The Little Bus That Thought it Could

And we hoped it could. After Thanksgiving we decided to head to Zhongdian at 10,500 on the Tibetan Plateau. Zhongdian is famous for its large working Buddhist monastery, it's old town and the surrounding countryside. It is a slice of Tibet not actually in Tibet.

The first portent of adventure was when our somewhat rickety old 21 seater bus died while backing out of the bus station in Lijiang. This is not all that unusual, but we knew we had to climb 2,500 feet to get to our destination. It turned out to the be the first of about 15 unexpected stops during the next 5 hours. Some of our stops were designed to onload and offload passengers and things. At one point Li looked out the window and reported that they were onloading large marble slabs under the bus. No passengers arrived with the marble, so we wondered whether they were simply ballast. At another point we offloaded some passengers and their luggage, only later to discover that someone else's luggage had been offloaded by mistake!

We made at least two stops to pay money or report passenger numbers to an official. We aren't sure whether the passengers that get on and off at points other that the official departure and destination get reported or whether their fares are extra pocket money for the driver. Regardless, the driver was committed to filling every last seat on the bus.

At one point the driver stopped, opened the window right by Li's feet, reached inside the bus for a hose which he connected to a hose from a small house and started flowing liquid into the hose inside the bus. We wondered and worried since there was a man smoking a cigarette just outside where this liquid was spraying. We later decided that this was simply water that helped cool the engine during the climb.

The real fun began as we began chugging our way up the valley to the Tibetan Plateau. We were worried enough about driving on a road that was bounded on one side by a sheer cliff tumbling down 1000 feet to a whitewater canyon and on the other side by steep rocky cliffs whose metal cage retaining walls had been breached numerous times by rockfall. We drove by teams of workers without any protective gear diligently shoveling piles of rocks off the road. Not long into our upward climb the bus stopped. I would say it pulled over to the side of the road, but of course it didn't. The driver climbed out and headed under the bus. He emerged a few minutes later and ejected a passenger from her seat so he could find some tools. After a few more minutes under the bus he put the tools back, climbed into the driver seat and we set off again. There was a strong smell of gasoline everywhere. We deduced that maybe his first tank had run out of gasoline and he had to manually switch tanks to use his second tank. From that point forward we stopped every 15 minutes or so, under the bus went the driver, out came the smell of gasoline and off we went. After about the third or fourth time he emerged with a 5 gallon plastic jug of gasoline which he brought into the bus. After a complicated series of maneuver's he had a plastic syphon hooked up to the 5 gallon jug running into the engine and a passenger diligently keeping the gas jug upright. 30 minutes later or so when the first jug ran out, he went underneath, refilled it and off we went again.

Meanwhile, the tarp he put over the heavily loaded roof rack full of luggage kept unhooking itself and the metal grommets banged incessantly again the windows. Three times he "fixed" the tarp, three times it quickly loosened itself and flapped around threatening to crack our window.

Of course the entire time our driver chain smoked and talked on his cell phone.

After 5 hours we literally coasted into Zhongdian on fumes, at the scheduled arrival time!

Our weekend improved from there with visits to the Songzhangling Monastery, walks around the old town and a hike to the world's largest prayer wheel. No heat anywhere of course so we winter camped in our hotel room and drank lots of hot drinks!