Getting used to the early wake ups and I'm up and out of bed at about 6.30am ready to make my way to the bus station to jump on my bus bound for the town of Kanding and the start of my high altitude journeys. As I'm milling around the hostel I end up talking to an Israeli guy and girl called Itay and Moran, who are also going to Kanding that day and we all end up on the same 9am bus heading west. Pulling into Kanding which sits at a comfortable altitude of 2616m, it is noticeably colder up here than down in Chengdu, I'm still braving it in a T-shirt as it's not freezing... yet.
We visit a few of the monasteries in Kanding and I want to try and climb one of the nearby mo
untains, but as it's getting dark soon and a British tourist was murdered on it a few years ago he thinks it's not a good idea. I guess he has a point, although if I was by myself I know I would have recklessly climbed right to the top. In a massive coincidence, there are two people staying in the same place in Kanding who are Israeli... they were also in my room in Chengdu, small world. About 30mins later, we meet two more people in the hostel and low and behold they are also Israeli, it gets even smaller. For dinner we hit a Tibetan style restaurant and sip Yak butter tea, eat a plate 
of Yak meat and lovely potato dumplings. As we are getting into Tibetan areas and approaching the Tibetan border, the architecture changes and there are a lot of Tibetan style monasteries. The people also change, starting to look different and wear more colourful clothes and seem a lot more eccentric.The best bit
about today is seeing so many monks all walking around dressed in their robes and the prize has to go to the two who were playing pool on the road side.
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