Continuing to run amok

So I have survived random bits of western China, and no, the trip wasn't as dangerous or as tough as I expected. But it was far more beautiful than all my expectations, especially the grasslands, and happily devoid of the usual May-Holiday tourist horde.

We began our trip auspiciously, by missing the train. Andrea and I dashed about like crazy people around the station—I didn't know I could run so fast with my backpack—leaping over barriers and pounding on locked doors. But Chinese trains, whatever their other faults, are deadly punctual, and no one would let us onto the platform at 2min. before the scheduled departure time.

There was nothing for it but to buy tickets for the next day's train, which, thankfully, we made, and spent a delightful 22 hours on a hard seat. Most of the ride we shared with 18 workers heading from Hebei to build a railroad in Ningxia. They were very curious about these 2 Chinese and 1 Caucasian girls, stared as if transfixed, smoked like an out-of-control forest fire, drank hard liquor, and were generally pleasant company all around.

Continuing the tale of our transportation woes, there were a few tense moments when a crowd of men surged up at the Lanzhou South Bus Station and immediately started grabbing our bags to try to get us to get on their bus, as opposed to the dozen others all going to the same place. It didn't get any better when they started pulling our arms as well, and I hit back a few times.

But to be honest, I actually thought it was kind of exciting, especially the part where we burst out of the knotty circle and shook them aside—so like an adventure story! fighting off dirty villains!—and I think my subsequent nonchalant attitude rather bemused my travel companions, who were slightly more concerned. Perhaps, deep down, I really wished for things to get more out of hand...it at least would have been more lively than waiting 2.5 hours for the bus to depart.

Fortunately, we didn't sit aboard various vehicles all these hours (~40) for nothing. Some pictures of Zhongwei (中卫), in Ningxia Province:

The Gao Temple in Zhongwei, which I now think of as "Chinese Gothic" in all its elaborate spires and eaves. It also featured a haunted-house-esque Hell in the basement, which we didn't see.

The Tengge'er Desert, Inner Mongolia. Andrea's camel got particularly snotty after I paid it a compliment. Mine seemed like it was in a rush.

This place (Shapotou) also captured all the contradictions of traveling in China. On the one side, incomparable beauty, sand dunes to the horizon, little beetles scurrying about on the wind-rippled dunes. On the other side, you have a mini-yurt village—if yurts were made of cement and painted with vaguely Greco-Roman athlete types—a volleyball court, ATVs for rent, and most perplexing of all, giant hamster-ball contraptions which roll down a gentle slope for just RMB 30. This is also not to mention the infrastructure madness on the side facing the Yellow River, where there are ziplines, slides, rafts, and more.

But then, behind all this, the desert is still there. All you have to do is point yourself northward, and off into the great, limitless expanses you go.

More on part II of our trip, Xiahe—quite truly the highlight—in another post to come.