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Published: August 23rd 2006
The Lhasa Express
All shiny and new.So we finally left Chengdu grasping our train tickets and Lhasa visas. We entered the station for the T27 Chengdu-Lhassa express all excited to be on this train in its first month of running. We were guided over to the waiting lounge and had to pass a sort of customs stand, which was quite heavily policed. When we showed our tickets to pass into the lounge, a police officer came up and asked to see our travel permit which we proudly thrust out in frount of us for him to see. After he had checked it (very thoroughly) we were allowed through to the departure lounge, where we were met by a group of about 5 police women who herded us to one end of the departure lounge. They told us to sit down and wait (which was all very well but there was only one seat), when we pointed this out, the police women ordered the man sitting in the seat to move and make space for us. They then proceeded to ask to see our tickets and permits again, but this time (having passed them around to each other), the last one in the line photographed them. After a
few questions were thrown at us in chinese (which we replied to with the customery blank look), another police women came along and asked the questions again in "engrish", which we answered in the most noncommital way we could. She then translated the "engrish" answers back to the first police women, who told them to the third, who then wrote them down for the fifth to read. After ten minuites of this they seemed happy and left.
We boarded the pristine train and settled down into our cubicle with the other four people we were to share with. The train pulled out of the station on time and low and behold, police women three and four turned up. They wanted to take a statment from us, which they duly did (with us giving the same answers as before), because we did not want to get Sim into trouble. The hardest question not to laugh at was... "what did the person who sold you the tickets look like, how could I say you all look the same to me. Anyway after the statement was taken the police left us alone to enjoy our train jurney, two days of uninterrupted vistas,
The highest fresh water lake in the World
4,800m above sea level and the meanies would not let us off the train to paddle. with nothing to spoil our view, but curious chinese travellers wondering how five foreigners got onboard the train.
The train had been in the news every day for the past month. It is a marvel of modern engineering and is the highest railway line in the world. The chinese are very proud of it, and to get on it in the first month was a bit of a coupe for us.
The views out of the windows train were spectacular and vanged from the vast plains to snow capped mountains. During the trip we saw herds of yak, sheep, goats and deer all running across the plains. We crossed the Yellow River (which wasn't), went across a bridge that was 11km long and through tunnels that had been cut out of the heart of the frozen mountains and at every new sight, somebody would come into our cubical to make sure that we hadn't missed it.
We thoroughly enjoyed our 46 hours on the train, sharing snacks, laughs and political opinions with our Chinese roomies all the way to Lhasa.
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Ben
non-member comment
Is that just Marc doing superman impressions at Kings Cross? It's all a big Photoshop operation this blog isn't it? Go on, admit it - you're hiding out in the back streets of Redhill pretending to go on this big trip occasionally pasting your face over the top of some Chinese scenery off of Google images! Seriously though - good effort keeping the blog going!