Below Belief

A thoroughly tortured and alternating hot and cold nights sleep gives way to a grey dawn. I brave the toilet for the first time and it proves to be an entirely unpleasant experience even without inhaling throughout. I dearly hope that yesterday’s chilli is not ready for a second appearance. That would be really undesirable. What keeps me from being appalled by the journey is the breathtaking scenery outside the window.
Suddenly we have been transported to the roof of the world – a narrow cutting dipping in and out of tunnels in the side of enormous steep hillsides, every last inch of which provides for rice paddies farmed on terraces by the village communities below us in the valleys. I am amazed this limestone scenery is not more famous. It reminds me of the lake district back home but is twenty times larger, more stunning and more impressive. We are passing through real China now: villages connected only by footpaths and the occasional train. We have hot water on tap from a large wood-fuelled samovar at the end of the carriage and so we make more tea. Sitting here reading and watching the scenery flash by it could be Sunday afternoon back home.
The only minor annoyance is that every time we go into a tunnel, which is about every 30 seconds, the lights extinguish and reading becomes a tiresome challenge of chasing dark words around the page. Llew returns from the toilet looking drawn and haggard, clutching a rather out of place roll of pink toilet paper, his face wincing. Clearly yesterday’s chill has made a re-appearance bringing new meaning to the eye-watering term ‘red hot ring’. The rest of the journey passes without too much incident apart from when a mug of what I presume is tea is flung carelessly from a window further down the train and neatly soaks us through our open window. Almost as bad as being spat on. In Kunming, after a bus ride to challenge even the most crowded in London, we arrive at our hotel, the ‘Camellia’ which has cheap dormitories for travellers. We meet Natalie, a 10-month traveller about to go back to Britain to begin life as a lawyer, but in the meantime desperately enjoying the sights of the world and her own freedom. She has travelled the world alone, except for South America, and clearly loves it. Not too mad either.
Kunming is a great city. It is strangely Western, much more ordered than elsewhere (cars actually stop at traffic lights) and I guess for all these reasons is a place where other travellers conjugate. We enjoy our first Western food – burgers – for many days and like it so much we go on to have pizzas at ‘Wai’s Place’ an almost legendary travellers hang out which is empty by the time we find it. We return to bed full, satisfied and just the slightest bit drunk on excellent Dali beer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 1997 at 1:57 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.