July 8, 2006
We're currently still in Beijing. When, we arrived here, the plan was to leave on the 5th, but we stayed an extra day (the 6th) to recover from accumulation fatigue. Also, David's been burdened with cold symptoms for the last few days, so we didn't think the extra day would hurt. Unfortunately, I had a bout of 'e-coli' cramps yesterday morning (they reoccur every so often after Morocco), so we decided to try to leave today. Our next leg takes us to Datong. Our current plan is to travel through Shanxi province into Shaanxi province (gotta love those slight differences) to Xi'an where we'll spend some time seeing the warriors, museums and temples and extending our visas. We'll also check to see if a Tibet trip is within our time and budget constraints.
On July 1st, the railway line to Lhasa, Tibet was completed. David had seen a news report about the engineering triumph on the one English language channel and promptly decided we should go. The reason it's such a feat is that after hiring lots of outside experts, including the Swiss who are apparently the world's premier ice tunnel diggers, the Chinese government ignored them all and built the railway anyway. The Tibetan plateau sits 4000-5000 meters above sea level, so much of the railroad is on permafrost and there's a serious danger of the line buckling.
We'd really like to go, especially before they're forced to close the rail line (!), but it's an awfully long way to travel and foreigners have to get a 'Tibet Travel Permit' which basically acts as a tax. We can't buy tickets to Lhasa without it, though and we can't leave the municipality once we're there, without even more special permits, so we'll see what happens. It's also entirely possible that the new train service has been booked out through the end of the summer, with all of the promotional stuff the government has been doing. Either way, we plan, at the moment, to continue at least as far west as Lanzhou, which can be considered the Eastern end of the silk road, before heading back East to Korea.
-Leah
