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Saturday 2005-10-01 - Golmud, China
Sleeper bus: a new experience
I wake up early because the Chinese woman with her little son on the bed above me are getting up: they leave the train one station before Golmud. It’s still dark outside and the lights aren’t turned on yet but I can’t sleep any more.
At exactly 7:00 we arrive in Golmud where one small bus is waiting to take us (and all our luggage) to our breakfast: there’s no way all 19 of us will fit in there. When our tour companion Marie Josee states we’ll take some taxis for those who don’t fit in, local agent Mrs. How arranges another bus (where did it suddenly come from?); it looks like she’s been trying to save some money — unsuccessfully. The buses take us to a hotel where the breakfast room is opened half an hour early for us (Mrs. How arranged that very well); we find an excellent Chinese breakfast buffet ready for us.
Our hired sleeper bus was already waiting for us when we arrived at our breakfast hotel (no need to go to the bus station). It looks bright and yellow on the outside (we’d been promised a new bus) but inside it’s not all that new. We find three rows of “bed-seats” (I have no idea what else to call them: not seats, not long enough for a bed) and four next to each other in the back, all in two layers above each other, providing a total of 48 places; between the rows there are also mattresses on the floor: normally people sleep here as well. Even though the head rest on one “bed-seat” provides foot room for the one behind it, the length of them is small: people with long legs are going to have trouble sleeping. It’s a good thing we have the whole bus to ourselves (19 of us), so we can park our food, cameras and shoes on the free upper beds.
The Qinghai-Tibet Highway
I never feel comfortable leaning, so most of the time I sit upright — with the disadvantage that I can’t look out of the window very well, you only can do that from a reclining position. While we leave Golmud I take a measurement with my GPS: we’re at an elevation of 2775m (my book says it’s 3200m), at about N 36.34340, E 094.81511. We’ve embarked on the 1115km Qinghai-Tibet Highway from Golmud to Lhasa.
The weather is overcast and misty, so at first the landscape, near-desert with scarce vegetation, looks very bleak. I notice some tamarisk where run-off water collects along the road, but that soon disappears completely. Still, for the first time we now see snow-capped mountains in the distance; at first with only a very light dusting of snow, later a more solid snow cover. At times some very fine powder snow is falling but it doesn’t even seem to reach the ground.
Slowly the landscape outside the windows changes from a river valley into a tundra-like high plain; there are streams (with occasionally a dam) and pools of water, here and there it looks like a flood plain. Vegetation is still scarce, with small tufts of short grass and herbs.
Gradually, the weather gets better now; the sun brings out the rich variety of greens and browns: it’s not as bleak as it looked at first. Actually, it’s breathtakingly beautiful, this wide, wild landscape. Where the vegetation is a little denser we occasionally see herds of “yak cows” and sheep. One of our short stops along the way is near the Tibetan Antelope Rescue Center: within the fence some antelopes are grazing. Later we see some small herds of Tibetan Antelope, as well as some wild asses. There are birds, too: we note (white) Wagtails, Thick-billed Crows and an (unknown) kind of gull.
Our first high pass is at 5010m (higher ones come later). As long as we are above 4000m and getting higher we’re not allowed to go to sleep — mostly to avoid altitude sickness but it can actually be dangerous: when you sleep your breathing slows down and with the lack of oxygen on the high passes you might never wake up again…
Saturday 2005-10-01 - Yan Shi Pin, Tibet (China)
Lunch break in the midst of poverty
We make a stop in a village along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway to allow our two drivers to eat lunch. The tiny restaurant is not really for tourists but the drivers invite some of us to share their Chinese hot pot (“don’t take meat, only the vegetables,” Marie Josee warns).
Together with Willemien I walk around a bit: some small buildings on both sides of the road — that’s all. The mostly Muslim inhabitants of this small village are very poor but amid the dirt (apart from the road there is no pavement at all) they’re still doing their best to keep things clean; we watch a woman sweeping her yard — she doesn’t even have glass in her windows, only a sheet of not-so-clear plastic with holes in it. Yet it must be bitterly cold here in winter: it’s very high at an elevation of 4558m (according to my GPS), located at N 33.58876, E 092.06429. One of our bus drivers writes down the name of the village for me: Yan Shi Pin.
Apart from the tiny restaurant, a beer house, two small shops and what must be a garage, it’s not clear what the inhabitants of this bleak village live on. At least there is a small clinic. What is noticeable is the power station though: a combination of some small windmills and a group of solar panels.
Saturday 2005-10-01 - Amdo, Tibet (China)
Finally, sleep
Once it gets dark, it gets a lot harder to stay awake. We’d been promised an hour or so of sleep once we’d get below 4000m but that never happens: we stay well above that altitude, passing two more high passes.
At 23:55 we come to a larger town, Amdo where the last checkpost before Lhasa is located. But it’s the national holiday in China: all three checkposts on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway are open and unmanned, we just sail straight through.
Now, we can finally go to sleep, we’ve passed all the high passes and it’s another seven hours to Lhasa. I snuggle in with two duvets (one along the drafty window) and soon fall asleep: no problem for me with my short legs!
