Another amazing new building, the Beijing West train station is packed with travelers of all types, mostly it appears more working class folks.
Beijing West railway station:
Main corridor of Beijing West station:
The waiting area for our train. They were many rooms like this throughout the station for other trains:
We have arrived early for two reasons. One is to buy groceries for the trip. The menu du jour it appears for train travelers is large bowls of ramen noodles. There is boiling water in the waiting areas and on the train for this very common food. We get six bowls of instant ramen and eight bottles of water. We have to stay hydrated to combat altitude sickness. There is a dining car, but we’ll likely use it only a couple of times.
The second reason is to try to secure a soft sleeper berth. That was our request when we made the reservation. Because it took so long to get our visas, which are required to buy train tickets, the soft sleepers were unavailable by the time our visas were secured. We ended up with hard sleepers. Carla, our travel agent, said we could possibly get soft sleepers once we are there in person. Well, that ended up going nowhere. No one spoke English anywhere at the station or on the train, and “soft sleeper” were not words we learned for our trip, nor are they in our language book.
So, hard sleepers we have. Boarding the train was kind of stressful. We were hurriedly stuffed into the narrow hallways outside the berths. We unknowingly walk past our berth, so now have to fight against the stream to get back. People are yelling, we're exhausted. Yikes!
The hard sleeper is a small compartment that we share with other passengers. There are six bunks, benches really, three on a wall, with a thick blanket used as a mattress covered by a sheet. The room is 6’6” deep, 6’ across and 7’ tall. There’s not much storage space for luggage, so my big bag is standing upright at one end of my bunk, now making my bunk 5’6”.
The T27 line, Car 1, Berths 5-6
There are fold down benches in the hall outside the berth. The people in the upper bunks spend most of their time there.
Once inside, the experience had a bit of the first night in prison feeling, or a really small dorm room on the first day of school. Crammed together in a tiny space with people you don’t know, plus the fact that we can’t communicate that well together. I won’t lie, there were moments when I wondered if deciding to take the train had been a good idea.
We each took a Diamox, a drug to prevent altitude sickness, then got to sleep pretty closely after our 9:30 p.m. departure. Twice during the night, an alarm went off in the hall. No telling what it was about. No crew from the train came by, and it eventually went off.
Waking up this morning, it seemed a little tentative on how the day would go. But, as it has turned out, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. The scenery is unbelievable. The small towns, the little plots of land being worked by hand, some mountainous areas where even a random six foot wide ledge will have some crop planted on it; the small shrines in the fields among the crops; seeing what people have brought to eat – large jars of pickled vegetables, the ramen, and other things that are yet to be determined. We are seeing so many different pictures of what China is that we would never have seen just staying in Beijing. It would be like someone visiting New York and saying they know what the United States looks like.
I almost didn't post any outdoor pictures from the train. The dirty windows and speed don't make for good photos. However, this picture shows how even between deep gorges, there are crops planted in between rises. You can see it better, and all of the pictures in the blog, if you click on the photos to see them larger.
We have settled in nicely. The boy in the bunk above me reached down a little while ago to offer Aaron and I a kind of beef stick. He is seventeen, from northeast China, and on the way to Lhasa with his mom to visit his dad. His name is Liu ee a (my own semi-phonetic/semi-Chinese spelling). He speaks a little English and is very nice. He was surprised Aaron is nineteen (“Too tall!” he said). He later gave us each a chocolate bar. We returned the favor later with a round of cokes.
Our friends in our berth in the hall playing a game:
We are the only non-Asians in the hard sleeper cars. We are definitely noticed. Again, I’m thankful for the way this worked out. The softer beds, the larger berth, a door on the berth would all be nice, but this is how I like it – not a sanitized, separate experience, but right in the middle of it. The only part I’m not looking forward to is having to use the squat toilets for the first time – on a moving train no less!
Toilet door sign:
Aaron and I watched the movie “The Bucket List.” Funny that two of the things they’re doing on their list are things we’re doing on this trip. The movie finishes as we pass through Lanzhou. I’m pretty tired and decide to take a nap at about 4:00 p.m.
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