They busted through a lot of rough country to lay these tracks, but
they pass through many valleys and along the shores of Qinghai lake,
too. The ride from Lhasa to Xining took over 24 hours. As the sun went
down, ice started forming inside the windows on the exit doors and by
morning it was nearly an eighth of an inch thick on the metal casings,
but the area where we sat and slept was plenty warm. We raced through
the mountains, through the valleys, along the lake shores, through the
snowfields, into the night towards the dawn, and as the light warmed
to golden yellow we were gliding through the grasslands. It's only
been a few days, but it seems like years since I was out there on the
plateau and my heart longed for those rolling hills even as I watched
them melt away like the snowfields before them and the mountains
before them. It was hard to leave two weeks ago and it was hard to see
them going by again without being able to step out and walk the land,
to feel the vastness of it and taste it in my lungs- like parting with
a loved one and then seeing them ride by on a bus and not being able
to talk, or embrace, or even to catch their eye. Soon the high
pastures were replaced by the standard dusty lanes and courtyard
farmhouses of China and we were in the lower lying lands where the hay
harvesting had only just finished and the giant yellow mounds were
being pitchforked into small gas-powered balers or stored on the tops
of shed roofs. Those, too, faded away and long before the non-distinct
land outside the city began, the smog and dust dissolved the blue sky
into a flat grey. The last hours are the worst- the train slowing to a
crawl through ugly land, through concrete block towns outlying the
city, and finally into the place itself. There is a brief interlude of
peace on the shaded platform and then we step into the roar of the
crowd outside the gates, squinting in the sun and are cast back into
the heart of the city.
