It’s pretty difficult to take photos on a train from Nanjing to Lanzhou, largely because the blessed thing spends most of its time in tunnel after tunnel after tunnel.
At least it does on the interesting part of the journey.
Truth is nothing much happens for almost 5 hours. Until the train reaches the ancient capital of Luoyang, and latterly, Mianchi.
Then things start getting interesting, and fast. Right after the Zhongtiao Mountains on the horizon appear, the train begins its plunge into the tunnels. That’s also when the wind starts whistling through the carriage.
Hats off to the engineering, but there ain’t nothing to see. Another 4 hours in and we were here, in the very centre of China.
After an evening feasting on the best lamb this correspondent has ever encountered, followed by a lousy breakfast, it was time to head. Not to the massive sand dunes of northwest Gansu, but to the plains and mountains of the south.
For we were off to “Little Tibet”.
Before that though, we need traverse the Gansu grasslands that earlier in the year pull in the tourists in their hundreds of thousands for their endless carpets of verdant green. But The Nanjinger, always forging a different path, made the trip at the end of September.
With our long train journey behind us, it was now time to spend 4 days in a car. So we chose a big one.
And what did we find? The Highlands of Scotland, basically. But on an epic scale.
Then, in the wonderfully named Hezuo (Cooperation), a couple of free hours led us into the unknown…
It was there that the vultures circling overhead alerted our driver (a Buddhist convert) to the fact that we had inadvertently stumbled upon a sky burial site. Fortunately, no pieces of the diseased were evident but we kept well back nevertheless.
Night 2 was spent in Xihe, a place which draws significant numbers of foreign tourists, judging by the amount of English on display in hotels and restaurants offering pizza and cocktails.
Why the latter remains a mystery since they come for the only draw in town, the largest Buddhist university in the world. This of course means it’s a pretty big temple, one in fact completely surrounded by prayer wheels. If you don’t turn every single last one in a clockwise direction as you encircle the temple’s perimeter, your mantra recitation is invalid. And likely some curse awaits around the next corner.
Forging on, day 3 took us to Zhagana, located on the southeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau.
With Tibetan chants on the car stereo, Tibetan script replacing English on the road signs and mists enveloping the mountains all around, it was hard to not feel spiritual.
Zhagana in Tibetan literally means “rock box” and with 80 percent of local people being Tibetan, it’s easy to see from where the nickname comes.
Along the way, slowing down, stopping and backing up become commonplace, on account of the various livestock which take to the road in front of their own free will, sometimes with or without their herder.
And livestock a plenty there is. In fact, it would appear that the majority of the Gansu landscape is given over to sheep, cattle or horses. Few vegetables were spotted being grown, a fact reflected on the tables of almost every restaurant in which we dined.
We spent our final night in Langmusi. And to be honest, it felt like the last night of our lives. If there is an end to the world, this is it.
But that there is a pub run by an Englishman (allegedly; it was closed for renovation during our visit) is testament to it attracting more of those Buddhist-loving cocktail drinkers, perplexedly in town for a visit to two nondescript temples.
In fact, that the town straddles Gansu and Sichuan provinces may well be its most redeeming feature. That, and the sign in the local café which reads, “Flirting is encouraged upstairs”.
With our trip topping out at 3,568 metres above sea level, The Nanjinger advises in-advance medication for altitude sickness. Knowing full well how unpleasant that is, we popped pills for 2 weeks.
