2015 China

21 April, Xi’an to Zhangye
Beichen Hotel 168CNY

We boarded the K591 train at 10:30 this morning for the 15-hour-plus journey to Zhangye in Gansu province hoping the “rainbow rocks” here will be worth the long, slow ride and the horrible 01:52 arrival time. In Zhangye at last, a taxi dropped us at our reserved hotel. The receptionist there sent us cater-corner across the road with a security guard to their sister establishment. The receptionist here took forever to photocopy our passports, visas and entry stamps – in fact, Charl had to help her resolve a paper jam on the photocopier – and then provided us with a key to a room which proved to be occupied by a surprised and surprisingly tolerant guest. In the next room, the main lights were not functional, but the third room offered us was just perfect. And so to bed at 03:30-ish...   

We boarded the train better prepared than on our first long train ride. Better preparation mainly took the form of an enormous bag of food we shopped for at our local supermarket last night. Instant noodles (just add hot water from the urn in the coach), a must-eat on any train journey and pretty much anywhere else in China; rice cookies, salty on the tongue, but sweet on top; pre-cooked sausages lathered in chilli seeds; and Snickers chocolates (Snickers is the only chocolate to be found with any consistency in Asia where chocolate has yet to take its rightful place as a must-eat on any train journey and pretty much anywhere else!). We also remembered to charge our laptops and Kindle, so got to do some reading and watched most of Ordinary People before running out of battery power.