Day 3 - Aug 11, 2007 Saturday

 Qingzang Railway 青藏列車 / Lhasa 拉薩

(click the hyperlink for the respective photo album)

The train runs at a speed of 120 km per hour within the Qinghai-Tibet section.  It also offers the record-breakers: the world's highest passenger railroad (at Tanggula Pass 唐古喇山口 - elevation: 5072m) and the world's highest railroad tunnel (Fenghuoshan 風火山隧道 - elevation: 4905m). Over 80% of the journey is at altitudes above 13,000 feet; fully half the track on this sector was laid atop permafrost.

It took around 24 hours from Xining to Lhasa.  We took off at around 10:30pm on Aug 10 and arrived in Lhasa at around 11pm on Aug 11.  We had berths for ourselves but the train was so full, our berths were not together!  Anyway to have nice views, we all moved to the nearby soft-seat cabin and took full advantage of the windows on both sides for photos.  Our train was not the scenic train and thus it did not stop at any station except Goldmud 格爾木.  The above photo was Kunlun Mountain 昆倫山.

We passed Kekexili 可可西里 where we had spotted a few precious Tibetan Antelopes 藏羚羊 running across.

The train journey had been very tough.  We all couldn't sleep well on the beds.  The train was crowded with people and even though we are Chinese, we are still sorry to say that the bad habits of Chinese, spitting and some others, are very annoying.  Because we couldn't sleep, some of us developed headaches.  The food was bad too thus the only thing we could enjoy was the sceneries.

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