Before I start this post, we have to give you a short explanation:
We are no longer able to access our blog because it has been censored by the Chinese government! Fortunatly, we can still post new messages but we cannot see what we are actually doing. So, if our posts appear somewhat strange with pictures out of place - please excuse us but we can't see it! Moreover, we cannot write comments anymore... :(
Now here we go! After about 10 months of travel we are finally on our way to one of the most remote and mystic regions of the world: Tibet, the roof of the world. 48 hours of nice, comfortable train (as you saw in previous posts) were to bring us from Chengdu to Lhasa and introduce us to altitues of up to 5100m! Luckily, by now,we are experts on long hours in trains and buses and so we didn't distinguish us much from the local travelers at the train station (except for the skin and hair color maybe :)): we were loaded with tons of noodle soup, packages of fried rice from our hotel, packages of cookies (homemade!!!), and fresh fruit; well, at least I had insisted on the fruit. There was no danger of starvation even if the train had took a week to arrive in Lhasa... And, to my greatest pleasure, there was also illimited hot water available on the train so that I could get drunk on tea all the way!
Of course, you cannot just eat and drink for 48 hours, so we spent lots of time becoming masters in card games and Yams (dice game) - to the great amusement of our four female compartment members who were very interested in every movement we made and were rather disappointed when we disappeared behind Harry Potter for hours in a row. I am not sure if we have become such a curiosity after all those months of traveling or if they were not simply happy for any kind of distraction as people here do not seem to know any kind of distraction - no music, no books, no magazines - they just do nothing for 48 hours!!! For me, this is an amazing phenomenon because I would have gone crazy after about 2 hours! Well, cultural differences I guess.
By the time we might have become bored, the landscape outside had changed so much that looking out of the window became one of our favored activities. The Qïnghai province and the Tibetain Plateau are simply breathtakingly beautiful! We went from desert-like steppe, to yellow-greenish permafrost moors; we crossed through rugged red mountains that appeared to be hewn by giants in former times and grey, snowcovered mountain ranges; we went past blue-white rivers and deep blue lakes; and sometimes, there appeared tiny villages, indicators of the amazing fact that life is still possible in this remote and hostile place! We didn't know where to look first, the magnitude of what we saw overwhelmed us and I, for my part, can saw for sure that I have never before seen anything comparable. The vastness, solitude, and roughness of the place capture your heart in an instant.
Well, our train ride did not take a week after all but before we arrived in Lhasa we still had the right to experience a very special treat. One of the women in our compartment was traveling with a baby and she had a very special way of keeping it dry... Usually, the babies or small children here all wear a kind of trouser with a hole over the bottom so that they can sit down anywhere in the streets and pee or... In the train, the mother had reverted to an awesome innovation: diapers. However, she apparently was not used to handling these, she wouldn't attach them properly but just hold them to the bottom of the baby, above the trousers. Then, 2 or three hours before our arrival, she ran out of diapers and, instead of improvising something with toilet paper, she just held the baby up in the air and let it pee on the carpet on the floor of the train! Seriously, I am not inventing this. We both couldn't believe our eyes but all the other people on the train simply laughed and went on with their business! I can tell you, we were very glad to have kept our shoes on all along the way! It's always fun to travel amongst new cultures!
Now here we go! After about 10 months of travel we are finally on our way to one of the most remote and mystic regions of the world: Tibet, the roof of the world. 48 hours of nice, comfortable train (as you saw in previous posts) were to bring us from Chengdu to Lhasa and introduce us to altitues of up to 5100m! Luckily, by now,we are experts on long hours in trains and buses and so we didn't distinguish us much from the local travelers at the train station (except for the skin and hair color maybe :)): we were loaded with tons of noodle soup, packages of fried rice from our hotel, packages of cookies (homemade!!!), and fresh fruit; well, at least I had insisted on the fruit. There was no danger of starvation even if the train had took a week to arrive in Lhasa... And, to my greatest pleasure, there was also illimited hot water available on the train so that I could get drunk on tea all the way!
Of course, you cannot just eat and drink for 48 hours, so we spent lots of time becoming masters in card games and Yams (dice game) - to the great amusement of our four female compartment members who were very interested in every movement we made and were rather disappointed when we disappeared behind Harry Potter for hours in a row. I am not sure if we have become such a curiosity after all those months of traveling or if they were not simply happy for any kind of distraction as people here do not seem to know any kind of distraction - no music, no books, no magazines - they just do nothing for 48 hours!!! For me, this is an amazing phenomenon because I would have gone crazy after about 2 hours! Well, cultural differences I guess.
By the time we might have become bored, the landscape outside had changed so much that looking out of the window became one of our favored activities. The Qïnghai province and the Tibetain Plateau are simply breathtakingly beautiful! We went from desert-like steppe, to yellow-greenish permafrost moors; we crossed through rugged red mountains that appeared to be hewn by giants in former times and grey, snowcovered mountain ranges; we went past blue-white rivers and deep blue lakes; and sometimes, there appeared tiny villages, indicators of the amazing fact that life is still possible in this remote and hostile place! We didn't know where to look first, the magnitude of what we saw overwhelmed us and I, for my part, can saw for sure that I have never before seen anything comparable. The vastness, solitude, and roughness of the place capture your heart in an instant.
Well, our train ride did not take a week after all but before we arrived in Lhasa we still had the right to experience a very special treat. One of the women in our compartment was traveling with a baby and she had a very special way of keeping it dry... Usually, the babies or small children here all wear a kind of trouser with a hole over the bottom so that they can sit down anywhere in the streets and pee or... In the train, the mother had reverted to an awesome innovation: diapers. However, she apparently was not used to handling these, she wouldn't attach them properly but just hold them to the bottom of the baby, above the trousers. Then, 2 or three hours before our arrival, she ran out of diapers and, instead of improvising something with toilet paper, she just held the baby up in the air and let it pee on the carpet on the floor of the train! Seriously, I am not inventing this. We both couldn't believe our eyes but all the other people on the train simply laughed and went on with their business! I can tell you, we were very glad to have kept our shoes on all along the way! It's always fun to travel amongst new cultures!
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