The day I spent a week in the Gobi Desert..........

The account of a journey I don't plan on ever taking again: I left from Lhasa bright and early Monday morning. Despite my bright and earliness, we barely made it to the plane taking us to Xining. Unfortunately, our Land Cruiser broke down on the way to the airport (have I heard this story somewhere before...?). Funnily enough, it was the exact same Land Cruiser and driver that took us to Everest and broke down on the way. Oh, the irony.....anyway, we did make it (barely...the airport people always want to take our diet cokes away when we go through security, it is highly annoying and sort of a sore spot). After arriving in Xining, we hopped a bus for an hour to the bus station. Next, we transferred to another bus for a 4-hour ride to Lanzhou. We had read in Lonely Planet that Lanzhou is notorious for getting passengers stranded at the train station. For some reason, we though b/c of our forward thinking planning, we would be an exception to this. When we got to the station, we found that all trains to Dunhuang were booked for the next three days. Oh my. After about two hours, Ann accidentally ran into a train-ticket-broker who sold her two over-priced tickets for a 9 hour train ride in hard-sleeper to Jiayuguan. The person told us Jiayuguan was only 2 hours from Dunhuang via bus. We decided that moving in was better than staying put. In the meantime, I was asked to join a religion that is illegal in China by a street evangelist and I also got in trouble with a policeman for loitering. Eventually, we hopped on the train around 10.30 pm. The next morning, we found ourselves in the desert town of Jiayuguan. Immediately, we went to the information desk. We found that the bus to Dunhuang actually took 10 hours (apparently the broker was a little off on her estimation) and the train took 4-5 but didn't leave until the evening. We decided to take the train (not really a difficult decision) and spend the day seeing the western end of the great wall (neither of us had ever seen it). The day actually, aside from our tiredness, was very fun--involving lots of climbing, camel-riding, and jiaoza-eating. We prepared for the train that evening. As we got on we found out that actually, we had "no-seat" tickets. In China there are five classes of train tickets, decreasing in comfort and price: soft-sleeper, hard-sleeper, soft-seat, hard-seat, and no-seat. Usually, with a no-seat ticket, one can just find an empty hard-seat and take it. This situation was different. Being as the hard-seat cars on the train are one of the cheapest ways to travel in China, half the population of China is actually in one car. There are families that have been riding the train for two days or more, camped out with their kids, family pets and farm animals. There isn't a spot for luggage, so it just sits on the floor or in the aisle. Then, there are all the no-seat people sleeping on the floor under the seats, in the aisle, in between cars or in the bathroom. We boarded the train with all our luggage (we both had a backpack and a medium-sized suitcase on wheels). We found two empty seats and settled. There is something about the Chinese when they are communicating. Not only is the language a very harsh language, but they also have a habit of yelling irritably, even though they may not really even be angry. It is very intimidating, especially to me (I hate hate hate getting in trouble). All this to say, though we thought the seats were unoccupied, they actually were people's assigned seats that had gotten off the train for food. When they came back, there was an outrage. Ok, please imagine a car of over 100 chinese people who have had two days of train riding with nothing interesting. Already, seeing the only foreigners on the train is exciting. Seeing the only foreigners on the train being completely chewed out by angry Chinese, is even more interesting. Seeing the youngest foreigner burst into uncontrollable crying is even better than that. Ann kept telling me to stay put but everyone was yelling at us and the person next to me was trying to bodily push me out of the seat for the Chinese man. I couldn't understand anything that anyone was saying and I was so tired. I realized I couldn't make it in this culture of yelling and disregard for politeness and this language that I have no hope of ever understanding and the dam just burst. Once the dam burst, it was over, I was hysterical. I knew I had to get a grip, but I couldn't. The faces of my family and friends kept appearing in my head one after the other and I couldn't believe I had left such an amazing community to come here....I felt that I would never see them again and I couldn't stand it. Before long, the whole car was silent and standing at our end of the car, simply watching the foreigner in hysterics. That everyone was silently watching me made me embarrassed and I cried more. I tried to get up so I could just leave and go to another car, but the Chinese around me wouldn't let me get up. They thought I was responding to them not wanting me to sit, and they all felt so bad they wouldn't allow me to stand up. This made everything worse. I was honestly a sight. Ann left to see if there was a place we could sit (away from this car) in the dining cart. While she was gone, an English-speaking Chinese student came and asked me what was wrong. There was no explaining, of course. He said "cammie, everyone is watching you, so you shouldn't cry." That didn't help. Then, people on the car started passing water bottles and fruit to me. Soon, I had a lap full of peaches and bottles, but I couldn't lift up my head to look into the eyes of these people. I was mortified. The student kept saying, "see, Chinese are really very nice." "I--I--I know!" I would sob back. Pathetic, it was really pathetic. Long story short, Ann and I made it to the food car. I ate some peaches and water and got a grip (a tentative grip) and we returned to the car. Everyone was seated again and when we came in they got so excited. For a few hours we stood by the car door--Ann started leading English lessons for the entire car and handing out bananas to everyone (except to the man next to me who was throwing up in a bag he had...). It was all very comical in the end. Once we got off the train, we found a taxi driver to take us to the hotel we had reserved. We both thought the price he quoted was too high, but we were too tired to argue. TWO HOURS of desert driving later, we arrived in Dunhuang (apparently the Dunhuang train stop isn't actually IN Dunhuang) and found our hotel around 2. The next day we went to see the caves and spent some more time riding camels in the desert. On Thursday we got on a plane to Shanghai and on Friday a bus here to Hangzhou. I have no desire to return to the Gobi desert for as long as I live.