Thursday 20th November 2014

Travelling on the World’s Highest Railway to Lhasa, Tibet

Happy Birthday Anne!
It’s Anne’s birthday today. Wow what a way to celebrate it, on a train travelling to Lhasa, Tibet on the world’s highest railway! The four of us agreed that the ‘beds’ were quite comfy and we all had enjoyed a good nights sleep. We were surprised how quiet it was on the train. We made tea and coffee in our sleeper carriage and had biscuits and porridge. We all sat relaxing and chatting, and Anne and I wrote notes for our journals. We played some background music from one of our tablets.

 

 

 

 

 

All this time of course we were enjoying the lovely scenery that was passing by. There were pretty river views and high barren mountains. We wondered if the train went near the Yellow River and learnt later that we did indeed see it during our journey. One of the train’s policemen paid a visit to our carriage and requested our permit, after inspection he shook all our hands. After a while the pretty scenery is replaced by views of infrastructure, scores of high-rise blocks are in the process of being built. Scenes of industry and bridges and roads being constructed follow.

There really is no noise on the train, it is so silent that for a moment or two I thought that I had lost my sense of hearing!

At around 11.30 am we decide to have a wander to the restaurant car and are not surprised to find that they are already serving lunch. There are lots of members of staff and one of them hands me a menu. There are only pictures of the dishes that are on offer in the menu but we do recognise one or two of them. I have a peek in the galley kitchen and I am appalled to see a kitchen worker hacking and spitting in the sink! One of the young girls keeps apologising to us presumably because of her lack of English. Dave tells her not to worry and says that we should know more of her language but of course she doesn’t understand. We just keep smiling and nodding our heads. The three English words that the staff all seem to know this lunchtime are lunch, thank you and sorry. Someone turns up with a phone, which has a translator app on it, and we type in ‘What time is the food served till?’ With this method we learn that lunch finishes at 1pm and that dinner is available between 6pm and 8pm. We return to our carriage for our ‘caterpillar’ bread and cuppa soups resolving to look up some words before dinnertime. One of our guidebooks gives the translation for pork, beef, rice, noodles and that all-important word (for Dave and I) spicy, so we should be okay. The so-called ‘caterpillar’ bread has an orange sweet centre so it’s not really suitable for dunking in cuppa soup! The various packets of food have all expanded due to the rise in altitude.

We spend most of the afternoon in our soft sleeper and we have a few laughs. One such laugh was at my expense as I attempted to climb up to reach a suitcase stored above the door. Anne and I had a fit of the giggles as she insisted on taking photographs of what is not my best side!

 

We had fun and took a considerable amount of time attempting to take a photo of the Tibetan Permit with the four of us.  We managed to succeed on about the tenth attempt!

There is a notice on the hot water dispenser in the corridor that warns ‘scalds bums’.

Mid afternoon we travel through a city in North West China named Lanzhou where the Yellow River flows through.

I sat in the corridor for a while charging my tablet, while playing a game of mah jong, a policeman passed by and noticed what I was doing. He started pointing at some of the symbols and saying what they were. He wanted me to repeat the words and he opened his mouth wide to show me where the tongue should be to pronounce the different sounds. I confess to being a poor student.

We spotted the first snow at 5.30pm, it was feeling colder on the train and I put my socks on.
Anne went to freshen up and she saw a Muslim washing his feet in the sink, no doubt in preparation for prayer. We wondered which way Mecca was from here.
Armed with our new words and our guidebook we set off for the dining car. The waitress remembered my name and gave us all a lovely happy smile.

With the aid of the translator on her phone she offered us more information about the pictures in the menu. She even suggested one or two options, ‘scrambled eggs with tomatoes’ we read from her phone. We also managed to find out which dishes were spicy and which weren’t.

A little earlier the policeman had warned us not to smoke ‘O2 O2’ he repeated. We were aware that we would be reaching 5200 metres during the night. We guessed that because of his warning that oxygen was already being pumped into the train. Again there was conflicting information on the Internet about the oxygen, some articles said that the train was pressurised, others that one must ask for a tube to attach to the oxygen if you needed it.

Dave and I had bought a very small cake for Anne’s birthday from a shop in Chengdu. We had brought a candle and lighter from home. However I didn’t dare light it due to the warning not to smoke. I thought it was therefore not advisable to light a candle. So we gave Anne her tiny cake complete with candle and told her that she had to pretend to blow out her birthday cake so we could take a photograph. She obliged and we sang Happy Birthday.

A few minutes later our friendly waitress arrived and gave Anne a bowl of noodles and a piece of paper, which read ‘Birthday Noodles, enjoy your meal’. We were all delighted, what a thoughtful thing to do. Anne sent a note back thanking them. It is a Chinese tradition to eat long noodles at a person’s birthday celebration. The long noodles symbolise long life. Apparently they are intended to be slurped until no more can be stuffed into the mouth before they are bitten. What a shame that we were not aware of this; the photograph would have been brilliant Anne!

We were a little surprised to see two members of staff smoking and also people smoking in the corridor. We appeared to be the only Europeans on the train possibly the only non-Tibetan /non-Chinese.

We were back in the carriage before 8pm and the four of us played a game of scrabble. I won, yeah! When I asked if I had a prize, I was told that I could wash our breakfast and lunch pots up the next day. Some prize!

Earlier in the day we had shown each other some of the photos we had taken both on our camera and with our telephones. Anne and Pete had quite a number of strange ones or outtakes as we named them, a photo of the floor, one of the sky, obviously errors. So when they left the carriage to enable us to get changed for bed, we used their phone to take some more odd shots – the kettle, a game of patience on Dave’s tablet, a picture of a crossword etc.

We were all in bed and lights were out by 9pm. We obviously needed to catch up on our sleep!

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