Cold! The Tibetan Plateau can be very cold and the winters are dry and long. It can also be very windy. While it gets to temperatures above freezing during the day, it drops before freezing at night. The other night it was only 16 degrees Fahrenheit!
Yushu is an ecotourism hot spot, meaning that there is a lot of accessible biodiversity that's unique to this specific region of the world, and people come from all over the see it. Snow leopards are one of those animals and its why I spend so much time here. We sample a field site regularly just outside of Yushu. In route to our field site we often see a lot of wildlife, including black-necked cranes, marmot and Tibetan foxes. Still no snow leopards yet, though!
