It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ‘n roll (in Lhasa)

Currently 15 hours completed on the Xining to Lhasa train. We had soft sleepers (not that soft) but G and I in separate cabins. Me with a Chinese family Mum, Dad and daughter, G with a British film editor Nadesh and a couple of young boys whose parents were in the next cabin along.

It’s a Z train so top speed is only about 120km, the night was long as the cabin was warm and the altitude took migraine-like effect. G had pilfered my Panadol. This is the highest train line in the world. For hours we have passed over the Tibetan Plateau. Often alongside the national highway dual lane road requiring constant maintenance to protect it from mud and snow landslides, erosion and overuse. The semis are crawling along, carrying roadwork equipment, wind generator parts, cars, supplies for work camps. It is slow business, the road is single lane in part. We look out on vast green tundra of low lying grasses, the occasional herd of moulting yak and penned sheep of nomadic summer camps, grazing donkeys, groundhogs (will need google to get there correct names) colourful pyramid shaped Tibetan's flag structures on lower peaks, work camps of men maintaining phone towers and/or the railway line in the shadows of huge mountains in the distance. Some still with summer snow, some exposing a rocky ridge line contrasting the grassy plains or bare earth on other peaks. Where the melted snow flows down the mountain side, kilometres of fencing and hand placed stone in grid patterns protect the raised railway line. Another extraordinary feat of engineering.

The train signage says we’re at @ 4800 metres. Our Nescafé sachets agree. They have expanded fit to burst under the changed air pressure. My knee pressed against a packet of unopened soda biscuits I’d been given with my morning coffee and I popped the packet.

If you don’t arrive in Lhasa by plane, you really have to commit. We will have to do this journey in reverse when we leave. An ex work colleague of G’s did the near 4000 km trip from Beijing by car maxing at 200km a day. He said it was a once in a lifetime thing.

15 hours in, 5 hours to go.

postscript: we’ve arrived in Lhasa I’ve seen the Potala Palace from a distance. ❤️We’re both feeling a little lightheaded but otherwise ok.