Xian to Urumqi

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KiwiKate

Train Attendant
Joined
Feb 1, 2004
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23
Following an exhausting day touring around town and visiting the site of the Terracotta Soldiers near Lintong, we took a taxi - another story all to itself! - to the main railway station. We stopped at least two hundred metres away from the entrance and when we exhorted the driver to carry on and drive a bit closer, we were more or less pulled out of the car, our luggage dumped at our feet and the agreed amount of yuan plucked from Len’s hand.

After a bit more arm waving we stopped to regain our breath and composure. We calmed down a little and had a closer look at our immediate surroundings. As we did,we noticed that there was no traffic at all, apart from one or two official looking cars, anywhere near the entrance to the station. Meanwhile two very small men had appeared from the darkness, scooped our bags up and on to their little trolley and ploughed into the milling throng. We hastily took off after them, managed to make them stop, agreed on a price and carried on. Next minute they both came to a sudden stop and asked us the number of our carriage. When we told them, one muttered “Soft sleeper!” and immediately tossed our baggage off the trolleys, while the other disappeared into a small shed next to where we were standing. We stood there, mouths agape at this sudden change of heart. Out popped the little man accompanied by a much larger man. When we asked what was going on, they told us that we would have to pay double the agreed price because we were in the soft sleeper section of the train. All this was happening as hundreds of people milled all around in the semi darkness, bags and bundles bumping and knocking into us as we tried to fathom the meaning of what was being said, from a jumble of mandarin, mutterings, spits, coughs and the very odd word of English. When we worked out what was going on Len and I just looked at each other. Without saying a word, he pulled out the pull-along handle on his suitcase, I had the harness out and the pack on in the proverbial shake of a lamb’s tail and we left the three men standing there, mouths agape at our sudden change of heart. They came running after us calling out offers of ever decreasing amounts of yuan, but we just kept plodding on. Enough was enough, we thought.

We found our way to the correct platform with the help of two or three people, one of whom was, we think, a deaf-mute. He took Len’s suitcase and bag and loped off, while I trudged along behind like the donkey who didn’t get eaten for dinner. By the time we had finally reached our train we could understand why the porters had wanted to charge us so much. We had walked in and out of three long corridors, past the end of three platforms, staggered up two flights of steps and down the other side, all at quite a fast pace. Our self appointed porter had very long legs and didn’t pause for breath, let alone wait to see if we were keeping up with him. We dared not slow down for fear of losing sight of him and our possessions in the human flood that surrounded us. Near to exhaustion, we heaved ourselves and our luggage up and into the train, thanked the young man, who refused to take any payment and finally reached our compartment. The agent had told us that we were booked into a two berth compartment, but this was not to be. There were two people already comfortably ensconced on the lower berths, so after a fair amount of lifting and shoving, we finally collapsed in a tangle of pillows, sheets, plastic bags and other litter. We thought we had arrived in plenty of time to get on the train and get ourselves organised for the trip before we actually left. However we had reckoned without the drama of the taxi, the porters, the distance, the crowds and the general confusion and misunderstanding that was to accompany us on much of our journey. Twenty minutes later, we were still catching our breath. We sat on the little jump seats out in the corridor for a while. Besides being rather exhausted we found ourselves in a bit of a quandary as both of the other people in the compartment were sprawled out on the lower bunks and we felt a bit embarrassed about disturbing them too much with our climbing up and down, trying to get ourselves sorted out. There was stuff for miles on our bunks while most of the other passengers it seemed, were unpacked and ready for bed. They were wandering up and down the corridor with bowls and chopsticks, flasks of water and toothbrushes, in differing states of dress and undress. By the time we had regained our equilibrium, nearly everyone else had vanished and our two companions were sound asleep. As quietly as we could, we dragged out what we needed for the night, cleared some space on our bunks and after a quick visit to the toilet and washroom, settled down for our first night on a Chinese train.

We didn’t get too much sleep as it was so incredibly hot during the night. There had been a fan whirring raucously earlier on, but that had either broken down or was turned off sometime when we were actually sleeping. The windows either didn’t open or no-one seemed to want them open, during the night anyway. The door to the corridor was shut and locked as well and the attendants had closed all the windows in the corridor before we had gone to bed. We had introduced ourselves to the others and had shown them where we were from on the map I had brought with us. We also showed them some photos and pictures of the countryside at home. The tall thin young man was called Gao or Arthur and he was a tour guide returning home to Urumqi after having finished with a tour group in Xian. He spoke English very well and translated for Luokangning, a woman travelling from Xian to Lanzhou. After a breakfast of coffee and biscuits we sat and watched the countryside go by, the train stopping now and then to pick up more passengers or to drop them off at their destination. The land was very dry with most of the fields lying bare. We saw men threshing hay using straps attached to long poles. The buildings we could see were made of bricks and there were many small walled villages along the way. Some quite large buildings emitted so much dust that we thought they could have been cement factories. People worked in the fields, and donkeys, sheep and goats wandered along the dirt roads. We travelled alongside the Wei River hugging the hills and passing through many tunnels. Between Wushan and Lanzhou the land became more fertile and changed from being vast flat plains and rolling green hills, to steeper land on both sides of the track. In all areas every available inch of space had something growing on it and any land not under cultivation, was either covered with rocks or under water. Gradually the view changed until it resembled the McKenzie Country at home, with golden spaces stretching to the hills in the distance. At one station a little old man wearing a thick jacket and a blue peaked cap, was walking along the track next to where we had stopped. Seeing us at the window he came over for perhaps a closer look. I took his photo whereupon he held up his hand and began saying something to us. We were told he was asking us for money and were advised not to give him any. Instead we gave him a pen and he gave us such a look that anyone seeing him would think we had broken his heart. He looked like an old tramp making a living from what he could find along the side of the railway track. He tucked the pen in his top pocket then shot off quite suddenly across the tracks, scrambling up to the platform on the far side. We soon realised the reason for his hasty departure as another train hurtled by over the spot where he had been standing.

Further along the way we began to climb steadily and at one place where the train had slowed almost to a halt, a group of young children squatted on the bank looking down on the carriages below their perch. They waved furiously and called out when they saw me taking their photo. We passed through the city of Wuwei later in the afternoon. Here the country was quite lush with the land being terraced along the sloping hillsides, every scrap of space being put to use. It looked as though the farming was carried out without the help of machinery and in some places we saw what we took to be family groups working together. We continued climbing gradually as we were in the Gansu Corridor, the area between the two mountain ranges, the Qilian to the south and in the north, only 300 kilometres away, the ridge of mountains that lined the southern edge of the Gobi Desert. This was near the end of the easier section of the Old Silk Route and we had read that some stretches of it had been paved. Our journey through this area proceeded with stops and starts and a few sudden grinding, crashing halts.

By early evening the landscape had changed quite dramatically. On one side of the train the view could have been of a lunar landscape, bare, stark, with hardly a feature, stretching away. Nothing between us and the hills on the horizon. Strung through the foreground was a row of poles lining a roadway that ran beside the railway lines for sometime, before it too, vanished in the nothingness of the countryside. The setting sun softened the view a little with the earth almost glowing salmon red. On the other side of the train there was some sign of plant life but quite an amazing transformation from the lush green and vivid yellow of the mustard fields further back near Wuwei.

After dinner we sat in the compartment and had some lessons in correct pronunciation from Gao and the beautiful young girl from next door. Her name was Li Xiao Ling, she was from Jiayuguan and was one of the prettiest young women I have ever seen. She was very petite and I felt large and clumsy sitting next to her. We would all explode into fits of laughter every now and then at our efforts. We had trouble with the ‘ts’ sounds mainly. They took special care with Len as they did not want him to sound like a cat when he pronounced certain words. Earlier in the day we had taught Gao how to play euchre and now he suggested we play again and teach Li so that we could have partners. She picked the game up quickly and we had much hilarity over the next hour as we played 3 against 1, east verses west, them against us and finally boys verses girls. It always surprises me wherever we are, how quickly the people we meet pick up enough English to be able to have a conversation with us, where we seem to take so long to be able to correctly pronounce one or two words at a time. So far we haven’t managed too badly. Many people say they learn from watching television programmes in English. Later on I realised that here we were, four people from vastly different areas of the earth, playing cards quite happily together, each pair chattering away in their respective languages - we were playing East verses West at the time, and the four of us understanding each other perfectly well. We said goodbye to Li as she was leaving the train at Jiayuguan sometime during the night.

I often wondered what we were missing as we slept. During the day, even though I was sometimes quite tired, I tried really hard not to doze of in case I missed something in the world outside the train. It was difficult to keep track of all the towns we passed, as the guidebook we had been given was of the journey from west to east. We did manage to follow most of the trip going backwards through the book and Gao was always very helpful. The station names were all written in Mandarin or some local dialect, so we couldn’t understand them either. At night the train appeared to slow down quite noticeably at times, while at others we seemed to be in danger of hurtling right off the tracks because of the speed we were going. This made it difficult to estimate the distance we had travelled during the night.

The following morning, outside looked much the same as it had the night before - scruffy lumpy desert stretching away to the horizon. Occasionally one tree would appear, growing near to the railway lines, nothing much else except for a row of power poles carrying one line across the emptiness. Small bushes and tufts of grass covered the sandy soil and sometimes, tire tracks wove haphazard patterns in the sand. The hills away in the distance, were now topped with snow. When we had woken up fairly early, we had noticed a drop in temperature. After a good hot wash, thanks to the water in our flasks, we had changed into jeans, socks and jumpers. The two big water flasks in each compartment, could be taken down the corridor to the samovar and filled or else topped up when the attendants wheeled a large tank of boiling water down the corridor, stopping at each compartment door. We were hoping that the water had been properly boiled. The samovar always had a good head of steam surrounding it, so we figured we should be all right. We breakfasted on coffee and uncooked pop tarts which we found filling enough. They needed no preparation as all we needed to do was open the individual packets and eat them. We’d had instant noodles for a couple of meals and the previous day, had enjoyed a meal of rice and vegetables that we’d bought from one of the attendants. Len had dashed off the train at one of the stops and purchased some spongy buns which we spread with jam from the hotel at Xian. Quite delicious. Our meals consisted of many snacks when we were hungry, rather than a full meal three times a day. We had been down and looked at the dining car but, apart from the bottle of beer Len had bought the previous night, we’d not really needed to get anything extra. The beer upset Len’s stomach and he didn’t feel like eating anything for a while. He’d had some Gastrolyte and homeopathic tablets as well just in case. Thankfully they seemed to do the trick and he was soon feeling better. Before we arrived at Hami, the carriage attendants had collected all the heavier bedding and had piled it all into one or two empty compartments. When the train stopped there were trucks parked on the platform and the bedding was passed out the windows straight in to them. Also on the platform, all in a line, one to each carriage, were food barrows with girls in white jackets and caps, in attendance. They were selling everything from grapes to cooked whole chickens. There were peaches and other fruits in preserving jars, cooked sausages of differing shapes, sizes and colours, pots of noodles, dried fruit, mysterious lumpy things in all kinds of wrappings and drinks of many colours. The whole station was a hive of industry with people milling around the food barrows, passengers leaving and boarding the train, the laundry trucks loading and unloading clean bedding, the platform sweepers, men in uniform, railway workers in bright yellow jackets and a few less fortunate looking people keeping an eye open for any handouts. One man pushing a trolley laden with grapes, was almost swamped by the crowd of people wanting to buy the succulent bunches. We were tempted to buy some, but resisted the urge. The owner of the barrow offered us a few to taste which we did. Back on the train we politely refused Gao’s offer to eat some of the chicken he had bought. It looked pretty appetising and he was certainly relishing every mouthful. We try not to get too paranoiac about food when we are travelling but in some cases, good sense is usually best. The day had warmed up and when the train stopped, the temperatures inside rose quickly. Before leaving Hami, we had noticed that the carriage attendants were standing at attention on the platform at the bottom of their respective carriage steps. Len and I had been walking out on the platform for a while when we noticed that all the girls were standing at their posts and that all the goods on the barrows had been packed away. Thinking that the train was about to leave, we dashed back aboard. Nothing happened for a minute or two then after moving forward about three metres, the train squealed to a halt again. At some stations there is no warning of the train’s imminent departure but at others, a bell is rung or a siren sounds. As the trains move away very quickly and quietly, we usually made sure that we didn’t stray too far from our carriage. Earlier on in the day, we had noticed women in uniform standing on the station platforms holding out a flag, as the train rushed past.

After lunch of more noodles and soup with noodles, we played some more games of cards, before Len and Gao decided to have a sleep. I sat and read about the area we were passing through and caught up with some writing. The Takalamakan Desert and the Lop Desert which is the remains of a huge inland sea, together make up the Tarim Basin which was a huge obstacle for travellers on the Silk Route. Besides lack of water and the terrible heat, sudden sandstorms would burst upon the travellers. The desert was also said to be haunted by ghosts and supernatural beings who would distract the tired travellers by wailing throughout the day and night, and lure them to their deaths. Apparently the spirits would call out just like a man would who was calling for help. It is said, that anyone straying from the path can never find the right way out again. The name Takalamakan means literally, “If you go in, you won’t come out. Later on in the afternoon we taught Gao how to play two other card games, Five Hundred and Fish. He proceeded to beat us both soundly before becoming a little over confident and losing a few games. Relations between East and West became slightly strained for a few moments before an impasse was reached and the cards put aside.

Outside the windows of the train, the landscape had changed very little. The ground had become stonier and the hills more jagged with more tracks and paths leading from the railway out into the wilderness. Len swore he had seen a couple of camels earlier on, Marco Polo riding slowly east, no doubt following the single row of telephone poles. There were not as many stations along this stretch of the line but we had seen rows of Karez. These are the subterranean canals said to have been built 2000 years ago, through which water flowing down from the mountains is channelled throughout the region. This area around Turfan is supposed to be the hottest area in all of China. The city of Turfan is a fertile oasis in the centre of these vast expanses of desert and it owes its fertility to the extensive network of karez. Apparently there are 11000 canals which cover a distance of 3000 kilometres. Another natural wonder in this area are the Flaming Mountains so called because in the intense heat of the day, they look as if they are on fire. Many legends abound as to the origin of the naming of these mountains. We found the desert absolutely fascinating, as every time we looked at it, there would be something different to see. There were either hills right along the tracks or else great vast stretches of space. Next time we looked, we might see canyons, gullies and low flat-topped hills, cut through with narrow fissures, rocks tumbled at the base of the hills and all, in the late afternoon, glowing a rich reddish orange.

Soon after we left Hami, the attendants came through the carriage with clean bedding. This consisted of huge rolled up bundles of sheets, blankets and a heavy quilt. Ours had been left on the top two bunks and as Len and I couldn’t be bothered reorganising everything, we ended up topping and tailing on one bottom bunk while Gao sprawled languidly on the other. We ate yet another bowl of noodles and marvelled at the way the railway track cut right across the side of the hill. The scree covered slope was fairly steep and seemed to stretch for miles above and below us. There was only enough levelled space for the tracks to fit along. It looked as though this thin flat ribbon of land had been scraped flat along the surface of the hill with a giant trowel. Looking back towards the east, we realised that we had climbed gradually over the last twenty kilometres. One area of land was covered in a low growing yellowish-grey coloured plant. It seemed to be some kind of coarse wiry grass, but it was quite a contrast to the red earth that surrounded it. Further on we came upon a really weird patch of ground. It looked as though a huge pot of grey icing had been poured over the soil which was now more pink than red. There must have been minerals in the soil to account for the differences in colours that we saw. Gao, who is a tour guide informed us that we would be going through about twenty tunnels before we reached Urumqi. We kept on climbing and were aware that the mountains were now very close to both sides of the tracks. We didn’t appear to enter them gradually, they were suddenly all around us. We clattered through the first of the tunnels and out into the open briefly, with time enough to glimpse the sheer drop down to the road below, before the blackness of the next tunnel enveloped us. Out the other end and we looked up this time to the rocks and mountain peaks towering directly above us. The next space between tunnels offered us a quick look at a stream rushing down the gully to join the narrow rocky river far below. We had entered the mountains with hardly any warning. One moment the gradual climb across the empty scree slopes with the hillside looking like a huge flood plain tilted on its side. The next thing we knew we were plunged into the blackness of the first tunnel. Out the other end, the hills hemmed us in on both sides, with barely enough room for the train to scrape through. We stood in the entry area at the end of our carriage so that we could see both sides of the track, and we dashed from one side of the train to the other, first crouching almost on our knees so we could look up the side of the mountain above us, and then across to the other side where we stretched up on our toes so that we could see as far down the rocky gully to the river rushing along far below us. The scenery was breathtaking and we realised that we were passing right through the Tien Shan Mountains. The rail route must have been blasted right through the mountains themselves. They reached up razor sharp all around us and we were so pleased that there had been enough daylight left for us to enjoy this amazing scenery.

An even bigger surprise greeted us, as we emerged from the mountains on to wide open areas of heavily cultivated land. From the dry red empty spaces of the desert we had come almost full circle to the lush green fields all around us. Looking back down the track, we could see that the mountains had ended very abruptly with no foothills or sloping land in between them and the flatness of the plains. They rose almost vertically from the plain in great boulder strewn leaps and bounds up to the jagged peaks now softened with the gold of the setting sun. A short distance ahead we could see a power station that used the wind to generate electricity. The attendant wind machines covered quite an extensive area, some in motion but the majority with their huge blades flipping slowly around.

As this leg of our journey drew to a close, we sorted out the collection of odds and ends that had accumulated over the two days and nights that we had been on the train. Everyone in the carriage seemed to be up and about, changing from their travelling clothes back into their boarding and leaving the train clothes. The attendants washed down the walls in the lobby area, rolled up the carpets and checked that everything was as it should be in the compartments. During the journey these attendants, mostly women, would troop off down the corridor in the direction of the dining car, with their bowls, pots and chopsticks. About twenty minutes later they would all be back, smiling and chatting to each other, no doubt refreshed by a meal and a break from their work. The attendants from about half of the carriages seemed to have their break at the same time, and as we were only two carriages away from the dining car, we watched quite a long procession go past our door every two hours or so. We had grown quite attached to Gao during the trip and with his help, had learnt to pronounce a few more words correctly. We had heard a few tales about some of the tour groups he had been a guide for and had taught him something about New Zealand. He in turn, had taught us plenty about this area of China and we had adopted him as our own personal tour guide. We felt a little reluctant at the thought of having to drag ourselves and our bags off the train. Dealing with taxis, porters and hotels didn’t appeal to us at all. We’d decided that if we had a shower and a decent loo we could stay on the train quite happily for another two or three days.

The end of a journey comes quite suddenly and this was to be no different. People are always keen to see who is meeting them and to get off the train and safely home. Farewells are hurried and almost apologetic and these short, intense relationships between fellow passengers, end so abruptly, that it seems more like waking from a dream than coming to the end of a journey. Before we arrived in Urumqi we had asked Gao to write the name of our hotel in Mandarin and to give us some idea of the taxi fare from the station to the hotel. We swapped addresses and thanked him for all his help. At the station he came all the way out to the taxi, made sure that the driver knew where we were going and told us how much we should pay. We had time to give him a quick hug and a final wave before the taxi pulled away and we lost sight of him in the swirling crowds of people.

Between Xian and Urumqi, we had travelled almost 2,900 kilometres, passed through amazing landscapes and incredible terrain and above all, we had met some wonderful friendly people. We were fairly sure that we had been the only Westerners on the train which was not in any way similar to the Trans Siberian Express. The latter is set up to cater for groups of western tourists, whereas the train we travelled on was, as far as we could tell, more for local people. From the information we had about the trains, we thought it had been a first or second class sleeper compartment that we had been in and not the first class soft sleeper that we had read about in the brochures. The toilet facilities were ghastly but we had expected that. Nothing could be worse than some of the toilets we had used in Malaysia and in India. We would spend two nights in Urumqi then carry on through the Tien Shan mountains and into Kazahkstan on our journey along the old Silk Road.
 
Hey KiwiKate,

Wonderfully descriptive travelogue there, thanks for sharing it. It sounds like you had quite an experience, one way off the normal tourist beat.

One question though.....you wrote:

"The following morning, outside looked much the same as it had the night before - scruffy lumpy desert stretching away to the horizon. Occasionally one tree would appear, growing near to the railway lines, nothing much else except for a row of power poles carrying one line across the emptiness. Small bushes and tufts of grass covered the sandy soil and sometimes, tire tracks wove haphazard patterns in the sand."

Hey, are you sure you weren't in North Dakota? Sounds just like the mid-section of the Empire Builder to me! :')

Next time you're in a traveling mood, and if you haven't done so already, come to the U.S. and check out America from an Amtrak window. I think you'll really like the view. We've got more than just noodles and pop-tarts! And we love Kiwis, both the little green edible kind as well as our furry footed friends from the Shire.

I'm scheduling a trip to your land as we speak. I'm blown away with the countryside that I've seen from the many books that I've purchased. Looking forward to it.

Once again, thanks for the great trip report.

Frank
 
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