A reasonably restless night as one of our new bunkers who joined us at Lanzhou who we shall name as Mr Snuffalofaguss spent the entire night trying to inhale himself, no matter how many times I kicked his bunk, he came minutes away from becoming Mr Suffucataguss .The lack of oxygen also woke me up as a deep inhale was needed every now and again to compensate.
Nevertheless we woke late around 8 as the sun was rising (China has only one time zone) and the train was shrouded in thick cloud, the hacking bird was making it's morning bathroom call, we were clearly in the mountains and climbing as the train was chugging along at a slow pace. We both decided to skip the pickled veg breakfast and finished off our fruit and Pringles, Ais, who is always hungry, but won't eat the lunch, is eating Indian mouth freshener, the ingredients of which read as follows:
Aniseed, Betal flakes, dates, silver leaves, Rose petals, sugar balls and oil.
We passed through the highest train station in the world at the Tanggula Pass at 5446m and began a descent to Lhasa which sits at around 3800m. All I need right now is a shower, a coffee and number two, still 4 hours to go. I eventually had to do a food run to satisfy the monster, however I'm not sure if the peanuts and Yak jerky worked.
We pulled into Lhasa station at 4pm on the nose and were met and presented with a welcome Buddhist scarf by our mandatory guide and taken to the Kyiochi Hotel, we have a great location in the centre of town and ventured out into the hustle and bustle, the burning incense and conspicious, fully armoured Chinese army.
More on Tibet and Lhasa tomorrow, we have a proper hotel, the place seem very interesting, need to shower now .... and bathroom
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