Traversing the Southern Silk Road.

KASHGAR

Martin and I left Kashgar on Friday morning, heading for Hotan. We had a fairly nice day bumping around in the bus and reading our books. The only problem came after about 4 hours of driving when the driver suddenly switched on the tv, and played the most awful movie ever. The volume was so loud I suspected all the passengers would forevermore have hearing problems, and the acting and filming was atrocious. I mean seriously bad. At one stage, the heroine of the movie gets angry with an old man and bites his neck, the camera slowly moves onto her face afterwards and she is covered with tomato-sauce-looking-blood which is drawn in a perfect circle around her mouth. Bad.

HOTAN

Once in Hotan, we found a decent-ish hotel, with 2 beds lining one side of the wall. The room had a kettle (a first for us), a tv that didn't work, and a strange odour. There was no bathroom for women on our floor, so I just used what was available and scared a fair few men.

We spent the afternoon trying to get a bus ticket to Qiemo, which, according to our guide, is a 48 hour drive of hell. The ladies in the ticket office of the bus station when we arrived were SO unhelpful that we almost gave up. But eventually some kind man took pity on us and explained that we needed to go to the East Bus Station (You'd think that would have been pretty easy for one of the ladies to say to us wouldn't you???). Once at the east bus station, getting a ticket was easy peasy. The kind lady there even explained to us how to take the local bus in town to a nice hotel. Sweet.

The next morning we took a taxi to the bus station (we didn't get out of bed early enough for the bus! oops) and got on the sleeper bus ready for the long trip. We met a new friend that day, Ally from Scotland. He is travelling for a month from Kazakhstan to Beijing, and is just great. We're going all the way to Lhasa together.

The road from Hotan to Qiemo looks like this pretty much all the way


QIEMO

The drive to Qiemo was quite bizarre. We, of course, were ready for a 48 hour marathon, but after only 10 hours we arrived!!! What was going on?? We were totally confused, thinking we'd only stopped for a pee break, and I had to ask about 6 different people before we believed them.

So while we tried to get past the wierd feeling of arriving at our destination about 38 hours before we thought we'd arrive, we ate some supper. It was rather strange: a huge bowl of fried-ish cabbage with some transparent noodles thrown in, and rice. After supper we had to take a taxi into the town area, about a 10 minute ride, and there we found a great 3-bed room with a bathroom (a luxury Martin and I haven't experienced for months!!). By this time it was about 1:30am, and all I could do was have a shower and crawl into bed.

The next morning pretty much followed the same routine as the days before and the days to come... wake up, force body out of bed, scramble to throw everything into bag, make way to bus station, get on bus.

RUOQIANG

The bus to Ruoqiang was uneventful, it took only about 6 hours, and I spent the entire time reading my new book that I borrowed from Ally ("The Time-Traveller's Wife"), a good one.

We arrived pretty early in the afternoon, so had a nice day to wander around and enjoy the little village. We first found a place to sleep: we managed to wheedle with a dodgy hotel man and arrange to sleep in a 2-bed room even though we are 3 people, thus getting a bathroom in our room for the same price as a dorm. The bathroom was ok, but stank of musty towels and other indescribable odours! Oh well.

That afternoon we wandered through cotton and corn fields enjoying the sunshine. We met a lovely Uighur family picking apples, so stopped to chat with them. They gave us handfuls of apples to take with us, and we spoke with them as best we could in broken Chinese, Uighur and hand movements! Later we bought a watermelon and the boys shared many of their pieces with a local donkey.

Road lined with trees in Ruoqiang.


That night was a terrible one... I don't know what I'd eaten that was so bad but I was as sick as a dog. I won't go into detail but it basically included lots of diarrhea and throwing up! Lovely. So when 6am came around and it was time for the guys to get up I was grateful to at least have someone to talk to. By this time I was feeling marginally better, but not really looking forward to the day of driving again.

We got to the bus station just before 8am, which was when we were told the bus would leave, only to discover that there was no bus, it was a 4x4, and that it only left after 10am. Great. Martin and Ally then went to find us some breakfast, only dry bread for me, and we waited around for this 4x4. At 10am we were duly seated inside with our new friend who was travelling the same way - a lovely lady from Taiwan!! Great to have that connection again, and Martin and I positively piled her with questions about the country that we miss so much.

Typical Uighur bread that we ate that morning


Waiting seemed to be the name of the game however, and we had to wait for another 2 or more hours before the car left. By this time the taxi man had managed to fill the car with 2 more people (squashed in the back with the luggage). We were getting angry from having to wait so long, and even more so because we weren't sure if the price we were paying for the ticket was the same as what the local people were paying. When we finally drove out of the bus station, we only got 100m down the road when the driver stopped again to squash even more people in! So sneaky, because this way the bus station sees none of it, and the driver gets cash straight into his own pocket! Grrrr....

Luckily, what made up for the annoying driver and his money-making schemes was the drive to Shimianquan... it was gorgeous, absolutely breath-taking mountains all around us and in the distance.

SHIMIANQUAN

As we drove into Shimianquan, all we saw was dust. Dust in the air, dust on the groud... we'd driven into dust-ville. We figured it was some kind of mine, and it was only a few days later when we looked it up on the internet that we realised it was an asbestos mine. Scary stuff, I can't bear to imagine what those people's lungs look like!

Asbestos mining


Our Taiwanese friend helped us find the cheapest bed in town - only Y10. For this price we got a lumpy bed (Martin's was damp!), a tap in the corridor outside where we could brush our teeth, and NO toilet. I shall repeat that, no toilet. We simply were told to find a spot outside and avoid the crazy dog chained up near the back door. Pleasant.

That evening we went on a mission to help Ally buy a jacket (he was wandering around in only a t-shirt while Martin and I were dressed in about 4 layers!) and after that had some supper. We ate a scrummy meal of aubergines and mutton, and played with the restaurant owner's little puppy.

The next morning was sooo cold! We had no time for breakfast, but had to rush to clamber into a local bus with loads of other people making the 1 hour journey to Huatugou.

The road our bus took to Huatugou


HUATUGOU

We arrived in this little town merely to buy a sleeper bus ticket to Golmud, and a few more journey snacks. We managed to find an internet cafe there and some food (lovely dumplings) and that was about it. Our sleeper bus left at 3pm, and we were told we'd arrive in Golmud at about 6am the next day.

The bus was ok, slightly different to other sleeper buses we've been on as it had a 5 bed area at the back where everyone gets to squash together like sardines. And it was just our lucky day... we were in the back there, along with our Taiwanese friend, and Smelly Man. Poor Martin was in the middle, sandwiched between Smelly Man and me, while Ally and the Taiwanese lady were lucky enough to be on either edge beside the windows. Windows are a miracle in these buses as the men usually chain smoke the entire time and its the only way to get any breathable air.

Sleeper bus beds


This journey was, in a nutshell, a nightmare. The men really did chain smoke almost the entire way - filling the whole bus with their cancerous air. The crazy bus driver obviously had strange ideas about how often humans need to pee... he even refused to stop when Ally begged him!! Only when Ally asked a second time and wouldn't give up did he pull the bus over... and then every single passenger got out with sighs of relief!!!

That night I don't think any of us slept very much, the road was extreemly bumpy and there were many unpleasant smells wafting around. I kept needing the toilet and of course, had to wait hours before I could relieve myself. When we finally arrived in Golmud at about 4:30am, we were all just ready for a bed and sleep. Our Taiwanese friend (what a star!) helped us find a cheap hotel and we all crashed.

GOLMUD

City street


We only stayed in Golmud for one day, but managed to pack so much into that day!! It was our mission to get a train ticket on the new Qinghai-Tibet railway line, with or without a permit. Martin and I were looking for the cheapest possible way in to Tibet basically. The "legal" route is to pay a ridiculous price for a tour (about Y1700) and go from Golmud to Lhasa by bus. You can also bribe the bus drivers to take you illegally, and that would cost about Y800. We'd read on an official website that the actual permit for the train from Golmud was only Y400, so decided to try and find that if we could, because if we added the price of the permit to the price of the train ticket (Y143) it would still work out cheaper - plus we'd get to go and the super new cool train over elevations of 5000m!!! We spent the day taking a bus here, a taxi there, all around town to various travel agencies and permit issuing offices. It was tedious.

We were eventually told that there was no possible way we could get this permit without paying for a tour - which we were adamant not to do. Instead, we decided to ask our Taiwanese friend to buy the train ticket for us (she could buy it safely because she looks Chinese and its only foreigners who need a permit before buying a ticket). That evening she came back with a massive grin on her face - we all had tickets to Lhasa for the next day!!! A miracle!

That night we didn't sleep much, mostly out of excitement and anticipation I think (we were nervous we'd get asked for our permit once on the train), but it was still difficult to get out of bed in the morning... we've had over a week of just sleeping and taking buses - exhausting!!

When we arrived at the train station, we kept our heads down and didn't talk much - trying to attract as little attention as possible. We got through the first ticket check... then the second... then the third. Nobody even blinked an eye! So we officially got into Tibet for Y143 each (about Y1557 less than we thought we'd have to pay!)

The new Qinghai-Tibet Train


The train was awesome, I think the one we were on was coming from Xi'an, but its the Golmud-to-Lhasa section that offers the most breath-taking scenery apparently. We had some serious record-breakers along the way: the world's highest passenger railroad (at Tanggula Pass - elevation: 5072m) and the world's highest railroad tunnel (Fenghuoshan - elevation: 4905m). Over 80% of the journey is at altitudes above 3900m, and half the track was laid atop permafrost.

Inside the train was cool, we only paid for hard seats as the 14hour journey is during the day, but we had a sneaky peak at the sleeper carriages and they were stunning. Every seat and bed has oxygen available to use... we asked for it in the middle of the day because we stopped for over an hour at about 4500m high to let other trains pass, and they brought us a clear plastic tube (like those you see in hospitals) which you put in your nose and they connect to an oxygen port underneath the seat. Nice.

So now we're in Lhasa, trying to acclimatise to the altitude here (3700m) by drinking loads of water and just resting. I need to catch up so much sleep after our marathon journey getting here!!