To laugh or cry the horrors of China by bus

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So remember a while ago there was a news story about a week long traffic jam in China.....we now know how they would have felt and are retracting our earlier statement about the superiority of Chinese sleeper buses! Lets back track a few hours and describe our bus journey for you.

After Dani slammed her finger between the two solid metal oversized doors at the hotel and Dumb & Dumber receptionist just stared at the blood streaming down her arm, we hurried off to the station with not enough time to stock up on food for what we thought would be a 12h journey.

At the station We were pleasantly surprised to be personally escorted to our bus only then to be shocked by the sight of it. In much worse condition than our previous bus the front windscreen was all smashed up and held together by sticky tape. Inside lacked the creature comforts we had become accustomed to such as pillows and curtains to block out the blistering sun and freezing desert night chill. None the less we settled in for the journey and enjoyed some stunning scenery heading west through Gansu province with a very horn happy driver.

After only 4hrs of travel we were brought to a grinding holt in the absolute middle of nowhere and joined a queue of stopped buses and trucks for as far as the eye can see. A few minutes later thinking our driver was pulling out to make a sneaky exit we realised he was just reverse parking to get nice and snug between the dusty trucks.

A little while later....Too cold to be outside and too hot to be inside we are slowly going insane as we type this, rationing our food and not consuming any liquid while we have some how miraculously managed to squeeze the two of us into one little bus capsule just for something to do. As Dani is handicappable with her finger at the moment she is the computer rest and Oreo holder. It has now been 90mins (11:15pm) with no sign of further movement and we are considering ways to hitch-hick the rest of the way.

11:26pm: false alarm, engine started moved 20cm although hard to tell if that was forwards or backwards, engine off again.
11:39pm: the sound of horns blaring constantly in the distance as they join our great queue is a little eerie.
11:45pm, all lights have gone off and it appears we are here for the night...Nicole wants to cry and states "if the sun comes up and we haven't moved, we're walking"
12:10am; too scared to use gadgets as we were ill prepared for epic traffic and were not fully charged, rookie error.
12:30am; everyone around us is snoring, guess it's time to try to sleep in this claustrophobic stinky, sweaty, smoky chamber.
3:30am; Woke up to the movement of our bus pulling out, squeezing between trucks and down embankments....a little scary but happy to be moving!

17 hours later we are literally dropped on a corner of the road on the outskirts of a town, as the bus pulls away we have the most beautiful view of snow capped mountains in the distance and realise last night's pain was worth it. At the end of the day laughter won over tears 😊

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