On the Beijing- Lhasa train

The train, T27 departed from Beijing Xi railway station at at 21:30 and I was in carriage 2 and on the top bunk in berth 19. We left on the 2nd of September and arrived at the newly built Lhasa train station on the 4th at around 20:15. We had travelled an amazing 4,064km through the most breathtaking scenery and passing major such as Shijiazhuang, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Xining.
The 1,956-km-long Qinghai-Tibet railway stretches from Xining to Lhasa. It is the world's highest and longest plateau railroad and also the first railway to connect Tibet with the rest of China. The 4,064-kilometer trip took us about 47 hours and 28 minutes some 960 kilometers of the new line's tracks are 4,000 meters above sea level, and the loftiest point is 5,072 meters, at least 200 meters higher than the Peruvian railway in the Andes, which was formerly the world's highest altitude railway.

We entered the train and everything was spotless and absolutely beautiful. There was even toilet paper in the toilets and the ends were even folded into a triangle. Unfortunately, after 2 days when we left, the train was absolutely disgusting and has put me off train travel in china a bit. Unlike the Russians who are so clean, the chinese seem to have no sense of hygiene. They spit everywhere (the hard sleepers had no spitting signs where as in the soft sleepers this sign was ommited) and food is thrown all over the place and the toilets..let's just not go there.

But apart from this the train journey was worth every cent...there were breathtaking landscapes every second of the journey. So this is how the train is mostly organised, the tibetans on the hard seats, the chinese in the hard sleepers and the foreigners in the soft sleepers where they have western toilets and 4 beds in a cabin with closed doors. However, most of us foreigners seemed to be in hard sleepers and a couple of crazy ones even in the hard seats,
It didn't matter though as we spent most of our time in the dining cart watching the views go by and just swapping stories again. There are people who have been travelling in Asia for years and I wonder why it has taken me so long to get here.
Anyway, among the many other tourists, I met Amanda and Ingrid and we are now travelling companions for a while, all staying in the same hsotel. Arriving into Lhasa, it was really dark and raining and I just felt a huge sense of disappointment as we drove to the hostel and saw neon lights and shoping malls and chinese restaurants. This was not the Tibet I was expecting at all.


But this morning we walked out of the hostel and crossed the street and were just absolutely amazed. Just spending a few minutes here and I knew I was meant to come here and i know that I want to spend as much time here as I possibly can. Do you remember, Sam and Luzma, you told me about that special feeling you guys had when you went into the Ngorogoro crater, well when I entered this street, I felt like that. Tibetans walking around with their prayer wheels chanting Om Mani Padme Hum, monks, nuns, tibetans with traditional clothes and beautiful faces, prostrating to gain merit, the smells of yak butter and insence everywhere.,..i haven't got enough words to describe the scenes that unfolded before us as we turned each corner. So we spent our day walking among the devotees and just getting used to the altitude. Bought some jewelry made from yak bones, ate some chips on the street and then dinner in a local restaurant and just sat gazing at teh amazing faces that kept passing us by. Unable to help myself I just kept clicking away with my camera and I just cannot wait to show you the little but of Lhasa that we have seen today.