Chaka Salt Lake, Qinghai Lake and Kumbum in Five Days from Luoyang

A midday landing at Caojiabao, then west into the city past hills of dull red rock with barely a tree on them. Bags down, and by evening into the Shuijing Lane market, working along the stalls for cold noodles, fermented oats and sheep intestine noodles.

Attraction introduction: Xining sits at about 2,200 metres, capital of Qinghai, with the Huang River running through a narrow valley between two mountain ridges. Shuijing Lane has been the city's food and dry-goods market since the 1980s, half local shopping and half visitors tasting their way along. Liangpi is made by washing dough for gluten and steaming the starch, then cutting it into strips under chilli oil and vinegar. Tianpei is fermented oats or highland barley, lightly sour with a hint of alcohol, and a bowl of it warms you through in winter.

Tips: Guests generally find they have eaten too much cold food on the first night and pay for it around midnight. In practice taste the noodles and the fermented oats, then have something hot for the actual meal. Two thousand two hundred metres is not high, but keep the shower short and dry off quickly.

Kumbum first, half an hour from the city, climbing through courtyards stacked up the slope with a queue at the butter sculpture hall. Back to Xining for lunch, then west over the Sun Moon Pass and down to Qinghai Lake by evening.

Attraction introduction: Kumbum was founded in the Ming and is one of the six great monasteries of the Gelug school, named for the stupa that came before the temple. The Great Golden Tile Hall carries gilded copper tiles on its roof, and the silver stupa inside marks the birthplace of Tsongkhapa. Butter sculptures are modelled from butter mixed with mineral pigment, made each winter and kept in halls held below freezing so they do not melt. Appliqué thangka builds figures and flowers in relief from cut silk, counted with the murals among the monastery's three arts. The Sun Moon Pass marks the boundary between the loess plateau and the Tibetan plateau at over 3,500 metres; beyond it the farmland gives way to pasture.

Tips: Guests generally find Kumbum stunning for its butter sculptures and equally likely to break a rule, since photography inside the halls is forbidden and thresholds must not be stepped on. In practice we set the rules out beforehand: hats off, clockwise circulation. The pass is windy, so keep any stop outside under five minutes.

Down to the waterline in the morning where a crust of thin ice crackles underfoot. Lunch, then west over Rubber Mountain at more than 3,800 metres, dropping into the Chaka basin. At the lake by five, staying until the sun reaches the ridge.

Attraction introduction: Qinghai Lake is the largest inland saltwater lake in China at 3,190 metres, some 360 kilometres around. In winter the shallows freeze into a skin of ice while the centre stays open, the water a deep blue-green. Its only fish is the naked carp, which grows so slowly it puts on less than fifty grammes a year. Rubber Mountain is the divide between the lake and Chaka; once over it the ground opens out into the stony flats of the Qaidam basin. At dusk the brine stops glaring and holds the last of the daylight, with the far ridges pressed flat against the water.

Tips: Guests generally find the wind at the lakeshore stronger than expected, where ten minutes leaves your hands numb. In practice we hold the shoreline stop under forty minutes, hats tied on, scarves over the face. The descent from Rubber Mountain is all curves, so take motion-sickness tablets half an hour ahead. The brine is cold in the evening, so pull the shoe covers up to the calf instead of going barefoot.

Through the gate with the first group at a quarter past eight, before the wind gets up, the brine flat as glass. Out by half past ten for something hot in town, on the road east at half past eleven, over Rubber Mountain and into Xining by evening.

Attraction introduction: Chaka lies on the eastern edge of the Qaidam basin, roughly 105 square kilometres of lake over a salt bed metres thick, covered by ten to thirty centimetres of saturated brine. When the wind stops the sky lands in it entire, hence the name. Salinity is close to ten times that of seawater, so it does not freeze. The tourist train runs on rails laid in 1951 for hauling salt, and the salt sculptures in the middle are recast each year by pouring brine into moulds and letting it crystallise. The first hour after opening is the only time the surface is free of footprints; by ten the wind has broken it up.

Tips: Guests generally find arriving at midday a waste, since the wind rises and the mirror turns to white glare. In practice we split the visit between dusk and dawn with a rest in town between. Shoe covers are compulsory in the water; the salt crust cuts, and the covers cost ten yuan with a fifty-yuan deposit, so do not tear them before you hand them back.

No early start. A turn through Mojia Street for dried yak and goji berries, lamb on the table by eleven with a bowl of mutton broth alongside. To the airport at two, two hours back to Luoyang.

Attraction introduction: Qinghai hand-grabbed lamb uses local Tibetan sheep, put into cold water with nothing but salt and Sichuan pepper and pulled out while a chopstick still goes through, the meat pale pink and eaten with garlic paste and pepper salt. Mojia Street is the old eating street of Xining, fermented oats, cold noodles and sheep intestine noodles packed into one short lane that locals also use for dry goods. If the schedule allows on the way out, stop at Huangyuan to see the gate of the old Dangaer trading town, the Qing-era customs point for the tea-horse market.

Tips: Guests generally find themselves worrying about the flight, when in fact the airport is forty minutes from the city centre. In practice lunch is at eleven and we leave the centre by half past one. Hand-grabbed lamb can be vacuum packed for the flight, and it is safer checked than carried on.