På eventyr med Lærke i Tibet

Tibet. It’s a sign or even a monument. Some signs are just text with fun translations into English. Others instruct us what (not) to do.

The huge monument is named the monument of the peaceful liberation of Tibet and refer to Tibet becoming part of China in 1959. It’s located opposite to the Tibetan Potala Palace and can be seen from the stairs of the palace on the way up and down as the first view of the town. As both are lit up during evening, it is a good time for a visit and we took lots of pictures. … and were taken lots of pictures of, as usual. As I still had altitude sickness and headache, we were here a little shorter but still walked there and back from our hotel and bought fruit on the way back.

Signs are everywhere. At tourist sights of course. In traffic. In nature along the road or at view points. At markets and restaurants. At bus stops, public buildings and even outside peoples houses.

Leaving Tibet on the train in Danish: the ‘Himmel expressen’ The only train I have been on with oxygen, should it be needed.

It’s the Lhasa to Qinghai express train. Hard sleeper with the locals as Laerke wishes a truly local experience for us. Truth be told, we both did and enjoyed it.

Kids from next door came to play. They were from the countryside in Tibet and their mother were mumbling religious texts in the hall for hours and hours -Testing my tolerance.

Our train was cancelled We had to change our plans. Not that easy as most trains are sold out soon after the tickets are released. As with tourist attractions in China, one need to know when tickets are released and be ready to book immediately. To make things worse, IT systems are designed for locals only as foreigners and all exceptions are way to expensive to program for. To me this makes sense and on this point I do not take it personally and just line up in the left side of entering trains, attractions etc to get the staff to manually write our passport numbers as we show passport and the locals show their ID.

As we so often do, we ended up turning the cancelled train into an improvement. We left Lhasa half a day early to get a train to Qinghai instead of Lanzhou. That way we got to experience a mosque important to the many Muslims in this town and a huge Tibetan temple… well, one more. One last one. Then continuing by speed train to Lanzhou.

The view was as astonishing as expected. Not all the time, but most. Yaks grazing. Mountains. Plateaus of grass. Enormous amounts of water from the mountains in the many rivers that crosses the roads and floods the plateaus. Long roads running parallel with the train tracks between the mountains through the valleys.

Most of the small towns with or without a train station had the feel of the depressing countryside cities of Russia and the USSR.

Making me think of my two trips with the transibirian railway many times.

Trainrides through China is the way to go. Its way cheaper than flying and its actually both fast and on time. Og course within limits as to the distance in this wast country.

You book online.

Onboard you can use the same app that has your booking info to order takeaway… yes!

In the app is a list of the places at the next station or the one after and their selection. Order and pay in the app as its linked to WePay / WeChat and Alipay. At the station, delievery is ready at the train and the train staff receive the orders and bring them to you in your seat! This is what we get when mixing technology and cheap labour.

(For the Danes: den lader vi lige stå med tanke på DSB, rejsekort; og togservice)

Lanzhou is for me now the Yellow River and the statue to mark it – a women with a child made by a female artist.

Rain was the reason we got around less. It rained cats and dogs. We stayed at Ibis as we have done many times before around the world.

When booking we can only book places that are registered to accomodation of foreigners. Its about IT systems among others. These are also more expensive/ luxurious than we would prefer. The last part is slightly inconvenient as it increase cost.

Night markets work regardsless of Storms and pouring rain. That saved my mood, sugar balance and sense of humour.

Grand Canyon. By train again. This Tine from Lanzhou to Zhangye. A tiny town of 1,4 mil inhabitants – more than in Copenhagen. I had never heard of it, and its not even in my loved NomadMania. There are two huge destinations in this area though, where the Chinese themselves flock to experience the Grand Canyon and the the Rainbow Mountains.

Grand Canyon. The nature is like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan … and Arizona. A real Grand Canyon where we could decide between different routes of approx 3 hours each combining hikes, busses, camels and even a 15 metres tall latter.

The closest hike ends on a platform that is so Chinese. Its the love platform with hearts on the rails where lovers can buy small signs to write names and wishes on. Lots of selfies and lovebirds.