With the Malaysian photographers, we started this trip on late July. 1 bus, 10 people, 14 days, 1500KM, Chengdu to Qinghai Lake overland.
The first stop is the Hongyuan Town located on the high attitude grassland, July is only the late spring on the grassland, we can still see lots blooming flowers.
Unlucky, We drove into a storm just after this picture, big hails came with the heavy rain. Our hotel were some tents on the grassland, very good location to shoot the milky way, but those tents were destroyed after the hail : - o We had to change to a hotel in the Hongyuan town, but lucky we didn't stay in that tent, it kept rained for the whole night.
The next day gave us a good weather, we were heading to Tangke this day for the view of the Yellow River. It was a hard climbing up from the hotel to the view platform. Old people in the group asked some local porters to carry their heavy camera gears. We wait for 3 hours on the platform for sunset view.
The tempreture dropped to 10C right after the sunset, we hurried up back to hotel and had later dinner that day. After dinner there were still some guys walking out to shoot the milky way.
Next destination is a little town called Zhagana which is not very famous yet, it is 5 hours drive from Tangke and we think this town will go popular in next few years.
Our hotel in Zhagana was amazing, rooms were on top floor with a huge balcony to shoot the milky way. And just after our check in, we had a rainbow coming after the hills.
The milky way in Zhagana from our hotel.
After saying goodbye to Zhagana, we were crossing into Qinghai Province the next day. The first spot we stopped for is the Gahai Lake, huge lake with beautiful sky. Sure can get a better reflection on lakeside but we were asked not to walk there by local administrator.
Then we heading directly to Qinghai lake, after some beautiful drive on grassland, we arrive in Qinnghai lake someday after lunch. Look at these guys after they’ve got some good pictures.
We chose to stay at Heimahe Town in the west Qinghai Lake which is the best spot for shooting the sunrise.
And we stayed there for 2 nights to make sure we don't miss anything, the weather is changing very fast near the lake. We also got out for milky way shooting at night.
We’ve got another major spot is the Chaka Salt Lake 100KM west from Qinghai Lake, the hotel on Chaka town is quite simple, but we still get good sleep and good pictures. Be ware that there will be countless people in these famous spots, we had to walk very far from the crowds to get a good picture.
The night of Chaka Lake is wonderful, very little wind gave us good chances to shoot the reflection of the milky way.
The final two nights stay near the lake and we took the flight at Lanzhou to back to Chengdu. End of the wonderful photo hunting trip.
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