Eating The influx of tourists has given a huge boost to the Xiahe catering trade in recent years. In the eastern part of town there are plenty of restaurants offer- ing Tibetan and traveller food- banana pancakes and the like. They usually have either Tibet or Snow in their titles, and they’re all pretty much the same. You won’t see many Tibetans in any of them - they tend to eat in the cheaper, unnamed places. One of two places called Monastery Restaurant lies at the monastery’s eastern edge; run by a family from the Gancha grasslands, it’s a homely place which offers Tibetan staples such as as tsampa, made from yak butter and coarse flour - you add sugar and turn it into a kind of breakfast cereal. There’s an English menu which includes banana in melted sauce†(actually coated in toffee), and plenty of Wild West characters hanging around. Budget travellers, bizarrely, seem to prefer the terrible food of the depressing Snowland over the road. The other Monastery Restaurant, farther west, is a Muslim place serving some pretty decent yak-meat dishes - a lot of meat for very little money. For Chinese food, try the small, cosy Sichuan Restaurant in the east of town, , where you might also see monks taking time out to watch Hong Kong action movies onVCD. East along the dirt track from the Labrang into the old Tibetan town, the first restaurant on your right - inside a courtyard - is a Muslim place offering great breakfasts, with yoghurt and honey, pancakes, bread and even cream cheese.

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