oeshoe's blog: 2017-09-13+14 Tibet Trip, Days 6+7, Qinghai-Tibet Railway

After three days of long bus rides, we have arrived at Xining to embark on the train ride to Tibet. Tickets for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway 青藏鐵路, which connects Qinghai Province to Tibet, seemed difficult to procure. For our group of 40, our tour agency was not able to get us all on the same train. Some of us would be on an afternoon train, the rest on an evening train. Many couples were separately assigned to different trains. As a result, several husbands and wives had to involuntarily travel independently.

After 50 years of occupation, China still feels compelled to put a tight lid on Tibet. Permission to enter Tibet is strictly controlled. Emergences of pro-independence movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan have prompted China to denyTibet entry, by default, to Hong Kong residents and Taiwan citizens. One member of our group was denied entry because she held a Taiwanese passport. She had to part with the group at Xining and went to Xian as a compensatory side trip. A similar control measure also applied to our train tickets by the Chinese authority. Our train tickets were individually registered to our names. We were not allowed to exchange tickets among ourselves so that husbands and wives could travel together. As I write this travelogue in November, the Chinese Communist Party just had its 19^th National Congress pow-wow in mid-October. Some websites reported that around that time travels by foreigners into Tibet were completely curtailed.

Since our train rides to Tibet were scheduled for the afternoon and the evening, we had time in the morning for a Xining city tour. Our first stop was Dongguan Islamic Grand Mosque, allegedly the largest mosque in China.
(Click on each picture to get the full-size view. Some pictures were taken by Ben, Peter, and others without explicit attribution.)

The mosque has several buildings. One of the notable and grandest is the prayer hall, which has a green dome-shaped roof and two slender minarets.

Most of the buildings in the mosque compound were built in Central Asia or Arabic style, except this one in traditional Chinese style.

We were very lucky that we had a real imam as our docent, Imam Wang Shaofeng 王少峰阿訇. His interpretation of Islam teaching and his comparison of Islam to other religions were very well received by Muslims and others. He was knowledgeable, articulate, and presented abstract concepts clearly. Many in the audience were captivated by his talk.

Imam Wang Shaofeng is an internet celebrity. He can be seen at youtube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E6%9D%B1%E9%97%9C%E5%B0%8E%E9%81%8A.

After the mosque visit, we had an early lunch. Those on the evening train had the afternoon free to themselves. Those on the afternoon train were bused to the Xining Train Station.

The train ride from Xining to Tibet (Lhasa) is a long journey of 1956 kilometers. It usually takes 22 hours, with one stop midway. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway goes through some of the roughest terranes on earth, with the highest elevation of 5072 meters. When the railway was completed in 2006, it was considered one of China’s great engineering achievements. The following map shows the location of Qinghai-Tibet Railway, relative to the geography of China.

The following map shows the full length of Qinghai-Tibet Railway, with elevation denoted inside the parenthesis. The highest point is at 5072 meters elevation.

Our train to Tibet.

The sleeper cabin has two sets of bunk beds for four passengers. Pillows, thick comforters, and hot water pot were provided. Reading light and conduit for oxygen tube was at the headboard.

Many husbands were separated from their wives for this train ride. Reactions from husbands varied widely. Some felt nonchalant (Eric), some melancholy (Ming), ……

… and some exaggeratedly overjoyed (Peter).

The train had a dining car for sit-down meals.

It was not easy to get a table in the dining car because of the presence of two other tour groups on board. On the second day of our train ride, three members of our group had to argue with the dining car server in order to get a table for breakfast. They finally pulled the senior-citizen card for the server to relent and agreed to make available a dining table.

The scenery along the railway: expansive, bare, and bleak.

Occasionally a sign of human habitats.

The high altitude brought frozen ice to the surface of the ground alongside the railway.

In some wee hours, the train made a stop at the Golmud (Ge'ermu) station for 25 minutes. Some of us hurried down to the station platform to stretch our body.

The Golmud station is located almost halfway between Xining and Lhasa. Qinghai-Tibet Railway was built in two phases. The first phase, connecting Xining and Golmud, was completed in 1984. The second phase, extending the railway from Golmud to Lhasa, was completed in 2006.

The daybreak brought the golden hue to the landscape. It reminded me of the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, by Robert Frost.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Vegetation started to appear along the railway. Yaks and nomad villages could be seen frequently when we were approaching Lhasa.

We finally arrived in Lhasa. We left Xining at 2 pm the day before and arrived at Lhasa at noon the next day. The ride took exactly 22 hours. Our train also carried a group of Chinese soldiers relocating to Tibet. They were regrouping on the station platform.

After going through the chaotic scrutiny at the exit door by the security personnel, we got out of the Lhasa train station. We then had to wait outside for our passports to be checked and double-checked by another security apparatus in a separate building. Looking around the plaza in front of the train station, there were numerous posters with slogans proclaiming the glory of the Communist party and the accomplishments of Tibet after “its return to the motherland” 50 years ago. After a long wait, our tour guide Titian finally emerged from the security building waiving triumphantly with a stack of our passports in her hands. We then met our two Tibetan local guides – Jigme and Derji.

By nightfall, all our group members, sans one holding a Taiwanese passport, arrived safely in Lhasa. We had our first Tibetan dinner. Some looked excited, some looked tired, but all felt blissful that we made it.