The Great Train Ride: Lhasa, Tibet to Chengdu, Sichuan

After lining up for an hour to buy my ticket, I excitedly waited the 20 days to departure: 46 hours from Lhasa through Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Shanxi, and Sichuan provinces.
Going through 2 check points before getting even near the huge terminal, I shivered in the Lhasa morning cold.  Everyone stays in line and carries their sundry baggage excitedly, into the building, up the escalator to a large waiting room and onto the platform. I find my car and compartment, settle in and we're off!

This is first class, home for 46 hours. The other passengers were quietly friendly, but left as new people appeared @ midnight at the 3rd stop.

The rail lines are built into the permafrost along the side of valleys, a true engineering fete. You can see the train's wheel wells were crusted in ice. We were able to disembark at stops to breathe fresh air and to buy hot food from vendors on the platform.

Rolling out of Lhasa. The sky is usually this blue and the mountains change colour with the angle of the sun. (Remember, we are above the tree line, so very different from the Rocky Mountains.)

Here is a photo of the train tracks taken from my return plane. On left center, you can see the tracks disappearing into a mountain, and the highway veers away from the mountain. You can also see how dry everything is.

Typical farm house. Yes, those are piles of yak dung, drying in the sun, ready to be burned for fuel.

Kekexili National Reserve: 5,072 meters altitude (Lhasa is approx 3600m). Glad the train was oxygenized.

                                 Every few km, a soldier stands at attention. You really understand isolation!

Breathtaking frozen Qarhan Lake "salt lake", and yes, the colours are true!

                              

These are not really frozen rivers, but appear to be frozen water over the grasslands.

We stopped at NaQu, Delingha, Gelmud, and then Xining metropolis the next morning. Then on to Lanzhou, Baoji, Guangyuan, and into huge Chengdu city on the 3rd day.

    You can see why there are dozens of distinct languages - the farms are very isolated.

 The North East is expanding quickly. There were at least 11 huge new complexes in a row as we pulled into Xining.

We arrived in Chengdu at sunrise (therefore no photos); I found a taxi to the airport and awaited a flight to Hong Kong, my next adventure.