I've been gone for a week now traveling the silk road, but it feels like
I've been here for months already. It has been quite the adventure with night
trains, squat toilets, and backpacking. As soon as we got off the plane we went
to the school to pack our backpack....we had 10 minutes to take whatever we had
from our suitcase and exchange it with our carryon items. Needless to say we
were all very stressed. We all ended up just shoving whatever we thought we
needed into our backpack. The majority of us wore the same shirt the whole
trip...which if you know me well you know that I am not a fan of feeling dirty,
so I was not looking forward to the trip as I walked out of the school with one
extra shirt and a pair of shorts in my backpack for the next week.
Friday
We took the night train to Xi’an for the first night. Night trains are
really convenient because you don’t have to pay for a hotel, but they are by no
means comfortable.
Six beds fit in a “room” which has no door. There is one bathroom per
train car and three sinks (no soap). The bathrooms are squat toilets, and if
you’re lucky you’ll have a surprise toilet that is broken and sprays your leg
instead of actually flushing. One night Linden was sleeping on the bottom bunk
and said she saw a Chinese guy walk into our room, look intently at each of us
--starting at the bottom, then the middle, then go on his tippy toes to look at
the top -- he then looked down and noticed she was awake and left.
In Xi’an we visited the Terracotta Warriors! The last time I went to
China this place was my favorite. It basically looked the same, but they had
dug up more pieces in different areas.
Saturday
Saturday we visited the Small Goose Pagoda. One thing that I really noticed as we visited
these different historical sites is how young America is. We climbed to the top
of the pagoda. It was 13 floors of very tight winding stairs. Some of the
lights were on, while others weren’t, and the stairs weren’t even, so our group
was slow going to the top. The view at the top made it all worth it though!
Later that night we had some free time to explore Xi’an before heading
to the train station to get on another night train. We were all pretty tired so we grabbed some
food from a supermarket and decided to just find a place to sit for awhile.
While we were resting a family walked by and were clearly interested in us. The
mom saw me and was pretty much forcing her daughter to go take a picture with
me. I felt bad for the little girl so I smiled and tried to make her feel a bit
more comfortable about approaching a stranger. She finally gave in to her mom
and sat by me for a picture. They thanked me and started walking away, but then
came back and started trying to tell me something. Eventually I understood that
they wanted to show me a magic trick. Of course I agreed and watched as they
attempted this trick more than 20 times…eventually the uncle (I think!) was
able to do it correctly! It was a really entertaining and I loved how excited
they were to show me it.
Sunday
This day was by far my favorite! We went to Bing Ling Cave Temple. There
were carvings and paintings from Buddhists monks that date way back to 20 AD. The
art was really awesome by itself, but the ride there and back was even better!
We were surrounded by very steep mountains the whole time.
After driving through the mountains awhile we took a 45 minute boat road
(a teeny tiny boat) to the actual caves. The next two pictures show the Yellow
River, but notice how much trash is in the first picture. To the right there
were guys taking trash out of the river to move it elsewhere. The second
picture is once we arrived. There was barely any trash there because it’s
further into the countryside.
I absolutely loved the mountains there! We climbed up one of them and
were surprised when we found an old couple living there! They didn’t speak any
English and were very small. They must have been in charge of the Buddha
carving in that place because they seemed quite knowledgeable about it and it
looked like they never left. We figured out that the guy was 82!
Once we finished looking at all the carvings and paintings were started
walking back when a guy came up to us and told us he’d take us somewhere for a
small amount of money. It seemed pretty shady, but we were a fairly large group
so we went for it. We ended up at the Llama Temple and met a monk that spoke
English! He gave us a tour of the temple – which included scripture way back
from the Tang and Ming dynasty!
I have to include this picture because it’s an experience I’m sure I’ll
never forget. This is the bathroom in the mountains. A hole in the
ground…literally. You can see the sunshine below, and surprisingly it didn’t
smell as bad as some normal bathrooms.
Monday
We took a night train to an area where the Great Wall ends and there’s a
fort at the end. There were shows inside the fort of guards, martial arts, and
other military activities that we watched.
Later that night we went to the night market to explore and eat. I don’t
know if I’ve ever had better food! It was so good and cheap. There were a lot
of actual restaurants along the street as well. We were in an area that
specialized in donkey meat (I didn’t eat any), and we came across this place,
and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of it.
Tuesday
We rode camels on Tuesday! The whole trip everyone was so excited for
this day. We rode in the desert for about a total of 50 minutes. People thought
we were nuts because we didn’t completely cover ourselves with scarves and
hats. It was a ton of fun!
After our camel ride we had the whole rest of the day to do whatever
until our night flight back to Beijing. We decided to go to some more Buddhist
cave carvings and paintings. They were a bit less famous, but they were really
cool! You could actually go inside the cave, where at the other place they were
outside. We couldn’t take any pictures because they wanted to preserve them as
much as possible. We wandered around the place a bit and found a river. When we
wanted to climb back up we realized the slope was pretty slippery and we
struggled to get up. A family saw us and the guy rushed over to give us a hand.
Once they helped us up we took pictures with them. They were very excited to
learn where we were from and what we were doing in China.
We arrived in Beijing at 2 in the morning and were beyond tired. After we were able to properly shower and sleep we began registration and orientation the next day. We are all so glad that we took the Silk Road trip. As much as we weren't looking forward to it we love the memories we made during it!
