Rosefinches perched prominently, and we had the first three of five redstart species seen that day; Black, Blue-fronted, and Hodgson’s.
 
“ Redstart Valley” – five species
 
 
Higher up the valley it began to snow. We had a pair of White-throated Redstarts as we crossed a fence.  Finally, as we approached the top of the valley another pair of redstarts made their entrance, both foraging for insects on the ground.  We were able to get some photos as they were more intent on feeding than worried about us. They were alashanicus -Alashan (or Przewalski’s) Redstart !
 
Ala Shan (Przewalski’s) Redstart
 
 
This was really the “Bird of the Trip” for us.
 
Setting off back to the main temple I noticed that Nigel was having difficulty with the handbrake. That evening he announced that he really couldn’t drive any further with his hand in such pain. So I’d be driving us along the Silk Road from then on.
 
We are all in snow!
 
Pine Bunting