Yesterday my friend Ingus bought me a train ticket till Lanzhou - about 30 hour travelling through Beijing where I will be like in about 7 hours from now.
From Lanzhou I will take a train to Lhasa, Tibet and afterwards will hitchhike deeper into Tibet - towards mt. Kailash
I think I will be out of reach for next 2 weeks...:) My bag is getting heavier and heavier not lighter with every day and every stop I make. In Russia it was a water who made my bag heavier but now when I'm heading towards Tibet - it's my new equipment who makes it heavyish.
Ingus gave to me a sleeping bag which can hold a temperature down to -5 degrees Celsius which I think might be useful in Tibet and tracking around the Himalayan mountains. Also we bought a mat to sleep on in a tent to avoid cold from the ground.
And - I'm thinking of getting rid of something in my bag - I just don't know in what will I be in a need during my trip. So I'm keeping e everything at least until I'll reach Kailash.
The real reason why I'm driving now to Lanzhou is because I've heard that from there the chance of getting to Tibet train is higher than from Beijing where Tibet Travel Permit control is much higher.
So I stepped out in Beijing and had a small walk around the city for about three hours. The city truly impressed me. So big. The buildings are huge. And everything is developing, so many new buildings and development structures.
In Beijing also I continued moving towards Lhasa by train to Lanzhou. The train was so crowded that few people even could not get onto it and stayed on the platform.
Somehow I got luckily in but - forget about a seating place - there is no even a place to put my bag and I had to wait for about 10 minutes until finally I found some place for it.
The train till Lanzhou goes for about 20 hours and besides the fact that there is no space even to stand, the salesman are going around the train all the time selling food and drinks. I'm allocated by Chinese people who are trying to speak with me and asking a lot of different questions about Europe and are taking pictures with me. I'm a star on this trains!:) (everybody get's it's five minutes of fame once in a lifetime) :) - I guess these are mine!:)
