The Road Warriors: June 2011

Boarding the train was easy. It never usually is, but we bought our tickets in advance and showed up early to ensure that we got our bunks. Missing this train would've been a disaster. A week in a smog oven of a city waiting, an ambiguous bartering procedure for tickets, a hefty reduction in funds for permits and whatnot, all would have been for nothing. So Lykke and Siri, the two Norwegian girls, David the Brit and I all cabbed together and arrived at the northern railway station a good hour in advance. We loaded in at around 7pm just as the sun was setting.

Examining the tickets, I noticed that I was placed in a completely different car than the other three. Inconvenient, but hardly worth groaning about considering I almost didn't get the tickets in the first place. Thankfully, an old man in their cabin had no qualms with swapping tickets so I could be with my travel companions. He gleefully sauntered off, probably thrilled at the fact that he just avoided having to spend 2 days and 2 nights in a cabin with a bunch of foreigners. Since each cabin had 6 bunks and there were 4 of us, it meant that the other two were gonna be taken up by randos; a familiar crap shoot when traveling extensively. They were claimed by two teenage Tibetan girls who looked like they had taken this train many many times before.

So, why the train? Well, first of all, if you've been following this blog at all, you know that I only travel by land so as to truly appreciate and get a sense of the distance I'm covering. Secondly, a quick wikipedia search will tell you that the Qinghai–Tibet railway is the highest railway in the world and boasts some of the most breathtaking scenery in China. Finally, Lhasa, our final destination, is a crazy 3600 meters above sea level, meaning the air is thin, and a 2 day train journey would be an excellent way to acclimatize. There have been stories of people getting off of the plane and their bodies flipping out because they can't deal with the altitude. Altitude sickness is a very serious thing and affects a very large percentage of people, so taking the train was a good way to reduce the chance of any of us having to be evacuated (evacuation is for the most part, the only cure). Still, I was worried that my ridiculous corpus, with its SCUBA woes and whatnot, would refuse to cooperate. This final leg was meant to be an epic climax to an already epic trip, and if something dumb happened, I would curse the sky with everything in me.

Once the train got rolling and everyone took their bunks, it became fairly jocular. It was a good group. David was an English teacher in Chengdu on holidays while the girls were friends from back in Oslo on a massive tour of China together. The two Tibetan teens didn't speak English so I have no idea what their deal was. They didn't speak at all actually and spent most of the time either listening to music or staring transfixed out of the window.

We toured the train together, hoping to locate the dining cart, or maybe some other travelers. The sun was down, so there wasn't really much to see out the windows. Past a few cabin cars we came to the proletariat seats. If you'll recall a few entries back, I described what was probably the most sanity stretching train ride of my life; sandwiched in with a bunch of hot, breathy, noisy, spitty people for 12 hours. This was the same thing, except for the entire 2 day journey. What a goddamn nightmare! Now, I fancy myself as someone who can endure hardship and discomfort, especially compared to some of the entitled yuppies back in Canada who complain when an escalator is broken. But this would have been impossible for me to endure. Part of me also wonders if I would have been insane enough to buy a proletariat seat if I had not won the bidding war for a bunk.

We tiptoed around the bleak, huddled masses sprawled about the floor to reach the dining cart, a rather unimpressive set of seats and tables. It was getting late, so nothing was being served, although snacks were an option. We brought our own and chatted. Lots of chatting to be done. We were three people who would be spending a week exclusively confined to one another so the comfort barrier was gonna get broken fast. Lykke was an extrovert and a cynic, Siri was humble and good-natured, David was wry and a bit guarded. I was just tired.

So day 1 on the train was not even a day. Just a pace up to the dining cart and back. I got top bunk which actually is the worst bunk. I had to Cirque de Soleil my way up every time, especially difficult when you're trying not to wake anyone else up. The top bunk also had way less headroom than the others meaning I would spank my head constantly.

Day 2 was really the only full day on the trip. We all brought our own food meaning we didn't have to rely on the meal cart for sustenance. It had already made its way through the proletariat seats meaning the cobbled mush of rice, chicken and vegetables being served was well molested. Plus it cost a lot.

Everyone on board had a book. I dug into Blink, a Malcolm Gladwell book about the value of impulses and split-second judgement. Kinda fitting for the whole trip. When not reading, we would eat and look out the window and eat and occasionally walk a little bit around the train car. There was nothing to see out the window, just a bunch of dry landscapes riddled with machinery and industrial discard.

Next door some spoiled fat kid kept kicking up a fuss with his mother. The kid looked about 8 but acted like he was 3. "Little prince" perfectly exemplified. See, China has this problem with the whole One Child Policy, in that families usually prefer to make that one child male, then spoiling it to all hell. What's extra scary to think about it what's gonna happen years down the road when all of these fat, entitled boys grow up and start assuming important positions in society. First off, 30 million won't find wives. Many more will discover that real life is quite unlike the comfy bosom of their mother. The speculation can go on forever as to what effect that will have on not only the country, but the world. So needless to say, we all took an immediate dislike to this kid, especially when he opened a bag of snacks and dumped it on the floor just to watch his mother scramble to pick everything up again.

At one point a few kids from nearby cabins swung by to chat with the foreigners (us). They knew no English but David had an alright grasp on Mandarin. We played some cards and whatnot. I broke out some old ECC tricks to make em laugh. The little prince wandered over and started stirring up trouble, helping himself to our snacks. David took an exceptionally strong dislike to him.

The toilets started breaking around mid afternoon. Only 50% would be in working order at one time and they didn't always lock the doors on the ones that weren't. It was kind of a crap shoot. They were all squat toilets too meaning whatever poor aim anyone had was essentially all over the floor (literal crap shoot, hey!). The ones that did not flush became ghastly. No one dared go in barefoot. And demand for toilets was HIGH.

It started becoming very claustrophobic soon. There weren't any stops thus far, and the most open area was in front of the sinks near the bathrooms. And by open, I mean you can stretch your arms and legs and that's it. We all walked to the front of the train, then to the very back of the train. The proletariat class looked like they were poised for an uprising. Seriously, like any moment they would storm the cabin cars, throw us off the caboose and claim a few bunks. In the dining car we met a few more foreigners. One guy was Austrian and had just come back from a tour of North Korea which I thought was really really interesting.

The day blended into night which blended into sleep. I myself remember nothing of that night except wailing my head hard on the ceiling right before I was about to make a joke that I thought would be very funny. Me wailing my head proved to be much funnier.

Day 3 was disgusting. Inside the train anyways. Outside it was gorgeous. We had just passed Golmund and were officially on the Qinghai–Tibet railway up into the clouds. The scenery outside was nothing but rolling green hills and insanely blue skies. No trees or shrubs anywhere, which you think wouldn't be that impressive, but it actually looked very very surreal. We were pretty high in the sky, too high for any kind of complex shrubbery to survive really. Most of this day was spend peering out of the window in awe.

So yeah, as I mentioned, the inside of the train had become a hamster cage. Garbage piling up, crumbs and spit on the floor. The garbage bins were full so loose garbage bags were tied to the outside. And don't even get me started on the bathrooms. For some odd reason, everyone had to pee like every hour or so, so the bathrooms were getting overclocked and functioning at about 25% capacity. Lines were a pretty common sight. I caught little prince pissing in one of the loose garbage bags, his mother standing beside him idly condoning this wretched display. I retreated to my bunk now and then when I felt I was starting to lose my sanity. I could only imagine how gruesome the proletariat seats had gotten.

The train was making semi-frequent stops. At one stop, they let everyone out to stretch their legs. It was at a pass about 5000 meters up. Crazy! Beside us, little Tibetan villages rolled by, with yaks grazing in fields and prayer flags draped over bucolic dwellings. The excitement was building, partly from the scenery outside and partly from the desire to get the hell off the train.

Finally we arrived, and a palpable excitement rose up amongst the passengers. The train station seemed very new and very empty. It was a terrifically bright day.