Urban Crawl 3

This Train Is Bound For Gansu, This Train

Yeah eventually it was time to jump on the rails for an all-nighter.

In the line to enter the platform at Kunming Station, passport at the ready

I honestly don't know how I managed to single-handedly curve the world without blurring this pic

Heading north, through the verdant valleys of Yunnan

The seats might look comfy, but they don't recline, and are classed as Hard Seats for good reason.

A Chinese bullet train, which can reach 350km/hr. Every day, an estimated 2,800 pairs of these trains cross paths as they rocket between Chinese cities. Not an insignificant number, is it.

There were loads of towns on the way.

And renewables, of various persuasions

My neighbour friends were amazing. They're from Lijiang in Yunnan, a famous ancient town, and are travelling all the way to Urumqi in Xinjiang to work. They've got an extra 24 hours on the train after me, lucky devils.

As usual they graciously stuffed me with their food and beers, and were really sweet, and loads of fun - particularly this woman, in her late forties, who I temporarily fell in love with because, not only was she beautiful, but because she was completely playful, interesting, switched on, cheeky, and had the most infectious laugh.

It's so much fun to be around people who are genuinely incredulous of me and my life, simply because it's so different from their own. And, of course, the feeling is completely mutual.

Some of the snacks they gave me were amazing, including some sort of spiced dried fruit, sort of like a stringy date, that made my mouth all numb. It was pretty much impossible to chew, but somehow my friends all still managed to get through a whole bunch of them each, while I was stuck on just the one of my own. Great for the jaw muscles.

The train was full of different ethnicities, with quite different facial features from each other. There were hardly any Han Chinese, who are the dominant ethnic group in China, comprising around 90% of the population. I guess most of those guys were in the more expensive train classes, because, generally speaking, they tend to be better off financially. Us riff raff, though, were all packed into cattle class, and, later in the journey, many had to make do without seats.

Purple sunset

Lanzhou

This city, the capital of Gansu province, hosts around 4 million people, and has an ancient history stretching back more than 5,000 years. It became a major hub on the Silk Road around 550 AD, bringing enormous wealth to the region. These days it's a modern urban centre, and the wider region is a centre for heavy industry, and for the petrochemical industry. Not that you see any evidence of that around town though.

Action at Lanzhou Station

It was wet when I arrived. Ooops, I hadn't thought of that. I'd left my raingear and umbrella in my panniers, to be freighted with my bike, and had only travelled with an overnight bag. I got a bit wet, but it wasn't cold. Cool, compared to Kunming, but not cold.

Drumming band celebrating the opening of a new store

This tattoo parlour's gone out of business. Whilst tattoos are sort of acceptable on foreigners and young people in the more modern cities of eastern China, they're generally frowned upon in the country. Confucian teachings deem tattoos uncivilised, and they've long been associated with organised crime here. Same for Japan.

Interesting convention centre

I found a shoebox for a couple of nights (eventually), and headed out for food.

Lunch was seaweed and poached egg soup, and sweet millet porridge.

The back laneways

Yeah, why not, it's time for a luckin coffee.

This is the most sponge-like sponge cake I've ever had. I literally could've used it to paint a masterpiece.

Er no, no I couldn't've. It wouldn't be a masterpiece.

Lanzhou lies on the banks of the fast-flowing Yellow River, the second longest river flowing solely within China, after the Yangtze. It is the sixth longest river on the planet, flowing for an estimated 5,464km, from the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau all the way to the east coast, with the mouth in Shandong province, in between Beijing and Shanghai. It provides around 140 million people with drinking water along its way.

People were out and about, given it was Saturday arvo.

The thing to do here is sit on the banks of the river and drink delicious tea. No beer in sight.

A pair of visiting bar-headed geese. These incredible birds migrate between the Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia, and are known as some of the highest flying birds on the planet. Move over Dolly Parton and Beyoncé, I'm talkin' super high altitude here. The birds have been known to pass over the top of some of the highest mountains in the Himalaya, ie. the world. Scientists don't really understand why they don't just take the lower passes. High fliers indeed

The kids were flying kites.

And I was eating fried rice cakes, potatoes, and yams. But they were pretty gross, because of a particular flavour enhancer they use sometimes, which has a distinctive chemical taste and numbs your tongue.

Good ole run-of-the-mill city view

Well used charging station

Custard bliss

They gave me a pair of plastic gloves, tucked in the bag with my custard tart. Couldn't believe it. Plastic usage is alive and well here, they haven't sorted that one out yet either.

I was staying pretty close to the extensive mainstream shopping area in town. Young Chinese were buying bubble teas and getting themselves stuffed toys. None of this beer drinking and getting trashed rubbish - well not that I could see anyway.

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Go to Part 4