Train from Xian to Lhasa

At around 8.30am I boarded my train to Lhasa. The train trip was meant to take 32 hours. My longest trip yet. While on the platform getting on the train I meet this Russian woman called Galina. She could only speak Russian so with the help of my Trans- Siberian Lonely Planet (thanks Lee!!) I was able to work out her name and that she was heading to Lhasa too. After this initial conversation the language barrier became a bit too hard and I left her to read her book. Russian is a really really hard language to speak! I don't know what I am going to do in Russia as very few people in Russia over the age of 25 can speak any English.

I then went to my hard sleeper and tried to talk to my "room mates" but my Chinese seemed to only confuse them and one guy called his English teacher to find out what I was trying to say. I felt really bad as I just wanted to practise the things the Swiss couple had taught me the night before.

Finally I met Werner from Austria. He had assumed I was Russian due to my earlier attempt to talk to Galina. Haha too funny! Werner has been living in northern China with his wife and kids for the past 15 months. He is working for an automotive company and his wife is working as a teacher. We got along really well and I tried to speak a bit of German to him.

Werner on the train in the dining cart. The try to make the dining cart all romantic with the fake red rose. haha!

While we were drinking in the dining cart we meet this Father and son from the UK. They ran a backpacker company and were travelling to Lhasa to look at setting up a new hostel there. I have to admit I didn't like the thought of Lhasa and Tibet becoming really touristy but it was still interesting to learn about their company and setting up hostels all over the world. They also offered me accommodation in London and Edinburgh at their hostels, which was really nice.

On the train we reached 5000m above sea level. I felt OK but my guts started to get bad and remained bad for the who time in Lhasa.

The train trip was amazing. And I would recommended it to everyone. You get to watch the landscape change as you get higher and higher. None of the pictures I have taken can even began to show how incredible the landscape is. As we travelled towards Lhasa the scenery would change. Initially we had the planes of the Gobi desert with distant hills.

The desert soon become grassy and we would see the occasional yak and nomadic person. It was crazy to see this random person walking in the middle of nowhere with no housing or tent in sight. I would have loved to gotten off the train and just walked with them to see how they live and what they do.

Some yaks

Then slowly small "town" would appear and the distant mountains became snow capped.

A small town somewhere between Xian and Lhasa.

The mountains began to grow as we reached 5000m above sea level

We saw an army convoy of around 100 trucks travelling to Lhasa. This was not a surprise to me as in the book Trish gave me it talked about the army presents in Tibet and that they often have military training in the Tibet area.

One of the army trucks

As we got closer the Lhasa the number of yaks increased and snow appeared on the side of the train tracks. We past a few rivers which were solid ice. I was glad the train was heated!

Finally we descent into Lhasa ( 3700m above sea level). When we arrived in Lhasa it was around getting dark. The Russian woman I had meet before on the train asked me for help with accommodation. I had already organised accommodation and was getting a free lift to the hostel so Galina joined me. It started raining and my first impression of Lhasa was not what I expected. The city looked like most other cities in China.

That night was really cold so I bought a fake "north face" jacket for $AUS15. It was too wet and cold to bargaining too much on price. We ate some street food which was deep fried skewers of veggies and meat. Yum!! Then quickly off to bed. I was staying in a dorm of 6 but it was only Galina and myself in the room. That night I slept soo well!I think the cold helped.