Strange things are starting to happen as the Lhasa Express chuffs across the rooftop of the world. Outside the double-glazed, UV-blocking windows, I can see black-robed Tibetan nomads tending their enormous, shaggy yaks — a scene little changed from Marco Polo’s day.
But that seems perfectly normal compared to what’s happening inside the train. As the altimeter approaches 17,000 feet, a package of potato chips balloons outward until it ruptures a seam. Sunscreen and hand sanitizer erupt unbidden from bottles. In soft-sleeper class, Chinese businessmen sprawl listlessly on their bunks, sucking oxygen from plastic hoses. The bathrooms smell of vomit.
Building a railroad into Tibet has been the obsession of every Chinese leader since Chairman Mao, and this past July they finally succeeded. It is, by any reckoning, one of the great engineering feats of our age. Over the last five years, hundreds of thousands of workers laid 700 miles of track over the Kunlun Mountains and across the Tibetan plateau, through some of the highest, coldest and most forbidding real estate on the planet. It cost $4.2 billion.
Environmentalists decry the damage to such a fragile landscape, and others fear its effect on Tibetans and their culture, which have been reeling under 56 years of often-brutal Chinese rule.
Each day the train delivers 3,000 people — most of them Han Chinese — to the Tibetan capital, adding to a Beijing-backed Han migration that has already made Tibetans a minority in their own land. The Chinese respond that the railroad will spur much-needed economic development in Tibet.
In all, the rail journey from Beijing to Lhasa covers 2,525 miles and takes just under 48 hours. Environmental and cultural issues aside, how does it rate as a travel experience? I rode it recently to find out.
It was 9:30 p.m. and dark when I joined the mob swarming onto the train at the airport-like Beijing West Railway Station, not far from Tiananmen Square. I was in soft-sleeper class, the most luxurious accommodation, with four bunk beds to a compartment. (Hard-sleeper compartments have six less-comfortable beds, Second Class has sit-up-all-night seats, and “hard class” is often standing-room only.)
I had a lower berth — the top ones looked like hell to climb up to — with a flat-screen TV (Chinese programming only) and a socket for the oxygen hoses that would be issued later.
My roommates were Chinese businessmen, and they stayed up all night barking into their mobile phones. The man across from me seemed to take great delight in ignoring the ubiquitous “no spitting” signs. Eventually, with the help of the gentle rocking of the train, earplugs, a sleeping mask and a sleeping tablet, I nodded off.
Each rail car on the “Sky Train,” as the Chinese call it, has a trio of sinks, a hot-water dispenser and two bathrooms — one Western, one squat. They were spotless when we boarded, but they didn’t stay that way for long. Word to the wise: Bring your own toilet paper.
I awoke next morning to the sight of the green Chinese countryside rolling past my window. There were a few interesting vignettes of rural life — a man in a Chairman Mao suit riding a bicycle, corn laid out to dry, a sod-roof house with a satellite dish — but the scenery was only mildly captivating. The sky was filled with a yellow-brown haze as we passed through a series of industrial towns.
The dining car was filled with a mix of Chinese businessmen and upper-middle-class Chinese tourists. Later, a quartet of Tibetan Buddhist monks in burgundy robes stopped by, and a family of Danes — the only other Westerners I saw.
When I awoke on the second morning I felt like Dorothy blinking her eyes in awe at Oz: Outside was a startlingly different world, a landscape of fantasy and wonder. In the early hours of the morning we had crossed the Kunlun Mountains and arrived on the Tibetan plateau, the highest major land mass on the planet.
Before, the sky had been hazy and yellow, the light flat and dull. Now the sky was an almost painfully deep blue, and the landscape was sharp, bright and deeply etched. Jagged brown peaks were flecked with new snow, and puffy clouds wafted around summits glowing golden in the dawn light. The treeless and gently rolling plain was a million colors, all of them variations of brown.
Strings of tattered, sun-bleached prayer flags fluttered from rock outcroppings; at this altitude, the gods must never seem far away. Golden eagles flew in lazy circles. When we passed our first yak, I fumbled for my camera, and the man across the table from me grinned: Yaks in Tibet are as rare and exotic as cows are in Iowa.
The highest point on the rail line, the Tangu La pass, is usually listed as 16,640 feet. But the map in my Lonely Planet guide places it at 16,994.75 feet, which means passengers — especially those in the upper bunks — poke their heads above 17,000 feet.
The atmosphere here holds between 40 and 50 percent less oxygen than at sea level. Extra oxygen is pumped into the unpressurized rail cars as they roll across the Tibetan plateau, but it’s not clear that it does much good. All around me in the dining car, passengers were suffering the hangover-like symptoms of altitude sickness: throbbing headaches and severe nausea.
I was feeling relatively chipper due to Diamox, a prescription drug that prevents altitude sickness. Even so, I was lightheaded and a little dizzy. Back in my compartment, I plugged the oxygen hose into the wall and inhaled deeply. Almost instantly my mind cleared. But the effect lasted only as long as I breathed oxygen from the hose.
The surrealness was heightened by what looked like hundreds of enormous golf tees lining the tracks. They’re an attempt to solve the railroad’s most vexing problem.
Four hundred miles of the route lie atop a particularly unstable form of permafrost that thaws during the day and freezes at night, causing the tundra above it to rise and fall by inches. To try to prevent tracks from buckling and cracking, Chinese engineers elevated more than 100 miles of it and installed the giant golf tees along other stretches. These are cooling pipes that use solar energy to turn liquid ammonia into gas, chilling the ground and preventing the permafrost from melting.
But the climate is warming more rapidly than forecast, and already some sections of track and concrete pillars have cracked, a railway ministry spokesman told the Beijing News recently. Some railway engineers have worried publicly that if the climate continues to warm, the railroad could be unusable in 50 years.
I spent the second morning in the dining car, sipping jasmine tea as we rode into a snow flurry. Every half-hour there was an announcement in Mandarin and English: Because of the extra oxygen being pumped into the cars, smoking is strictly forbidden. Pure oxygen can turn a spark into a fireball in no time.
Around 11 a.m. I headed back to my compartment for a nap. Spitting Man and my other roommates had disembarked during the night, and now I was looking forward to luxuriating in privacy and catching up on missed sleep. But when I slid open the door, there was someone in the compartment. He was a conductor. He was laying on my bed. He was smoking a cigarette.
More Top Picks Cobra Rad 480i
Through gestures I got him to stub it out, but then he rolled over and went to sleep. Within seconds he was snoring. I went back to the dining car and stretched a lunch of noodles and broth out over two hours.
We rolled into Lhasa (altitude about 12,000 feet) at dusk, precisely on time.
My verdict on the new Beijing-Lhasa train? I’d give it a B-minus. It was probably as comfortable as any 48-hour train ride these days, and the scenery varied from tedious to literally breathtaking. I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t rate it as an everybody-should-do-it-at-least-once-in-their-lifetime experience.
– – –
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
The train departs Beijing every night at 9:30 p.m. and arrives in Lhasa just under 48 hours later. Tickets are in high demand, and the Chinese don’t go out of their way to make it easy for foreigners to book. (The return trip is a little easier to book because many visitors fly home. It departs Lhasa daily at 8 a.m.) An online travel agency based in Lhasa (www.ac cesstibettour.com) can book tickets. The fare for a lower bunk in soft sleeper (highly recommended) is 1,262 yuan (about $158 U.S.). You must also obtain a separate Tibet travel permit, which costs 700 yuan ($89).
TOUR PACKAGES
I booked my train tickets through a Nepalese travel agency, Explore Himalaya (www.explorehima laya.com) in conjunction with an 11-day Land Rover tour from Lhasa to Katmandu. It cost $980, not including the train tickets.
INFORMATION
The Web site www.chinatibet train.com says it is the official site of the Beijing-Lhasa train, and it has lots of good information on everything but booking tickets.
— J.F.