My 71-year-old mother and elder brother visited me in China. After considering where to travel, I decided upon Qinghai. We only had five days, so I planned a trip that would sweep us through the countryside south to Gansu and loop back to Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai.

Arriving at 1 a.m., the road into the city passes desert country, the odd billboard, silhouettes of mountains and electricity pylons all giving a skeletal effect to a ghostly night landscape. It's thrilling to be at an altitude over 2,000 meters above sea level and to know we are on the Tibetan Plateau. In the daytime, we see the fusion of peoples that comprise the metropolis: Tibetans, Han, Tu, Hui and Mongols.

We board a bus to Tongren and are greeted by the unreadable stares at our fellow passengers. My mom befriends them with a smile, which is returned in a dozen disarming flashes. Off, onto the Ping'a Expressway. Soon, from the dry and high red mountainous region, we pass into valleys verdant with crops and trees and green hillsides. Scale and size is incomprehensible after being hemmed inside a city. Our fellow passengers eye us, as we eye the countryside passing by, registering every detail with fascination. The Yellow River snakes its way below us, its waters, like China, always busy and heading somewhere in a hurry.

Goats, yaks, shepherds, miners, nomads and Tibetan Buddhists pass us. Eventually, we reach Tongren. It's getting on for 3 p.m. when we discover the bus to Xiahe is cancelled, with no explanation offered. We decide upon trying to reach it anyway: It sounds magical--the Labrang Monastery town with temples and gumpas, stupas and shrines, and 3 km of prayer wheels, surrounded by stunning mountain ranges, sacred lakes, and grasslands to explore. My mom feels up to it, so we find a taxi to drive us 120 km.

We start to crawl up a gradually diminishing road over a mountain pass. The altitude tells as we reach the snow line that has been spotted earlier on the slopes of some peaks. The car skids around, but the driver's fortitude seems emboldened by a picture of a Buddhist deity he keeps attached to his windscreen.

Occasionally, we disembark so the driver can pass through ruts with my mother, and we chase him happily through snow that's becoming deeper on the ground. Our driver is resilient and gets us over the pass, some 7,000-8,000 ft up in the mountains. We descend, and at one point are stopped by a few souls in the night. Their faces bound against the wind. Eyes peer in and Tibetan voices explain that a bridge is down and our driver must cross a small river at speed. We scramble over a dirt pile, see that, indeed, a mouthful of the bridge has subsided into the riverbed, and watch our good driver brave the current. The wheels sink into the cold waters, my mom catches her breath in fright, but the car struggles up and out.