Lynne Kennedy

CHICKEN LOVER

 

Lhasa, Tibet - 4 NOV 2004

 

 

I am almost at the end of my time in China – when I leave next week I will have been here for almost four months. So many weird and wonderful experiences to remember but the one that I will definitely never forget is my journey into to Tibet – China’s farewell to me - the worst journey of my life!

 

We arrived in Golmud after 6 solid days of travelling across the south of the Taklamakan desert (more on that later). I was still with Carol and Richard, the couple I met a few weeks ago in Kashgar who came with me to the Pakistan border. We all agreed that we needed one proper day of rest before the trip to Lhasa which was to be a mammoth 24 hour bus ride, so we booked into a nice and surprisingly inexpensive hotel and chilled out for the day.

 

Tibet has long been one of those magical places people want to visit and the Chinese, who some time ago claimed this Shangri-La for themselves, have cottoned onto that fact. The result is that there are only two legal ways to enter Tibet; flying from Chengdu on an organised ‘tour’ or taking a bus from Golmud on an organised ‘tour’, both of which will cost the traveller the exorbitant fee of 1800 RMB (£120) while locals pay just 200 RMB (£13). The enterprising bus drivers in Golmud, however, soon realised they could be onto a winner and for years have been smuggling travellers in for the much more reasonable fee of 500 RMB (£33). To clarify ‘smuggling’, Tibet is part of China so our Chinese visas covered us to be there, it’s just that the government charges an arm and a leg to get there hence the enterprising business of cheap tickets. Obviously though, to save so much money there has to be a catch and that catch is the small risk of getting caught at one of the police checkpoints whereupon we would be fined and sent back from whence we came. The three of us had been deliberating for two weeks about whether we should chance it or not and having done lots of research and heard many other travellers’ stories we decided to take a gamble. Almost everyone choosing this option gets through because the bus drivers bribe the police with a backhander to turn a blind eye, so everyone ends up happy. The worst that could happen was a fine and then being escorted to buy an official ‘tour’ ticket.

 

Touts were everywhere so we didn't have to go looking for our bus - it found us. We arranged to leave at 11am the following morning and went for our last ever Chinese meal (hurrah!!!). The next morning was like a covert military operation. First we had to go to the bus and put our luggage on then return to the hotel and wait, out of sight of any police that might be hovering around, and come back an hour later which we duly did but the driver told us we couldn’t get on yet - too many police around. Carol and I had to wait on one street, looking as innocent as possible and not at all like travellers trying to sneak into Tibet. Richard had to wait on the opposite street and signal to us when it was safe to jump aboard. After 30 minutes of standing in the freezing cold we were finally allowed on the bus and set off.

 

Because we were entering without the official ‘tour’ ticket we had to be hidden at the back of the bus, where instead of individual beds there were two large platforms – top and bottom - on which 5 people were supposed to sleep. Carol and I were on the top platform with a nice Japanese man who was also getting in the cheap way and next to him was a Tibetan monk, a Chinese girl and all their luggage so there was limited space to get comfortable. While we drove out of Golmud, Carol, with her fair hair and so clearly not a Chinese citizen, was looking out of the window. I think someone saw her because we were suddenly thrust under a pile of stinking duvets and told to stay there until further notice.

 

25 km down the road was the first police checkpoint. The four of us had to get off the bus and one of the drivers sneaked us around the back of the building across a dusty wasteland to meet the bus further down the road. The police almost definitely saw us but they were busy accepting their bribe so everything went according to plan. We climbed back on our platform with Carol pulling me up by the arms and two Chinese blokes pushing me on the bum because my legs were too short to get up there myself. I resolved to go to the loo as infrequently as possible because it was a bit of an effort getting on and off but (strangely!) every time I did the Chinese men were always back on the bus before me, ready to push me up.

 

The journey we were undertaking was almost the same distance as driving from John O' Groats to Land's End in one go, and it soon became blindingly obvious that it was going to be far from an easy ride. Now, I don't know much about cars or buses but I do know they are supposed to have something called suspension, which prevents the occupants from being tossed around like vegetables in a Chinese stir fry. Not so our bus! We spent 25 long and sleepless hours being hurled around so much that most of the time we had to either hold onto each other or grab onto a very cold bar on the back window. The bar was so cold because there was no heating and as a result of our height above sea level (3500 metres, averaging over 4000 metres and topping 5000 at one point) there was ice on the inside of the windows - the kind of ice you scrape off your car in winter. It was absolutely freezing.

 

We lay there hour after hour, hurled about like popcorn in a microwave. There was no chance to see the scenery because of the ice on the windows and our spirits were low to say the least with the added effects of altitude sickness - headaches, palpitations, nausea and shortness of breath. I tried to keep sane by fantasising about the food that lay ahead in Lhasa – curry, pizza, tomato soup etc.

 

At one point, around 3am, the driver broke so hard that Carol flew in the air and was thrust forward, almost falling onto the poor guy below. She managed to grab the bar with one hand and me with the other but her legs were hanging off. I meanwhile had been bounced high and landed on my side, my hip smashing onto something metal. I have to admit I lost my temper a bit and had a little strop. It was altogether a soul-destroying journey and we did at one point wish we had paid the full whack and had a comfortable heated bus. The only consolation was that we found out later from someone who had paid the official government price, that they had had as bad a bus as us so we were marginally appeased.

 

Thankfully, although the previous week had been spent on long bus journeys every day, it was a lot less stressful. A group of 9 of us left Hotan, a wonderful Muslim town on the edge of the desert. There was myself, Carol and Richard, a Swiss couple – Jonathan and Chantal, a very beautiful Danish girl - Pernille, an Israeli and Japanese guy and an Aussie. Now, I don’t know how the Australians have the nerve to call the Brits ‘whinging poms’ because this guy never stopped moaning about the price of everything (and it’s not expensive where we were). His whinging was constant for days, like a stuck record, so in the end I just told him he was a tight git and to shut up because we are all travelling on a budget. I don’t think he liked me much but the feeling was very, very mutual!

 

We were expecting to travel about 500 km to a town called Cherchen but after we’d gone about 150 km along the dusty, desert track road the bus pulled in and we were told to get off. The bus was only half full so we had to stop the night and then carry on in the morning. Needless to say we were not terribly pleased at first butas is often the way with unexpected turns, we ended up having a rather memorable night. After wondering around for a few hours we decided to seek out some food and walked down the main street stopping at each little restaurant to see what they had. The choice was not extensive as we were still in Xinjiang, a mainly Muslim province. Every pot we peered in had mutton of some description (including boiled sheep heads, not a delicacy I cared to try!). Carol and I, not knowing the Turkik word for chicken began to flap and squawk with a hopeful expression on our faces. The locals found this quite amusing but shook their heads replying "Baa..baa". Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man appeared with a cart attached to a bicycle. He motioned us to get on, flapping his arms and making chicken noises. Delirious at the thought of what might lie ahead we all jumped aboard as he pedalled furiously down one long street and up another before depositing us in front of an oasis of chicken, all hanging up and ready to be scoffed. While we ate, he waited and then took us on a little tour of the town which was like a mini Blackpool in the desert, complete with a tower and flashing lights strung between the trees.

 

The next morning, the bus full to bursting with people and bags (there was even an old washing machine on board) we set off again across the desert to Cherchen. One night there and then back on the bus to Charklik which we’d heard was sometimes difficult for foreigners to continue on from because it was near an area where the Chinese had a nuclear facility so they were unsurprisingly not that keen on having westerners around. The travel writers Nick Danziger and William Dalrymple had both failed to get past this point so I’ve heard.

 

When we arrived we discovered there was indeed no public bus to the province border so we had to hire a jeep. There were enough seats for 9 plus the driver, the exact size of our group so we paid our money and started to board. It was at that point we realised the driver was intending to bring two Chinese along as well so in the end there were 12 of us squashed in – the driver and two Chinese in the front, four of us on the middle seat which was most definitely not built for four so poor Jonathan spent most of the time on the floor at our feet, and five in the back squeezed onto four seats and a tyre. We had a nine-hour journey ahead through the mountains on a dirt track road and it was not particularly enjoyable but considering what we went through afterwards it was a walk in the park.

 

The driver chucked us out at the province border in a dusty village which was reminiscent of a wild west film – deserted, with the wind blowing sand and small bushes around us – and indicated a very run down looking building whose owner was a fierce looking Chinese lady demanding a fortune off us to stay the night. She clearly had a monopoly on accommodation. After a brief discussion we agreed to try and reach the next main town 70km away from where we would get a bus to Golmud. However, there was no bus until the next day. Resigned to the fact we would have to cough up to stay the night our night we trundled back to the crumbling building. It was then that our knight in shining armour appeared. He was the manager of the quarry and after a long discussion with Jonathan who could speak a bit of Chinese, and Masimoto, the Japanese guy who could write a bit of Chinese, he told us that when he finished work an hour later, he would drive us – free of charge – to Huatong, the next town. Jubilant, we climbed on the bus and waited - two hours later he dropped us off in front of the bus station in Huatong.

 

He was a truly wonderful man because not only did he give us a free ride, he then organised our bus tickets for the following day, arranged somewhere for us to sleep and then took us to a lovely warm restaurant for dinner where the kebabs and bread were cooked on a stove in the middle of the room. We had decided to pay for his food but he would not accept it. It seemed he was delighted to meet some foreigners and just wanted to help us as much as he could. Talk about the kindness of strangers.

 

The restaurant staff were very friendly and as we finished our meal a camera appeared so 36 shots were taken of us in varying groups – the driver with all the girls (individually), the owner with all the girls, the waitresses with each of the boys and lots of group shots. It was one of the nicest times I’d had in China and all of us left in high spirits.

 

The next day, our fifth of solid travelling, we boarded our very comfortable sleeper bus (oh why could we not have had that one to Tibet!) and set off for Golmud, which brings me back to where I began.

 

I leave Lhasa tomorrow on a five-day trip to the Nepal border with a night at Everest Base Camp. In my four months in China I have travelled the length and breadth of the country – over 9000 miles in all, from the Great Wall of the north to the paddy fields of the south, via the cities of the east to the desert and mountains of the far west.

 

If I had left after one month, I would have left hating China and vowing never to return. With its huge cultural differences it is a country you need to persevere with, in my experience anyway. But if you give it time you may, like me, fall a little bit in love with it.