A small part of the extensive breakfast buffet.
Then I received a phone call. It was Eric who had met me at Beijing airport the previous day with "bad news". The sleeping cabins are 4-berth so to avoid sleeping with strangers, they'd purchased four tickets to give me a private cabin. But the Government, he said, had required him to surrender the tickets at short notice for a Government Official and no other cabin was available. With commendable restraint, I asked him to continue to make what efforts he could to make an alternative booking and mildly said "I'm not happy". I gloomily looked out of my window at what I'd described as 'a park' but is actually called 'Central Square' and tried to keep calm.
Later in the morning, Eric phoned again and said he had four new tickets which had to be exchanged at the station so I might have to leave earlier. I didn't quite understand this business of ticket exchange but it was decided that the previously agreed meeting time with the guide, Co-Co, would be satisfactory. I thanked Eric for resolving the problem.
I checked out at the hotel's standard noon check-out and waited for Co-Co. She suggested I had lunch whilst we waited for the car pick-up which had been arranged for 1.30 p.m. Co-Co had already had lunch so I just had a hot chocolate and a slice of apple pie in the lobby restaurant before we were driven through the city to a fairly unprepossessing area to the west of the centre where we unloaded in a car park adjacent to an electrified railway but with no station in view. We then walked for a few hundred yards along a broad avenue which had been pedestrianised by erecting a motley selection of barriers. We passed a row of grocery shops which suggested to me that we might be nearing a station and, indeed, there were a number of pedestrians heading our way with luggage and what could have been refreshments for a long train journey.
We arrived at a large but singularly unimpressive building which Co-Co confirmed was 'Xining West' station. There are a few pictures of this station at the beginning of the set here. Apparently, it's a temporary affair, opened about two years ago, whilst a new station is built at Xining East. Police were checking the documents of arriving passengers but when Co-Co and I joined the queue, we were denied entry to the station building. I wasn't clear why but Co-Co made a number of phone calls, approached another official and, accompanied by the official, we tried again, meeting the same refusal. This, of course, was the trigger for more phone calls whilst I copied the local practice of sitting on a long line of welded tube barriers which made reasonable seats. We then tried again, this time with only the minor glitch that Co-Co presented my passport to the puzzled policeman open at a page showing a Myanmar visa including my photograph. When I realised the error and opened the document at the proper photograph page, it was smiles all round and we were waved inside. I never found out the reason for the initial reluctance to admit us. We entered a large waiting room with hundreds of passengers waiting on plastic seats, reminding me of my visit to Hanoi Station earlier in the year.
A view of the waiting room at Xining West Station.
Co-Co said that we now had to wait for the replacement tickets to arrive before we went onto the platform. A train arrived a few minutes later and we went onto the platform. Co-Co had engaged a porter for my large case and one of the friendly group of porters spoke reasonable English which he was keen to try out.
On the platform, Co-Co met a business-like woman who appeared to have just got off the train and she had the four replacement tickets. These were collected by one of a group of ladies in railway uniform after my 'Special Visa' for Tibet had been checked. I was waved on board and Co-Co and the lady who'd brought the tickets came to show me the cabin. They then asked me for the tickets and thought I was confused in saying that they had been collected already. They insisted on my emptying my purse and the bag I was carrying. Only after they'd each searched the contents did they go back to the platform and find the official who'd actually got the tickets. Well, I'd finally got my cabin for sole use so I thanked Co-Co and the lady who'd brought the tickets and we said our goodbyes.
At five past three, my train quietly departed for the 24-hour trip to Lhasa.
My Pictures
Yinlong Hotel, Xining.
QingHai - Tibet Railway.
