Phil's Fabulous Tibetan Journey: Part 14-- 67 Hour Train Ride

As unfortunate as our traveler's early return from Mount Everest, things actually work out better this way. You might remember there being some problems with the idea of our traveler's triumphant return to Kunming--mainly that he had no clue how this was going to come about. Our traveler was now going to be in Lhasa on the 4th of May which is a Friday. He decides that it would not be a bad idea to simply head out the train station on the 5th and try to catch the Saturday train (which leaves around 10 in the morning).
After the first good meal he has had in more than four days, he confers with his companions who are returning by airplane Sunday morning. It is decided that our traveler will awake as early as possible Saturday morning and make the journey out to the train station. There he will try and get on the train but if this doesn't work he will return and try to meet up with his companions again. To this purpose he asks them to give him a call around nine or ten o'clock that they might know whether or not our traveler will be trying to meet up with them again. Our traveler would have used his phone to call them but it is currently on the fritz and only able to receive calls.
Morning comes, our traveler heads to the train station where he boards with incredible ease. It seems that in a few minutes all of his traveling uncertainties are gone, he has a bunk on the train to Chengdu which will leave in a few hours so everything is just a waiting game now. He waits for a call from his companions. It never comes. Are traveler later learns that his phone is on the fritz to such an extent it cannot receive calls either. So our traveler, as far as those in Lhasa know, simply vanishes from Tibet--next to deportation, a fitting way to leave.
The train ride ahead of him is longer than any he has ever taken. He has never taken a train for more than an hour or two. This train will be going for some three days before he arrives in Kunming. The first leg, 49 hours from Lhasa to Chengdu, is almost pleasurable with wonderfully stunning views and only one surprise. In a conversation with a Dutch man our traveler meets on the train, he is shocked to learn that he will be going through Lanzhou which is a city far in the north of China. For a few ghastly minutes our traveler imagines he has gotten on the wrong train and is headed into far off parts of china which he has never had a plan of visiting. This misconception however is cleared up when he learns that the train will be turning south after Lanzhou down to Chengdu where he can change for a Kunming train. Though you may find it hard to believe this was the only shocking event in the first 49 hours of our traveler's train ride.
The next 24 were entirely different however.
Arriving in Chengdu at 8:30 in the morning, our traveler sprints off the train to purchase a ticket for the 9 o'clock train to Kunming. The lines in the ticket office, our traveler immediately gives up all hope of catching the 9 train. After some twenty or thirty minutes in line, he reaches the counter and asks for the soonest train to Kunming. The woman behind the counter tells him 5 in the afternoon is available. Our traveler feels this to be a little later than desirable and asks for the earliest train again (stressing the earliest). She tells him there is a two o'clock train. Our traveler repeats this process, saying the same thing each time and the woman always working closer to the desired near departure. Eventually they settle on a 10:15 train and our traveler sprints back to the station, since this train is about to depart.
The Kunming to Chengdu train is entirely different from the Lhasa train. The Lhasa train, being a new addition to the Chinese railway system in the last year, was clean, comfortable and populated mainly by classy tourists. The Chengdu train is the antithesis of this. It is old, dirty, and populated by the lower reaches of society. Now our traveler has nothing against those people who are less privileged than others, but this was not quite the issue at hand.
He arrives at his cabin to find a small member of the slit pants crowd crawling all over his bed. If you are unaware of who the slit pants crowd are, I will take the trouble to enlighten you for our traveler's sake. The slit pants crowd are a group of more traditional Chinese who believe that all children up to the age of 5, 6 or even 8 should wander about with a slit in their pants rather than a diaper. While this does have many advantages in the realm of convenience, it is disgusting when one finds a little child rubbing its naked butt all over one's pillow. But these were simply the beginnings of our traveler's woes.
Another notable aspect of the Chengdu train's clientele is that everyone smokes horrible cigarettes. There are no laws against smoking in China and sometimes these patrons of the train can be seen smoking two cigarettes at once, such is their state of addiction and indulgence. When added to the general smell of feet which have not been washed in several years and other nastiness, our traveler was quite happy when his sense of smell committed suicide and gave up the good fight.
But the worst was yet to come. Our traveler had gotten up to visit the dining car (which wasn't bad considering the rest of the train) when upon returning was startled by something he had thought the Chinese not even capable of. The small child, member of the slit pants crowd as already stated, was being held in his mother's arms out over the small walkway between the beds. Here upon urging from the mother in the form of some sort of child-like imitation of a gun firing, the child was being induced to pee. Our traveler does not consider himself a overly sensitive person, nor someone who is terribly bothered by filth and squalor, but small children peeing on the floor only a few feet below where our traveler sleeps is something else.
The shocked expression on our traveler's face must have awoken some sense of decorum in the mother's heart for she smiled awkwardly and after her child had finished ran to grab a mop with which she rubbed the little kid's piss all over the floor to ensure that the coat was even. Around this point, our traveler crawled into his bed, turned to the wall and whispered calming things about how nice America was. In such a state he arrives once more in Kunming, thankful that the train ride is over. And such is the ignominious end of Phil's Fabulous Tibetan Journey.