The Long Road Home

Well I’m OK again. Phew. Now in Lanzhou and all just fine. Back in Chuanzhusi, the lovely Tibetan lady manager of the hotel I was in looked after me as if the place was a nursing home, coming in and quietly opening and closing the curtains etc, and giving me cups of hot water and pillows. Luxury really. She kept suggesting some special tea, and tsampa would put me right. I’m afraid I couldn’t face those, and just slowly had a boiled egg, a tiny bit of flat bread and hot water for a couple of days.

When I was OK again, I caught a very rattly bus to Langmusi via Zoige. I went up the same track that I’d struggled up on the bike in the cold and rain. Now of course it was glorious sunshine. Ha. I watched to see how close to the top I’d got before flaking out… Really close! Only a few KM before a last set of hairpins, and then I would have made it. How frustrating. Oh well.

The bus went over the high grasslands to Zoige, and then Langmusi. I had been really looking forward to the grasslands. Actually, the first bits we went through were rather like bits of the Peak District - say, Rushup Edge or Win Hill etc or maybe Mam Tor, smooth green hills with sheep and so on. I was thinking this was no big deal. Then the valley flattened out and the real grasslands began. Open green space just on and on… All you can see are herds of black maoniu hairy cattle here and there, and black kites overhead. Occasionally you would see Tibetan men on motorbikes in huge overcoats with red sashes and balaclavas. I saw a crane standing in the grass, with very long black legs. It’s not in my bird book, so no idea what it was. I also saw some of those massive Tibetan dogs which I’d been warned about. Good to be in the bus for this bit after all. It filled up with Tibetan people in cloaks and huge coats whose clothes smell of sheep or something.

The bus punctured once but finally arrived in Langmusi. This was the rendezvous where I was meeting Rick, the husband of Polly, my colleague in Hong Kong. Rick had flown to Lanzhou on this rescue mission. Poor thing had been messing about for three days on buses and in little places for three days until we could meet. Lucky a very nice patient person. How good to see a friendly face! We had dinner at a cheery cafe where they had COFFEE, and which turned out to be where the local folks got drunk and then danced, so we ended up doing some dancing. We were pretty good for beginners suffering from after-effects of altitude sickness. (pod recording on its way…)

From there we went to Labrang Monastery at Xiahe by bus, to do some proper sightseeing. It’s a huge place, with a massive prayer hall that thousands of monks can sit in - all dark and butter candles when we were there. The monks all seemed to be busy doing things in the town. Also in the town were lots of outrageously wild-looking Tibetans in enormous coats carrying long daggers. We found a place where you could get western food, so I had a chocolate pancake, a coffee, a salad, a pizza, two more coffees and one more chocolate pancake. The following morning I had two rounds of toast with scrambled eggs, an earthenware jar full of delicious yoghurt that had just arrived from somewhere, orange juice, two cups of coffee and three more rounds of toast with jam and rather odd butter. (So you see no need to worry to much about me now. )

We did a glorious ride down from Xiahe to Linxia, downhill all the way, thereby setting a trip record fast average speed (19.6kph). The villages round Linxia had lots of mosques, extraordinary shapes, new ones all white and green and shining, with thin columns and so on. In one village crowd of Muslim children with matching caps (boys) and tinsel hair bands and grubby frilly skirts (girls) mobbed Rick and performed various songs etc for him. Does this happen a lot, Polly? Pod recording on its way.

We then spent a day in Lanzhou fixing stuff - bike, etc, ready for my next stage along the Silk Road to Kashgar. It’s been GREAT to have company and such cheerful help on the road. Thanks a lot to Rick (now on his way back to HK) for flying all the way out here to rescue me, and to Polly, who organised everything including a lovely hotel here in Lanzhou, and as well as sending Rick, also sent some delicious Taiwan biscuits and some cosmetic face masks and tea bags for me. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! Now I’m really OK again ready for the next bit.

By the way, I can’t receive or send email on Blackberry right now for some reason, so I can only check email etc when in an internet cafe - I’m therefore not at all quick to reply to emails, but I will reply eventually. Off to get SALAD lunch now in this lovely hotel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 at 4:21 am and is filed under On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.