Melting

Early in the morning, which was becoming the theme for our travels through China, Chris and I boarded our bus from Xiahe to Langmusi, another small Tibetan town featuring a monastery and beautiful scenery. The leg room, astoundingly, was quite good on this bus, and we comfortably settled in for the 4 hour drive. The scenery continued to keep us entertained,and as our bus rumbled along the hilly roads, we chatted to a nice French couple, Julie and Guillaume, about their travels in China. We exchanged stories and told them about the horse festival, which they regrettably missed. Unlike many bus journeys, the time flew by along with the numerous peaks and valleys outside. We arrived in Langmusi uneventfully and without a warning, with no signs or characteristics to show us that the journey had ended. We walked around the small town and looked for accomodation, searching in vain for a guesthouse that apparently doesn’t exist anymore. We finally settled on the first one we went to, and for less than half the price of a double room in their new wing, we had a dorm room to ourselves with comfy beds and less than clean floors. Julie and Guillaume had a room down the hall from us, so we arranged to meet them a popular cafe for lunch, where we hoped to get some information about travels to the next stop on our itinerary, to where there was no direct bus. The small town of Langmusi was surrounded by beautiful and unique scenery on every side. Facing one side was a huge red plateau similar to the scenery I saw in Australia at Kakadu, while on two other sides huge hills, or possibly they were mountains now, displayed rocky formations out of the ground known as the Stone Forest. The last side showed small hills in comparison, but was built with small homes and temples for the monastery in town. It was a bright clear day and we were looking forward to doing some exploring in the surrounding hills. But first was lunch, and at the small cafe, famous for its enormous Big Yak Attack burgers, we chatted with Julie and Guillaume about their next plans, and we agree to find some transport together to Songpan, the next town we wanted to visit. [read on]

Exiting the train station in Lanzhou, I had only one thought on my mind, and that was how crappy I felt. I pushed this thought aside however, and managed to concentrate on the new task at hand. We needed to get to the bus station to head to our actual destination, Xiahe, and the next bus was leaving in about 15 minutes. Luckily, Chris and I had used our brains for once in Xi’an the night before, and had the girl at our hostel write down a key phrase for us in Chinese: south bus station. We quickly found a taxi driver and showed her the card, and she nodded, agreed on a price and we set off for the station. We arrived just as the bus was about to leave, and though there were touts trying to sell us tickets on that bus, we couldn’t think fast enough and walked past them inside the station. We both knew that we needed a bathroom and some water at the very least before our bus ride, and after easily buying tickets for the next bus an hour later, we took care of some basic needs while we waited to depart. Much to our dismay, we saw as we boarded the bus, there was very little leg room on our seats as well, and our legs ached just looking at them. Tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep on the bus, and mostly stared out the window at the rapidly changing landscapes outside. [read on]