Well if you want an authentic Chinese experience, this is it. The hotel is miles out of a Chinese provincial city. Nobody speaks English, not even hotel staff. No English TV shows, no English menues, no English signs, and the nearest shops to walk to are supposedly half an hour away, but nobody understands if you ask for directions.
Went for a walk as the sun was just rising, down past the local middle school, and I'd estimate that there were over 2000 kids pouring in for a 7:30 start. Completely different uniforms for different streams. There are probably about 50 20-storey apartment buildings under construction within one kilometre, so I'd guess that there are about 50,000 families about to move into the local area. We were told later that the entire government infrastructure is about to move into that area, so the school will end up being huge. Found a local supermarket and bought enough for meals on the train.
The guide materialised about 10am and took us for the morning visit to the local mosque. 16% of the population are Muslim being on the old silk route, and it's an interesting fusion of central asian and far eastern in the architecture of a Chinese mosque. It's one of the 5 largest mosques in China.
Into the city and a visit to the supermarket for the others, and then ceremoniously dumped at KFC for a cultural lunch. Down to the station for a security pat down, and a 3pm departure of our high altitude train. Not sure what they were searching for. None of the sensors went off because of the piles of metal in my pockets, and judging by the knives brought on board they weren't looking for them either. We were told not to take any photos at the station - we were in a sensitive military area - the Chinese atomic bomb tests were held in the area 'in the middle of the last century'.
The fun started when we found our carriage. 2nd class hard sleepers in rooms of 6. Inevitably I was on the top bunk. That wasn't much of a hardship for me, but it seemed to be a nuisance for the dozen people already in there. I guess we lobbed into the middle of a Chinese travel group. At one stage during tea there were 11 people crowded into our cabin, and that didn't include the 3 of us who actually had reservations in the cabin who were sitting in the corridor because there wasn't room.
Put my Russian train skills into practice and had noodles for dinner whilst watching the bare hills roll on by. Turns out that there are about 6 trains a day between Beijing and Lhasa, and it was packed, so I guess the incredible engineering feat has been worth it. Unfortunately we aren't on the showcase train you see on the ads, but who cares. To give you an idea of the challenge, 550kms of track was laid on permafrost, the train ascends to 5100m, the same height as Everest Base Camp, and they pipe oxygen into the cabins as you go over the plateau.
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