On any long trip, there is always one place that everyone warns you to stay away from. Invariably, it is some industrial town or city with no redeeming features in the middle of nowhere. Usually, it is the only nexus for long distance busses or trains and unavoidable, explaining why you would be there at all when you knew better than to go there in the first place. These places are the building blocks of countless traveller yarns and publications with titles like "Vacations from Hell."
After ending up in a few of these must not see places, I realized that I must have a much higher tolerance to grime, boredom, and dilapidation than others. Almost all of the places I had been warned to avoid turned out to be not nearly as bad as everyone had made them out to be. Some of them were really enjoyable.
And then there was Golmud. Back in 1993, Golmud was the only way to legally leave or enter Tibet by land. Everyone I had met who had travelled through Golmud had said to avoid it all costs. Given my past experience with must avoid places, I thought it could simply not be that terrible. And it wasn't. It was worse.
It would have been easy to avoid Golmud. All I had to do was buy a plane ticket from Lhasa to Chengdu. But, I had flown into Lhasa and wanted to travel overland to get back to China. Unfortunately, if you did not want to spend some time in a tourist police office, the only way to travel overland out of Tibet was to go to Golmud.
I asked other people in my hotel about the bus trip. Nobody really knew how long the bus was supposed to take, but the average guess was about 36 hours, with one unlucky soul recanting a 54 hour trip from hell when he had come from Golmud to Lhasa. Armed with low expectations, I headed to the bus station to buy a ticket. The station was remarkably uncrowded, considering this was the largest population center for 2000 km. Strangely enough, a bus ticket to Golmud cost about one tenth the price of a ticket from Golmud. This should have been the first clue that something was amiss. Nobody at the station seemed to concerned about the bus filling up, and it was easy to get an advance ticket. This should have been my second clue.
On the day of departure, I left the Yak hotel before the sun had risen, and caught a cab to the bus station. At the bus station, there was only one other traveller taking the bus. She was a sour faced East German woman who seemed to have forgotten how to be happy. She would also be my only company for the next thirty six hours. Feeling a little apprehensive, I boarded the bus with the dour East German, and we were off.
Despite the mysterious disappearance of our driver and his timely reappearance, a cracked windshield, and inexplicable stops in the middle of nowhere, we arrived at Golmud just before lunch, after only 28 hours of bumpy riding. We stepped off the bus into a dessicated, half built town with absolutely no redeeming features. The ever present wind blew dust through the nearly deserted streets, guaranteeing that any colour in the town would eventually turn a flat, yellow brown hue. At the edge of town, dry plains stretched off as far as the eye could see. All it needed was a few tumbleweeds.
It was the only time I had taken a bus that arrived early in my life, and I got to spend the extra time in Golmud. Taking one look at the town, which incidentally contained three prison camps and was home to a good chunk of those exiled from Beijing, we both wanted out as quick as possible. Heading north to Dunhuang would be a good plan, though heading anywhere away from Golmud was a close second. According to the reports of others, Dunhuang was open to tourists, and had some interesting sights.
Without even bothering to make the pretense of looking for a place to stay, we headed straight to the bus ticket window, and asked for two tickets to Dunhuang on the next bus out. The ticket girl told us that Dunhuang was a closed area, and that we would need a permit before we would be allowed to buy a ticket. We protested that Dunhuang was an open area, had been for some time, and was not about to close to tourists any time soon. Typical for this kind of exchange, the ticket girl ignored our protests. She pretended that we were not at the window by quickly glancing down, and scribbling something on a pad of paper. I thought about arguing the point, but realized it would be fruitless and somewhat self destructive to antagonize the only person who could sell us a ticket out of Golmud.
We decided it was better to just spend the money for a permit and get out. To get a permit, we would have to go to the tourist police office, which was somewhat inconveniently located a kilometer away. Refusing to believe we might actually have to stay a night, we walked to the tourist police office in the hot sun with our packs, on the off chance we could get out the same day. When we arrived at the dusty office, we found that it was closed for lunch. Giving in to the inevitable, we walked back to the bus station and found a grimy, yet not unreasonably priced hotel to stay at.
By the time we had settled in, what we guessed passed for lunch hour had passed. It was time to head back to the tourist police office. When we arrived, the office was open. The tourist police were polite and friendly, and issued us both permits to visit Dunhuang, a town that was well documented as being open to tourists. Despite the semi extortionate fee, we were both glad to have paid what seemed a very reasonable amount of money for the privilege of being able to leave Golmud.
After sweating back to the station, we proudly presented our permits and asked for two tickets on the next bus out of Golmud. Apparently, plenty of other people had exactly the same idea, and all tickets for the next day's bus had been sold out. The next bus left two days later. We would have to stay another day in Golmud. I started to convulse at the thought of being stuck in the same place where Chinese dissidents were sent as punishment.
As we were walking back to the hotel, I got the brilliant idea of trying to hitch a ride out. There were plenty of garages full of trucks and piles of fruit and dirt just waiting to be transported away. One of those trucks had to be heading towards Dunhuang. We went to one garage, and asked about whether we could get a ride to Dunhuang. The man said there was nothing going to Dunhuang, but mentioned that he could get us a ride to Lhasa. And that began the tour of Golmud truck garages. Hours later, and countless garages visited, we still had found no ride out of Golmud, unless you count the ones to Lhasa. What was so very odd about the whole situation was that we had plenty of offers to take us back to Lhasa, which was officially closed to tourism, yet nobody was going to Dunhuang, an area open to all tourists except those unfortunate enough to be coming from Golmud.
Resigned to our fate, we slumped back to the hotel, with the sun beating on our necks and the sand stinging our cheeks in the ever present wind. We were tired, hungry and getting ever more irritated by the unwillingness of the locals to let us leave. As we were walking back to the hotel, we saw a beater of a bus waiting by the side of the road. It was pointed in the right direction. Could it be a private bus that the bus office refused to tell us about?
There was a westerner sitting by a window near the front of the bus. I walked up to the window and asked him if he was going to Dunhuang. "No", he replied. It was a private bus that was going to Lhasa in an hour. He said we could probably make it before it left, if we wanted to get out of Golmud that badly. I seriously considered his suggestion, but decided to stay the course. We would try to get on the morning Dunhuang bus without a ticket.
Next morning, we got up early and headed to the bus station. There was a bus leaving at seven for Dunhuang, and we wanted to be on it. With some luck, there would be a no show, or some space in the aisle we could squeeze into to get out.
The station was unusually crowded for first thing in the morning, filled with greasy looking locals, and visitors with looks of desperation in their eyes. A local hustler was working the crowd with the three card equivalent of the shell game. We watched as gamblers placed their bets with the shark. For some reason, he seemed to be losing more than winning. Either he was new at the game, or he was an eccentric millionaire with a novel way to be philanthropic.
I watched as one heavily soaked and swaying gambler placed his ten yuan bet, and lost. The shark had his mark and continued to work the man. No matter how the gambler tried, he failed to pick the correct card. At one point, the gambler had chosen the correct card, and drunkenly checked his jacket pocket for his wallet. While distracted, the shark discreetly switched cards and won the bet yet again. This continued for some time. After taking the gambler for more than one hundred yuan, the shark stood up quickly, tore the cards into a cloud of confetti, and disappeared into the crowd.
Soon after, the bus to Dunhuang pulled into the station bay to be accosted by a horde of desperate travellers pushing uncontrollably and waving dusty bags. All of us were desperately hoping to somehow get onto the one bus that would take us away to anywhere but Golmud.
We waited in anticipation as the conductor allowed on the people with tickets. The moment he had finished counting, the now quiet crowd burst into action and imploded into a tight ball around the door of the bus. We pushed and shoved our way to the door, as more and more people climbed onto the increasingly crowded bus. By the time we arrived at the front, the bus had been packed all the way to the front doors. The conductor could barely fit both his feet on the steps when he signalled to the driver to leave.
We watched in vain as the bus pulled away. We were left to spend another twenty four hours in Golmud. This might not have been too bad, but I was in the company of somebody who had not likely smiled in the last twenty years, and was in the process of sucking what little positive energy I had left and transforming it into post-Communist angst.
I'm not sure what I did for the rest of the day, but I do remember taking my pulse and writing a postcard to a friend about it. Later on, he would tell me that he got a kick out of my Golmud Tourist bureau marketing plan. Somehow, in a fit of boredom, I coined the slogan "Golmud, where all the wasted time in the world goes" and managed to squeeze it between the reports of my varying pulse rate. That was about as exciting as one could expect in Golmud. The rest of the day slowly passed, and I turned in early, if only to try and speed the time to departure. The East German continued to brood the entire day and probably well into the night. An East German in Golmud was a recipe for disaster.
Determined not to miss the bus, on pain of another day in Golmud, we woke a half hour earlier than the day before. After packing up our gear, we made our way out of the hotel, only to find out that somebody had locked and chained the front entrance. Was this part of Golmud's plan to get more tourism dollars to stay in Golmud? We rattled and shook the doors, yelled and screamed, and eventually made enough noise to wake one of the floor girls. She seemed to move in slow motion as she sauntered from the office and unlocked the chain. My mind raced as I thought of the bus leaving without me, and grimaced at the thought of spending another twenty four hours in the worst place in the world with somebody who had not smiled in her lifetime.
We ran to the station, and arrived just as the bus started loading. We heaved our gear onto the bus roof, and pushed our way into the bus. Even though we did have tickets, there was no way I would let anything dealing with my escape fall to chance. I made sure I was well planted on the bus and nobody would be pushing me off. Relieved, I sat on a dusty faux vinyl seat and could barely hide my joy. The mood must have been infectious, as I thought I saw the East German almost make a smile.
As we pulled out of Golmud, the town slowly disappeared in the emptiness of barren plain. This was the landscape that had made Golmud the primo choice to send exiles and prisoners. The place was surrounded by vast stretches of flat, parched dirt. We passed through what seemed to be an endless potash desert of scorched earth, bare of vegetation. But, as we drove across the desert, Golmud slowly receded in the past, becoming just a bad memory.
Despite the less than ideal experience in Golmud, China was a very interesting country to visit. Large and diverse, with some beautiful landscapes and some very impressive buildings, China could keep anyone rubbernecking for years. Unfortunately, the scale of China meanas you have to travel long distances to get to something interesting. However, time spent travelling also meant time spent eating. Overall, the food was mostly tasty and good quality, though the occasional meal would send you to the toilets, which were probably the worst in the world. If you could get local prices, China would be one of the cheapest countries in the world to travel in. Of course, nothing comes for free. China was probably the most difficult country to travel in. Unless you can speak and read some Mandarin, going to China will give you a first hand view of what it means to be mute and illiterate. To top of the difficulty, the Chinese were remarkably indifferent to tourists and charged them up to fifty times more than locals for some sights. China is a travel challenge, but well worth it. Just stay away from Golmud.
Text and images copyright © by Curtis Marr. All rights reserved.