Ovi presents Lukas world bike tour: Tibet

While I was enjoying my Xmas lunch (yummy! ) Lukas sent his update from Tibet. Yes, after Nepal, he decided to travel to China entering from the Himalaya. I can’t explain well enough how jealous I am…

If you are a fan of his biking adventures around the world, you are going to love this piece and the stunning pictures!

-Pino (@haikus)

Have you ever been on a 48 hours train ride? Or let me rephrase: have you ever been on a 48 hours train ride over Himalayas in a hard seat-class? As cycling over Himalayas become an impossible task to do (especially in December), I booked a 10 day tour from Nepal to mainland China. First seven nights our group enjoyed the Tibetan landscape from a van, the last two I continued over the world’s highest plateau together with a wagon full of Chinese workers.

First I thought I’m going to write about the first part of this journey, but then I changed my mind – whereas pictures can tell the beauty of Tibet, I can tell about the unforgettable train ride experience.

I arrived to Lhasa‘s modern train station early enough to pass the security check and dismantle my bicycle. Against all requests, I didn’t book a soft sleeper, or even a hard sleeper, but the cheapest hard seat. So an hour before boarding time a friendly train station personal advices me to wait aside, and board the train in advance…

Didn’t even have time to properly attach my bike against two poles, when the Chinese already poured in. Amazingly, It took only half an hour to fill up the hard seat wagons with not just passengers, but also their over-weighed and over-numbered bursting baggage. When the upper shelves had no more space, rest of the bags and sacks were placed below the seats, under your feet or on the corridor. In the end it was like a well played Tetris game, because somehow all the huge amount of kilos were on board when we left the station on minute. Me, I was sitting on my seat with surprised eyes looking at me, waiting what will happen next.

As the train departed, the two passengers on my right opened their whiskeys and the ones on the left started gambling with cards. Also immediately after we had left Lhasa, the eating begun, and it didn’t stop until we reached Chengdu 48 hours later. I really thought I was well prepared with my potato chips and snickers bars, but I was way behind these fellows with their different chicken parts, boiled eggs, nuts, fruits, vegetables and, above all, the noodle packs. The hot water tank was free of charge so the passage next to me had a non stop traffic back and forth for these people to fetch some fresh noodle soup.

First ten hours of the ride I was occupied with the mixture of beautiful landscapes and following the ongoing around me. I also made a short visit to taste the rice in the restaurant wagon – no English was spoken so that’s what I must’ve ordered.

Then it was bed time, or for the hard seat class, the seat time. Luckily I slept previous nights fairly good, so I didn’t mind if I wouldn’t have proper rest next two nights. And I didn’t. If it wasn’t the noodle preparing person who kicked me on the way to the water resource, it was definitely the tender neck, numb feet, ringing phone or constant chatting & laughing which kept my dreams short.

The second day I spent mostly reading my book and listening to Christmas music I had downloaded from Ovi. I also downloaded some games from Ovi to keep me company, and especially the World Tong-its Tour I got addicted to. Rest of the day I followed the live card games on my left, or strolled to the toilet and back.

The time passed the second day slowly, but when the neck pain woke me up the following morning, the hastiest were already collecting their bags. My longest train voyage was finally approaching its destination, but first a massive cleaning operation took place. All the food left overs, spits and clipped nails were cleaned up just before arriving to Chengdu. I must say, walking out of the train station with my bicycle was the best Christmas present this year.