A Little More About The Train From Tibet…
Well, we have about 4 hours to kill before we can board our boat to go down the Yangtze River so I thought I’d do a little more justice to our 49 hour trainride from Tibet.
The morning we left, I got to experience the sun rising over the mountains as we drove to the train station. It was beautiful, just like the night I came out and watched the sun set over the same setting. At the station, the excitement was building to ride on the train… it’s a new train that only started running in July so the train itself was quite clean and even the hard sleeper was quite soft. This green machine was a thing of beauty… I couldn’t wait for it to take us through the moutains of Tibet.
On the train, we passed magnificent mountain scenery… snow-covered mountains, terraced steps of crops, wild yaks, little traditional houses, sand dunes, patterns of squares made with stones to prevent wind erosion in the sand, blossoming cherry blossoms… and everything in between. It was surreal to me… another one of those moments where it dawns on me where I am.
As we reached 5100m in altitude, I could see the most beautiful view of the mountains and valleys. Luckily, they pump oxygen into the train so we didn’t have any altitude problems… it’s kind of scary thinking that there is pressurized oxygen on board though and everyone still smokes like a chimney.
We passed a few crystal blue lakes and many more beautiful mountains before reaching some of the bigger cities. My memories of Tibet will always be enchanting and I hope to return someday.
Anyway, I just didn’t want to chince out on any of the details on the ride back from Lhasa. I will try to post all the pictures when I get back to Hong Kong (April 10th).
Tags: China
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