Miss Marple meets Cluedo in China

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Our new hotel room cost us £8 extra a night and was a shift from crappy hostel to decent hotel. It was lovely. There were lots of other tourists staying there too and as we sat down for our first breakfast in 2 weeks we listened somewhat smuggly to a bunch of middle aged Americans complaining of altitude sickness. One lady was crying and was being taken off to have oxygen and the next morning another woman said she had been sick all night every hour and also needed oxygen and maybe a drip. Lhasa is situated at a high altitude and I have read about people needing a few days to acclimatise but the thing with altitude sickness is that there is no telling who will suffer from it and quite how badly. One Lady was complaining of pins and needles in her finger tips and this is one of the first sign of altitude sickness. It’s amazing to think that people climb mountains whilst suffering from acute altitude sickness and still manage to function just about well enough to make life threatening decisions.

We had one more monastery left to visit and it was the Sera monastery where the monks debate. This is an amazing spectacle which takes place in a courtyard. Each monk pairs up with another and one stands whilst the other sits. The standing monk asks the sitting monk and question and when he has finished asking he ends with an elaborate clapping movement. The monk sat down then has to reply. The debates can last for days and are about scriptures they are studying. After this our tour was officially over and we were left to our own devices. We had booked an extra night at both the beginning and end of the tour so as not to be too rushed and now we were glad f it. We went to our favourite cafe the Summit cafe. It was our favourite for many reasons. 1) Perfect toilets 2) Coffee 3) Free Wi-Fi we settled down to email and blog. We had a few last things we wanted to buy from the market and enjoyed bartering and chatting with the locals. Then right next to the pilgrimage circuit an old lady came up to us. It was the lady that we had circumnavigated the Jakhong temple with the week before. She recognised us and motion with her head that we should follow. So of course we did but this time we knew the words we should be chanting as we walked and she was pleased with her students. We left her again after one circuit and marvelled at the chances of meeting her again. It felt familiar this time in Lhasa as we made our way around the market talking to familiar faces and ate in a restaurant where the waiter new us. We were definitely sad to be leaving but we had another train journey to make.

And boy what a journey it was. Could it be worse than the Mongolian trading train? No, Yes, Maybe??? Well we already knew that we didn’t have soft sleepers and that all that was left was a hard sleeper but we never knew what this really entailed. We were in the small cabin with SIX bunks and NO DOOR and squat toilets. So in our carriage there were 60 sweaty Chinese. The foreigners were let on first so we found our cabin after much effort and grabbed the bottom slightly more spacious bunks and waited. 10 minutes later came the Chinese in all of their pushing, shouting and spitting glory. Jacks then had a heated argument with a Chinese man who was insisting he should have the bottom bunk and we should have the middle ones. He won although she gave it her all. In the middle you could not sit up on your bunk because of the bunk above. All trains to Lhasa pump in oxygen due to the high altitude. I think this is needed more on entering Lhasa rather than leaving.

The train crawled out of Lhasa and through some stunning countryside but it never really picked up any real speed and we were certain we could walk faster. 2 and half days on board a slow hard sleeper train what a nightmare. Carriage 1, our carriage was full to the brim every bed occupied so 60 people in a very small space whilst carriage 2, 3 and 4 had just a smattering of people. As we walked on we arrived in the soft sleeper carriages and much to our dismay they were not all full. However the Miss Marple meets Midsomer murders and cluedo tour group were occupying half of the carriage. This quintessentially British group consisted of; Miss Marple herself, who was very quiet but always watching everything ready and waiting for murder on the Lhasa to shanghai train, Caroline the retired headmistress and keeper of the supplies and coffee along with Colonel Mustard and stiff upper lip. There was rather glamorous older lady who must have been a model in her younger days; she wore red lipstick and dark sunglasses, Professor know it all and his companion were also in the group and then some extra but equally interesting characters. We were only missing the excitable young cad home from Uni wearing his cricket whites. They found us equally amusing as we were “doing it independently”. We wasted some time waiting for a murder but to our knowledge it never took place.

We asked to move carriages because ours was jammed packed but they said we could relax in an empty cabin for the day but must sleep back in our rightful one. Our carriage was noisy and smelly and the isle was taken up with overspill from the cabin. Jacks stood in the middle and stretched her arms out and could touch each side of the small cabin. We returned at 9.45 as lights were out at 10. We couldn’t imagine that it would be quiet at night but at 10 o clock when darkness fell so did silence. We have never slept with 4 Chinese men before and it was quite an experience. Every single one of them snored. The next day we couldn’t relax in another bunk as the train became full with teenagers and 8 year old girls. This time we were 2 of only 4 white people on the train and so our daily hike up the carriages to find the only western toilet caused quite a stir. In our carriage our every move was scrutinised they chattered away about what we wore, how we sat, what we ate and everything else you can imagine. The carriage way had 2 small seats and a thin shelf/table outside if each cabin and in our carriage the whole length of it was full with people sat on these seats. Our Chinese travel companions always insisted we sit on our cabins seats which was very kind of them and we soon began to develop a mutual love for one another. The loud almost shouting older man who had thrown us off of the bottom bunk we called Mr Angry and his kind and quiet friend was on the very top bunk above Jacks and I had decided he was a doctor so we called him Dr Wong. Along the carriage was a very fit and healthy looking Chinese man who looked as if he may have competed in the Olympic Games for China many years ago. He wore bright blue very high jogging pants and a red polo shirt tucked in with a shell suit style zip jacket with a sporting logo on the back. He was a friendly looking man who also smiled at us a lot. We called him Mr Fit. One day he went off and came back with a very old man in a shell suit. It was all white with CHINA written on the back and legs in red with Chinese stars across it. We called him “China Granddad” Mr angry and Dr Wong were with the cabin next door which consisted of 6 older woman who liked to natter about us throughout the day and fuss over the men. Mr Fit had a young man in his cabin who we decided was his son who miraculously could suddenly speak English. We never found this out till I was typing up a blog in the corridor and looking at Pictures of Everest when I realised I was running out of power and so started to look for the power point. As I did this I showed the computer to the man near me and then they all started talking. Before I knew it Mr Fit and Dr Wong and others were all around. Mr Fit’s son said: “Ahh Mount Everest”. We spoke and it became apparent he was quite fluent in English. He asked where we were going and how long we were in shanghai. We told him of our trip and this passed down the carriage like wildfire as each person whispered the gossip to the next. After finding all of this out we all became firm friends. They were concerned that we did not eat breakfast but we knew we would not waste away. Jack’s was playing clock patience in the cabin with Mr Angry and Dr Wong watching they were fascinated Mr Fit soon arrived and was brave enough to have a try the other two suddenly became experts at telling him how to play it. I showed them postcards that we had bought with us from home including Bristol, Bath and Clevedon. They were intrigued by them.

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I have also fantasy in life and one of these is traveling around the world together with my family