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Another Train Ride
Sunday, August 14, 2005-10:25 PM
I wish I could be writing about something other than long train rides, but after I found out I needed to curtail my travel plans since my visa would not be valid long enough to visit all the places I wanted to visit for as long as I visited, I chose to shorten the duration of my stay at each destination rather than to remove destinations from my itinerary.
Unfortunately, the time it takes to travel from one place doesn't change according to my whims. Consequently, I'm spending a greater percentage of my time aboard trains than I anticipated.
The trip from Guizhou to Qinghai I hoped would only take a day or so. As it turned out, it took me over 50 hours from the time I left Guiyang to reach Xining.
Since there was no direct train to Xining from Guiyang, I had to switch trains in Chengdu. Reaching Chengdu was quick and painless.
The train routes don't run in a straight line from Chengdu to Xining. They head considerably far west, into Shanxi province and pass through Lanzhou in Gansu province before reaching Xining.
At the time I started the journey, my back and arms were painfully sunburnt. By the time I reaching Xining, I hardly noticed anything.
What was painful however, was the train constantly stopping to let other trains pass.
The train arrived late. I checked into a room near the hotel, ate some barbecue at a small stand run by a Muslim woman, and am getting ready to go to bed.
Tomorrow, I'll either visit a Tibetan monastery, a small Tu village, or go to see China's largest lake, Qinghai Lake.
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