Day 229 (China): unnamed city - Xining (21 hour busride)

Well, I slept well where I was. I really did and woke up early. Or so I thought and then realized that the bus would be leaving on Beijing time and I was still on Xianjiang time. Two hours difference. But all still doable. I got up and dressed, headed to the bus station. 

Not without buying things for the ride and then off things went. It was a sleeper bus … as it was going to be a long ride.

And the area was beautiful, but would have been difficult to ride through at this time of the year. There was little water around and whatever there was would have been frozen. And there were almost no towns. Made the Taklamakan look like a very populated place. There was oil exploration and all sorts of extraction going on. The road was good, excellent and very bad. And it turned out to be a much longer ride than expected. It went overnight.

And the night was ugly. There were too many people on the bus and being in the last row of beds, they placed two more people in our row, making it five altogether. Having been by myself for the last months I felt a bit squeezed. Squeezed by one side with a person you are close to is not an issue. But the two guys on either side seemed to want to gang up on the puny foreigner and basically lay on top of me at times. Which caused some not so good-natured wrangling from my side after pleading with them at first.

The long ride also did nothing to uplift my spirits and the temptation has, if anything, only become great. Bag it and head to Beijing. Then I try to rationalize things and come up with a plan. See how much you can fix in Xining, get your extension and then take it from there.