Overseas Tibetan Hotel

Top choice in Gansu


This well-run, large and popular 40-room place is a Xiahe mainstay, offering comfortable rooms, wi-fi that reaches every corner, solar-powered hot water, laundry service and affable staff. The modern and refurbished doubles have clean enclosed showers, flat-screen TVs and cushy, thick mattresses. Dorm beds are four to a room, with shared shower. Expect discounts of 20% in quiet periods.

It's owned by Losang, an energetic, likeable Tibetan with faultless English who's in touch with the wants of travellers. Useful services include the OT Travels & Tours travel agency, transport arrangements and the Everest Cafe with western set breakfasts with yak yoghurt (¥30).


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Gansu attractions

1. Snowland Art

0.19 MILES

Tucked away down the backstreets of Xiahe not far from Labrang Monastery, Snowland Art is a family-style fine art and handicrafts training school set up…

2. Barkhang

0.19 MILES

The three-storey Barkhang serves as the monastery’s traditional printing temple. With rows upon rows of more than 20,000 wood blocks for printing, it’s…

3. Labrang Monastery

0.27 MILES

With its succession of squeaking prayer wheels (3km in total), hawks circling overhead and the throb of Tibetan longhorns resonating from the surrounding…

4. Hall of Hayagriva

0.32 MILES

A repository of vivid and bright murals, the hall encapsulates a startlingly fierce 12m-high effigy of Hayagriva – a wrathful manifestation of the usually…

5. Gongtang Pagoda

0.63 MILES

With an interior splashed with murals and illuminated by a combination of yak-butter candles and electric lamps, the golden 31m-tall Gongtang Pagoda is a…

6. Hermitage Ruins

0.73 MILES

What remains of this hermitage are earthen walls overgrown with nettles, making the real attraction here the view of the town nestled into the mountains…

7. Nunnery

0.85 MILES

This nunnery is on the hill above the Tibetan part of Xiahe. The outer kora (pilgrim path) begins just to the left of here.

8. Thangka Display Terrace

0.88 MILES

The best morning views of the monastery come from the Thangka Display Terrace, a popular picnic spot.