Where In The World Is Evan?

————— DAY 1 —————

Feeling rather pleased with ourselves after our achievements on Everest, Sergio and I understandably thought that the hardest part was behind us. Now, however, we faced the unheralded problem of how to get home. As we were the only group at EBC who had actually hiked up, everyone else had charted jeeps waiting for them halfway down the mountain–in the spirit of squeezing every last cent out of tourists the jeeps were not allowed to go all the way up to EBC.

After some hard bargaining with local Tibetans the four of us—Sergio, Jerome, his Taiwanese girlfriend, and me—organised to be taken from EBC to Rongbuk Monastery riding pillion on beat-up motorcycles for 5 kuai each. To save money my rider kept intentionally stalling his engine and relying on the steep gradient of the road to coast down. As a result the others had already stopped and dismounted by the time I arrived. We were, however, not at Rongbuk Monastery. From what we could gather the only people licensed to carry foreigners on this part of the road are the horse and cart drivers, who charge 40 kuai for the ride. What bothered us about this situation is that they had knowingly entered into an agreement that they had no intention of honoring. As such we refused to pay them and simply walked off. Not wanting to get caught by the police who were supervising activities at the monastery a couple of hundred meters away, they had to leave without payment.

At the monastery there are official buses that shuttle people up and down from the car park, about 20 km further down the mountain. On the way up you have to pay 80 kuai for a return ticket, but thankfully they just assume you already have the ticket on the way down. At this stage we’d covered quite a bit of ground for free and were feeling pretty confident about our chances of hitching a cheap ride in a jeep to Shigatse. It’s at times like this, of course, that things start to go pear shaped.

After spending five hours waiting around on the periphery of the car park and begging for a ride from anyone who came by we finally hit a stroke of luck. Contrary to all the advice we’d been given (thanks again Lonely Planet), hitchhiking in Tibet is not easy at all. It may have been in the past, but with the ever increasing cost of permits and jeep rental, the only jeeps we encountered that didn’t have a full compliment of five passengers were hired by rich people who didn’t want to share. It probably didn’t help that neither of us had showered or shaved in quite a long time and looked rather unsightly.

It was at this point that the innumerable failings of Lonely Planet fucked us over once again. According to the LP map (the same one we’d used for our hike), it was around 20 km from the car park to the friendship highway. Considering this, it seemed like a stupid idea to sit around waiting for a ride in the car park, when we could be hitching on the highway itself. We pointed this out to some locals, with whom we were negotiating to get a lift, and they adamantly insisted that it was very far to the highway, and not possible to walk. Taking anything they said with a grain of salt, we kept insisting that we were going to walk if they didn’t lower their price.

In the end two long-haul trucks came to our rescue. We negotiated for them to take us out of the Everest Nature Reserve, and drop us at the police checkpoint run by our friend, the young army captain, for 50 kuai each. Even this seemed excessive until we got underway. Because the road winds and double-backs so many times it may well be 20 km as the bird flies (and the LP map shows), but the road itself is over 70 km long! Unfortunately LP neglected this obviously unimportant fact.

During the drive out of the park we discovered that the trucks we were riding were going all the way to Lanzhou (the city were Sergio and I had met up on our way to Golmud). As such they would be passing though Shigatse, where we were due to meet Jacek. Unable to contain our happiness at this great stroke of luck we gave the drivers some more money to take us the rest of the way. As each of the trucks had two drivers they planned to drive all day and night to arrive in Shigatse early the following morning. This suited us perfectly, as we were already a day late to meet Jacek.

After exiting the Everest Nature Reserve, we dropped off the others at the checkpoint and continued on to New Tingri for a quick dinner break. Two hours after dinner we hit the first of several physical obstacles that were to thwart our timely return. Heavy rain had washed away large sections of the highway during the previous few days, and the road work teams were struggling to get the highway back into usable shape. As we waited for the excavator in front of us to finish shifting dirt and rock off the road we hoped that this was an isolated problem. Thirty minutes later, however, we hit a traffic jam. Three trucks in front of us were stuck in the mud, completely blocking the road.

In typical Chinese style all of the drivers from the blocked trucks got out and walked over to inspect the situation. Of course absolutely no one offered any help or assistance of any kind. They just formed a crowd and milled about, while the drivers of the three bogged trucks aimlessly sat inside their cabs doing nothing. At first the situation seemed rather amusing, here we were stuck in the middle of nowhere witnessing how deeply culturally conditioned the Chinese are to never get involved in anyone else’s problems. Even though these people were directly affected by the bogged trucks they simply had no interest in helping to resolve what was clearly not their problem.

After the first hour rolled by the situation seemed increasingly less funny. There’s only so much comfort one can take in making condescending sociological observations before the fact that you’re indefinitely stuck in the middle of nowhere begins to nag at you. After the second hour passed without any apparent change in the situation first one of our drivers, and then the other, crawled into the sleeping berth at the back of the cab and went to sleep. Being unable to move from our bolt upright positions in the two front passenger seats Sergio and I had no real hope of getting any descent sleep.

After finding that using the gear stick as a pillow was slightly less painful than allowing my head to loll back at a 90 degree angle I managed to fall into a rough approximation of sleep, only to be woken by one of the drivers getting back into his seat. With my hopes suddenly buoyed he started up the engine and turned on the headlights. Looking expectantly ahead I saw that none of the other trucks showed any signs of movement. After a couple of minutes of loudly revving the engine, he turned it back off and went back to sleep. This process continued throughout the night as we were repeatedly given false hope by the warming of the engine.

————— DAY 2 —————

Shortly after dawn an excavator arrived and began towing the trucks out of the way. After clearing the road it spent some time trying to repair the rain damage before giving up and having to tow both our trucks (and the dozens of other waiting trucks) through the impassable mud. In total we spent seven hours stuck waiting for those trucks to be cleared from the road. The two most infuriating things about this situation, however, were the constant stream of jeeps that avoided the traffic jam by driving down the stream that ran alongside the road, and the fact that despite being made to wait for seven hours not a single one of the drivers honked their horn. They were all perfectly calm and happy to wait for someone in authority to come and deal with the situation.

After one of the worst night’s sleep of my life we thankfully got underway again. A couple of hours later, however, disaster struck again. Another truck, this one comically overburdened with goods, was blocking the road ahead. As there was construction going on just five minutes down the road it didn’t take long for another excavator to arrive on the scene. This time, however, due to the angle of the road and the positioning of the tuck the excavator couldn’t dislodge the bogged vehicle without risking toppling it into the stream. After thirty minutes of failed attempts the excavator eventually managed to get the truck out of the way. Not content to tow all of the waiting trucks through the mud, as the last excavator had done, we had to wait another hour and a half while the road was literally rebuilt in Charlie Chaplain slapstick style. The steamroller they brought in to level the newly laid road got bogged twice and had to be towed out. While it was being pulled out the second time an official communist party jeep carrying party dignitaries and flanked by a police escort crashed into the back of the excavator. They stopped briefly to inspect the damage before speeding off again, all the while Sergio was taunting the driver in Chinese about his bad driving.

The trip from Tingri to Shigatse should only take about 16 hours. By this stage, however, we’d been on the road for 17 hours and hadn’t even reached the halfway point.

A little while later, as we rounded a corner we found ourselves in yet another traffic-jam. Cursing in nine or ten different languages Sergio and I got out to inspect what catastrophic road conditions had caused this latest problem. When we reached the source of the traffic jam, however, all we found was a huge crowd of Chinese people standing around watching two people argue over a minor scratch to one of their vehicles. It turned out that one of the passing jeeps had been clipped by an earth mover, so naturally the driver left his car in the exact position of the accident (blocking the whole highway) so he could hysterically gesticulate and demand unreasonable amounts of compensation for what was clearly an insignificant scratch. An hour or so later, after the driver had struck a deal with the construction worker, the blockage was cleared and everyone could move on.

Having had nothing to eat or drink since dinner the night before, neither of us were dealing well with the stress and frustration of the situation. Indeed it was around this time that the truck drivers kept trying to get rid of us. As we approached the first town we’d seen since leaving Tingri the drivers announced that we had to get out because of the police checkpoint ahead. Suspecting that they just wanted to ditch us on the side of the road we refused to pay them half, as they were demanding, but did get out and walk through the police checkpoint and the additional 3 km into town. After getting a filling meal and relaxing with a pot of green tea everything seemed a lot more manageable.

The drivers, however, were still quite keen to get rid of us, so they negotiated with the driver of the public bus to illegally take us the rest of the way into Shigatse. After spending a full 24 hours on that truck we were pretty keen to be saying farewell to our drivers, and boarding the much more comfortable bus.

After a comparatively uneventful eight hours on the bus we finally approached the outskirts of Shigatse at around 11:00 pm. Suddenly, however, we were being hustled to the back of the bus accompanied by urgent whispers about police. Behind a curtain at the rear of the bus was a padded luggage bay in which Sergio and I were told to hide just in case the bus was stopped and inspected by the police. This area turned out to be quite comfortable and despite my best efforts I fell asleep twice.

After arriving at the station without incident we got a taxi across town to our old hotel. When we checked in we discovered that Jacek had left earlier that day. Desperately tired after our ordeal on the truck I collapsed into bed before even finishing the celebratory beer we bought at the bus station.

————— DAY 3 —————

First thing in the morning we checked out of our hotel and went straight back to the bus station. Getting on the public bus to Lhasa we settled in for the comparatively comfortable four hour ride. After arriving in Lhasa we checked back into our old hotel and returned our rented camping equipment. Meanwhile Jacek had contacted us, as we’d not turned up in Shigatse as planned. After learning that we were okay, and that there was no need to report us missing, he bought our bus tickets from Lhasa to Golmud while he was at the station getting his own ticket to Xining. When leaving Tibet the tickets only cost 210 kuai (as opposed to 1,700 kuai for getting there), only 90% more than the Chinese have to pay. Bargain!

This being our last night in Tibet, Sergio, Jacek and I decided to go out for some celebratory drinks. After a couple of beers and some dinner Jacek turned in, but Sergio and I wanted to party. Leaving the restaurant and walking down the main road (patriotically named Beijing South Road) we noticed that almost all of the shops, bars and restaurants were closed. In place of advertising signs hanging from shop doors were Chinese flags expressing how happy everyone is to be part of the motherland. It wasn’t until we saw riot police marching down the middle of the road, and realised that we were the only people stupid enough to be on the street, that we returned to our hotel.

Local party officials had been preparing a huge celebration for the pending fortieth anniversary of the declaration of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. As with most political nomenclature in China to understand what the name actually means simply reverse what it says.

————— DAY 4 —————

Our bus ride from Lhasa to Golmud was much less eventful than our earlier trip in the other direction. Having negotiated to switch our sleeper beds to the rear of the bus, we were both able to stretch our legs out a little more. While chatting to the people beside us (at the back of the bus, five people share one very wide bed) we discovered that they had the same plan we did. They too were planning to get a hard sleeper train ticket from Golmud to Chengdu. As we all wanted to depart Golmud on the same day we arrived this meant more competition for limited train tickets.

————— DAY 5 —————

After spending only 26 hours on the bus this time, we arrived in Golmud in the late morning. Sergio immediately jumped off the bus and got straight into a waiting taxi–to beat everyone else to the train station. I waited around for our luggage to be taken down from the roof of the bus, and then followed him to the station.

While waiting with our luggage at the station I could see Sergio at the head of the ticket line. After buying two tickets he came walking back with an odd expression on his face.

“I’ve got us tickets for today, but they didn’t have any sleeper tickets.” he said leadingly.

“You bought us hard seat tickets for a 39 hour train ride!” I exclaimed.

“No, they didn’t have hard seat tickets either. I bought us standing tickets,” he said with a grin.

Having ridden long distance trains in China on more than 16 occasions I think I’m pretty hardened to the difficulties involved. On one previous occasion I’ve bought a standing ticket–on the eight hour trip from Tai’an to Qingdao. As the train was completely overbooked there was little room even to stand, let alone sit on the floor. When I did try sitting down on the floor I was repeatedly kicked and hit by people rudely pushing their way through the carriages in the pointless hope of finding a seat. Sergio, on the other hand had never had this experience, and was full of bravado for what he though would be another chapter in our Tibetan adventures.

Having a few hours before our train departed we got some lunch and bought some much needed groceries for the long train ride ahead. Thirty minutes before our train was to depart Sergio made a stunning admission.

“When I said there weren’t any sleeper tickets that wasn’t quite true. They had soft sleeper tickets but I couldn’t afford one and I didn’t want to be standing alone.”

Cursing loudly I lunged across the table and began to choke him. Unfortunately Sergio is a lot stronger than I am and easily twisted my hands away. After being reminded of how I owed him two big favours I agreed not to upgrade without him.

Returning to the station and boarding our train we discovered just how dire our situation was. The train was so full that we couldn’t even get into our assigned carriage because of the number of people–I was stuck in front of the toilet door, and Sergio was in the coupling area between the carriages.

After realising the realities of the situation Sergio registered our names with a train attendant to get us an upgrade when someone got off. At every station, however, we were greeted with a seemingly ever increasing number of new passengers who would push and shove until we were all so pack in that it became hard to breath. As night descended and the coupling area became increasingly cold, people pushed even harder to get into the heated carriages.

After putting on my down jacket, thermal underwear, two pairs of gloves, and my Russian fur hat I was still freezing cold as the train crossed the Qinghai dessert. At first we were both waiting with the bags, but when I looked up after trying in vain to get some sleep I discovered that Sergio had disappeared. About two hours later he reappeared from one of the heated carriages carrying a pot of instant noodles. He seemed genuinely puzzled that I would be angry that he fucked off without saying anything to go get some food and enjoy the warmth of the carriage while I was freezing my arse off in the cold minding our bags.

————— DAY 6 —————

With the number of passengers slightly dropping after we passed through Lanzhou, we managed to find room on the luggage racks in our carriage to stow our bags. This meant that we were much freer to move around the train. This also allowed me to have the first food I’d eaten since before we got on the train–there were so many people earlier that I didn’t have room to open my bag to get my food.

As the hours rolled by we both entered into a kind of delirious state, where the things going on around us were tinged with a sense of unreality. Most of the other passengers on the train were northern Sichuanese peasants, with almost no concept of personal or public hygiene. People were letting food scraps fall from their mouths, down their fronts, to pile up on the floor. Compounding this was the incessant chain smoking and spitting on the floor.

After about 24 hours on the train the Chinese people sitting beside us allowed us to squeeze onto the end of their bench. A couple of hours later the train was infused with the stench of human faeces. Looking at the man in front of me, the smell appeared to be originating from him. It wasn’t until he reached under himself with his right hand, which returned covered in shit, that my suspicions were confirmed.

When speculating on the cause of this situation one might suggest that the man was simply incontinent. That wouldn’t explain, however, why he then wiped the shit off his hand onto the wall, leaving five parallel streaks just beside the window. He furthermore made no attempt to clean himself for the remaining 16 hours of the journey.

Shortly after this incident we moved back onto the floor.

After darkness fell we reluctantly faced our second night on the train. Taking the lead from a couple of other passengers, Sergio unfurled his sleeping bag, slid it under the seats and lay down amongst the filth that covered the floor. Sitting beside him, perched on the end of his bag, I was filled with a sense of envy that he was able to sleep, suffused with a strong feeling of revolution at the rubbish that he was sleeping in.

————— DAY 7 —————

After two successive nights without sleep I was no longer a recognisable person. Sitting folded in half, with my head between my knees I just wanted to be off that fucking nightmarish train.

As more passengers got off we were able to move off the floor and onto a seat for the last couple of hours. Feeling quite ill, I attempted to drink some water and have some food, only to throw it back up in the toilet 30 minutes later.

When we finally arrived at Chengdu station, Sergio and I embraced before running for the taxi rank and getting into a beautifully air conditioned taxi across town to our hotel.