Day 5 Friday, October 25

Although somewhat apprehensive, we managed to sleep through the night on our narrow bunk beds. After bumping our heads a few times in the morning, we wound our way to the dining car for breakfast. We soon learned that there wasn't much difference between breakfast, lunch and dinner so we relieved on the few groceries we picked up before boarding the train. There was only one Western toilet for each of the other six China models so line ups could be long.

There were, however, two events that made the trip worthwhile. First, we shared out car with a young China couple, both reporters who spoke excellent english and second, the scenery was amazing. Different from anything we had ever seen before with wide stretches of grassy plains set against snow topped mountains. Deep blue mountain lakes with herds of wild yaks, sheep, donkeys. Nomads roamed across most of the open spaces. We passed through a major new city called Lanzou with 2.5 million people living in new high rises.   

We were in Car#5, she was the Conductor, for the entire trip, note the red carpet on the ramp plate.