Murmuring an unbroken stream of prayers, and focused intently on a scarlet and silver monastery bathed in morning light and incense smoke, four Tibetan women fell to their hands and knees in succession. They laid face down before standing up to clasp their hands in prayer for their three hundredth prostrate atop the snow-dusted hilltop on the Sichuan side of Langmusi.

But the solemn chants of these devout Buddhists soon dissolved into the self-conscious giggles of young girls upon sensing the presence of a foreigner. Using the moment as an entertaining respite from their prayers, they beckoned to see the pictures I had just taken of them, the site of themselves on my digital camera bringing even louder laughter.

Located at an altitude of some 3,000 meters in the mountains of western China, and literally straddling the Gansu-Sichuan border, the rustic, plank-rooftop settlement of Langmusi, and the two glittering Buddhist temples of which the town architecturally and spiritually orbits, is one of those places that can best be described as heavenly.

Gansu itself is one of China's most dramatically varying regions both topographically and culturally, extending in a long, narrow arch from the mountain-sized sand dunes of Dunhuang in the northern Hexi corridor to the verdant Ganjia grasslands in the provincial interior.

South of the Muslim metropolises of Langzhou and Lingxia, gleaming mosques become sub-bleached stupas and the white-capped Hui people relinquish the landscape to prismatic Tibetans spinning prayer wheels beneath the surreal blue sky, living up to its provincial sobriquet, "Little Lhasa."

Following their morning prayers, the three pretty sisters and their mother, each regally draped in heavy, black cloaks and adorned with layers of florescent orange coral necklaces and hefty belts of silver, invited me back to their home.

It wasn't their real home, they explained, but temporary living quarters. Like so many of the Sichuanese-Tibetans who comprise the town's nomadic population, they were completing their pilgrimage to the Langmusi and Labuleng monasteries in nearby Xiahe before making their way back home to northern Sichuan.