There was only one bus each day from Tongren to our next stop, Xiahe, and that left at 8.30am. We set plenty of alarms so we'd wake up in time for this, but Cat sleepily turned them all off, so it was only by the luck of my having woken up at 7.45 in need of the loo that we made it in time. The bus was packed with local people in traditional dress, who were just as fascinated by us as we were by them. I made friends with the Tibetan lady sat next to me by showing her all the photos on my camera and giving her some (of Cat's) biscuits; she reciprocated with a peach so hard it was more like an apple. Later in the journey, she showed interest in my iPod so I offered her an earphone and we listened to Biffy Clyro (not chosen specifically for her, my iPod was on shuffle) together for a very short while. She claimed to like it, but the speed with which she handed back the earphone and said otherwise... All around the bus there was nothing but ducking and sweeping green hills, maybe the odd yurt and flock of sheep, and all of it very scenic, so we were actually quite enjoying the bus ride.

Unfortunately, a couple of hours in the quality of the roads had deteriorated to heavily pitted mud tracks and our bus started to struggle quite seroiusly. Not long after, we found ourselves trapped amidst the mud with a dozen lorries and an ever-increasing number of cars. A little further up the road, a log-bearing lorry had fallen and caught at a 45 degree angle in the mud. The small rope-teams that had been set up to try and pull it back out of the mud were clearly getting nowhere anytime soon. Fearing another experience like ours on the way to Kunming, we debated abandoning our coach and finding a different way to Xiahe. We were told this was 30km away, so walking was out of the question, but smaller vehicles were leaving the main 'road' and looping around the jam over the neighbouring fields - hitchhiking in one of these cars seemed like our best option. Cat and I chased down a car going in the direction we wanted and asked if they would take us to Xiahe for money; they would take us to Xiahe, but they didn't want any money. Perfect! Hannah waited with this car whilst Cat and I sprinted back to the bus for our bags. As it turned out, our bus reckoned it too could manage the escape-by-field; it set off less than a minute after we'd retrieved our bags, so in the end we just climbed back on. Less exciting than hitch-hiking, but at least we didn't waste the cost of our tickets.

Xiahe has only the one main street, which stretches about from the long-distance bus station to Labrang monastery via shops, restaurants and guest-houses. This street took us a bloody age to walk down; longer because we kept stopping to check we hadn't walked past our guest house, and even longer because my ear broke three-quarters of the way down the street and we had to stop to allow time for me to freak out. I should explain: a couple of entries back, I mentioned that I had had my tragus pierced in Guilin. I had loads of problems with this piercing being infected and generally a bit gross, although it hadn't hurt at all after the first week. Well, as we were walking down Xiahe's main street, we paused so the girls could buy drinks, and I fiddled with my earring a little - and it fell out. I assumed I'd accidentally knocked the back off, but no, the back was still on. The flesh between the piercing and the edge of my ear had just, somehow, without my ever feeling it, ripped apart. (This is why I say my ear broke, any more accurate description is just too horrible.) I freaked out, swearing and shouting for help from the others, who were as horrified as I was and as unreassuring as possible: "oh my god that's awful! Oh my god, Ella that's so bad! Oh that's so gross!" etc. We continued to the hostel with me still in shock, where we had to hang around in reception before being led to one of the dormitories from Annie, which was apparently our room for the night.

We allotted an hour to relax/freshen up/nurse my ear at the hostel. Less nursing of the ear was done than photographing and taking advantage of the wifi to send the resulting gory pictures to my friends at home, but I did calm down enough to find it funny, which was nice.* Reassured that I wasn't going to be carried off by septicaemia anytime soon, we went to look around Labrang monastery, which was literally metres from our guest-house door. Disappointingly, the majority of tracks and roads about and amidst the separate halls and temples of the monastery were under construction, half dug up and strewn with diggers and lorries. Even ignoring all of this, Labrang was underwhelming. This could just have been the effect of having come straight from Tongren, but there was nothing we found particularly striking or beautiful, at least not on this first day. The redeeming feature of the monastery, for us, was the wacky English tour, led by a very strange monk whose sanity was even more doubtful than that of the other we'd met in Tongren. This guy spoke clearly rehearsed lines in English so rapid we could hardly keep up. He made and laughed at his own jokes throughout the tour, threw in plenty of very controversial comments about Islam, even more concerning the shortcomings of Islam when compared with Buddhism, and entertained himself by hiding behind pillars and jumping out at us. We besieged him with questions about everything, so he ditched us for a bit to go and talk to some girls. When he came back, he was in an even funnier mood. Cat asked him who the Penchai (?) lama he kept referring to was; he cackled and told her it was her brother, laughed a bit more to himself and beckoned a girl he'd been talking to earlier over so he could repeat the joke for her. Minutes later, Cat asked him about an enormous butter candle the size of a basin; he told her it was a birthday cake, announced it was her birthday and dissolved in laughter as he started offering round slices of birthday cake. Outside one of the halls, we saw an elderly woman walking around, prostrating herself on the ground every three metres or so, completing a korah. I asked him if he had done this, or if he would have to: "I don't need to do this because I am young and clever. I can read books and study, but she is old so this is all she can do." Cue more laughter. Oh, and when coming across a map of the monastery in a museum hall, he stopped and spent several minutes throwing spit balls at it, under the guise of showing us our current location.

Besides our memorable tour guide, the most interesting part of the tour was "Butter Sculpture Hall", which is a hall of butter sculptures in the forms of various throned Buddhas and erhats. Our tour guide was unable to explain why the monks make sculptures out of butter (if we asked a question he couldn't answer, he would just pretend he hadn't heard and stroll off); we assume it's now just a tradition that stemmed from yak butter being a readily available material, but we could be completely wrong. Either way, the butter sculpture hall smelt sour and musty and the sculptures, whilst impressive, did have a little bit of a plasticine-y look to them. Apparently the current sculptures were five months old, and there were no plans to replace them for at least another six months. Mmm. We also bumped into a trio of German backpackers who'd also been volunteering in China for the year, and the six of us walked about the monastery together, quite awkwardly as none of them were big conversationalists.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant right outside the monastery, which served Tibetan food. Yak meat featured heavily in this. We had fried momo, a type of yak meat dumpling, vegetable paale bread, which turned out also to be fried, a really great yak meat curry and some safe vegetable fried rice. Post-dinner, we arranged to go horse-riding the next day and retired to bed early to read and gossip.

* My ear is now healed (mostly) and infection-free (completely), although I'm pretty sure a small chunk of my tragus is gone for good and the rest is nicely scarred. Could have been worse.