THE TRAIN

If travelling overland from Lijiang to Chengdu was a like fighting Mike Tyson, the leg from Lugu Lake was like the uppercut that takes more than just your breath away. We started fairly early catching a taxi to a nearby town because we'd told that's where we had to catch the bus. We arrived way to early and had to wait about 3 hours. The bus arrived and the only available seats we right at the back between a nauseous Mosu woman and a porky couple. We pulled away from the village and drove around 30 minutes, stopping at the village we'd spent the night in and left about 4 hours earlier to catch the bus. The journey could only be compared with riding one of those machine bronco bulls and we hit new heights with vomit stats. The little puke bags had filled the bins so by the end of the trip the passage way was dotted with serious obstacles. If you add to that the fact that majority of the passengers chain smoke, you really find yourself in a situation that requires the patience of a saint.

After the 8 hour bus ride we arrived in Xichang, only around half way to our intended destination. We'd met a young Chinese couple on the bus and after hearing that they were intending to catch the overnight train we decided to tag along. We caught a bus to the train station and waited in 'line' at the ticket desk. We got to the front and found out that there were no more tickets. We bought what I thought was tickets for the next day but later realised that we'd managed to secure standing tickets for the 10pm train. Yes, you read correctly, standing tickets for an overnight train. What we found out 15 minutes later was that the Friday 10pm train from Xichang to Chengdu is one of the busiest and roughest in all of China. The extent of the problem truly dawned on us while standing on a full platform, watching a full train arrive. The next 10 minutes was somewhere in between a ruck and a street brawl and somehow we managed to get onto one of the carriages. The passengers assumed that their evening entertainment had just arrived and our every move was scrutinized by what felt like a thousand eyes. We squeezed our luggage up onto the full racks and stood in the aisle with our 2 equally concerned Chinese friends. I have no idea how it happened but a while later all 4 of us were sharing seats with complete strangers. One group even offered us beers and dinner. We felt a lot happier to be sitting but my right bum cheek refused to believe that it had to spend the whole night hanging in space.

About an hour later, a female ticket officer passed through our carriage and approached us. She spoke not a word of English but thanks to some interpretation we were told that Jackie and myself could move to the soft sleeper carriage and find some seats. We said that we were OK, not really wanting any special attention and unhappy with the idea of leaving our friends behind. She then said that she wasn't asking us, because of safety issues we were not allowed to remain in cattle class. We were the only foreigners on the train and therefore had to be locked in the soft sleeper section. We reluctantly moved and found 2 tiny seats in the dark and silent carriage. We managed to get a few hours sleep in a position very similar to the inverted yak in yoga and hobbled off the train just before 9am. We found our friends and our luggage and 23 hours after leaving Lugu arrived at our hostel in Chengdu.