Traveling to Tibet, China

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We left for Lhasa on June 12 after having spent a week in Chengdu. Of course, complications occurred. The trip from Chengdu to Xining went off without a hitch, though we were an hour late arriving in Xining. The hard sleepers were not too bad. Six people shared the hard sleeper compartment. I was on the top bunk. There was barely room to sit up, so I spent most of my time down on the bottom bunk with the Chinese that were on the train. Ido, Kris and I spent some time in the dining car playing Chinese Chess. Fun game, but they both beat me handily.

When our train arrived in Xining, we took a motorcycle taxi to the Tibetan Connections offices that were attached to the Lete Youth Hostel. There we met Bill. He seemed a decent enough guy. He answered the questions we had, then we left to find an ATM for Ido to get more money. When we returned to hostel, we met Bill's manager Wangden with whom I had corresponded in the US. We were getting ready to receive our train tickets when Wangden said "Oh shit!". Turns out that they had booked us on the 4:20 train but thought that they had booked us on the 8:30 pm train, and we had all of 20 minutes to get to the station and on the train. We quickly paid for the trek, grabbed the photo copies of our permits, and ran to a waiting taxi that Bill had had called for us.

The train ride was very pleasant. Having soft sleepers was quite the luxury. We shared them with two Australian women in their mid-forties. They were pleasant company. The night passed uneventfully and we awoke to the snow covered peaks and wide plains of the Tibetan Plateau. The scenery for the rest of the train ride was gorgeous. The elevations the train went though were quite high, passing 5,000 meters in one spot. Supplemental oxygen flowed from vents in our cabin. We also had to make an unscheduled stop for a baby who seemed unresponsive due to the lack of oxygen. There was an ambulance waiting at the train station to pick up the baby and mother and take them to a near by medical center.

There were lots of soldiers on the train. Surprisingly, a good number of them were Tibetan returning home. One soldier we met in the dining car was particularly friendly and bought us a round of beer. We were to see a lot People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers during our stay in Tibet.

We arrived in Lhasa on June 13 a little late. As we approached the city, we could see the Potala dominating the skyline. What a sight! The train station in Lhasa is vast and very impressive, but way too big for the traffic that it receives. A large paved yard in front of the train station is completely blocked off and guarded, presumably to prevent attacks on the train station. The train station comes across as a demonstration of Chinese power over Tibet.

We were picked up at the train station by our guide, Gelleck who presented us all with white scarves, a traditional gift. We drove off to find a hotel. The first one we stopped at was too expensive, so Gelleck took us to the Kailash hotel which was a bit more reasonable in price. We settled into our hotel and then wandered around the Barkhor Square a bit on our own.

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Photos

Tibetan village viewed from train to Tibet, China
Note the cool, tilted rocks in the background!

Entering Lhasa, China
Our first view of the magnificent Potala (red building in the center of the photo on the hill).