The first and most obvious strand is my methods of communication. As I am getting more and more remote, my opportunities for hooking up with the internet are also shrinking. This is not helped by the fact that I have lost my international SIM card, and can think of no way in which a replacement card can be provided to me as I travel. I can now only communicate if there is a free Wifi connection - preferably broad band though this is not essential. In Xining, there were multiple Wifi servers - nearly one for every room. In Chengdu, free broadband wifi was available in all the public areas of the hostel. In Kangding, there was a Wifi broadband in the main public area. In TaGong the only connection available was based on a per megabyte charge, so the owners both had to charge (a fairly substantial 10Rmb per hour) and ensure that the connection was set up by them, and that no pictures, downloads, or videos were accessed. Here in Ganzi there is one place in town (a town of approx 65000) that offers free Wifi - and I am sitting in it, and staying here. Beyond here, I don't think there is a connection, until I retrace some of my future route. If this is correct there will be no more blog entries until I reenter the appropriate area, though I will still be writing them and storing them up for future publication.
Another obvious strand is transportation. The journey from Xining to Chengdu was soft sleeper, taking 27 hours. This is a (reasonably) fast, good quality service, that is efficient and punctual. Onward from Chengdu to Kangding was a nine hour bus journey, reasonably broken into stages by a stop for lunch and toilet purposes. The vast bulk of the trip was on high quality roads - comparable to a good single carriageway A road in the UK. As a result it was fairly quick, not massively uncomfortable, though the seats had been designed by a very perverted sadist. Onward, and downward. The journey to Kangding was a two and a half hour shared minivan cab. These are prevalent in this part of the world. Six of us shared this journey, which was in a newish van in good condition. These vans have six passenger seats, plus the drivers seat, plus a little fold away seat for an occasional seventh passenger. This particular one was comfortable and capable of taking all six of us plus all our luggage. Tagong to Ganzi was a slightly differnt matter. A nine hour journey, arranged by a local hostel owner, six of us tried to hire a van for the journey as we had done for the previous one. The driver agreed to the hire, and we agreed a cost, but the driver reserved the right to fill the seventh seat. In practice this meant that the foreigners had to use the jump seat, because the front passenger seat was reserved for whoever the driver got to fill the space. The minivan that turned up was slightly smaller in all dimensions than the previous one, and it was only with a major effort, and discomfort for the whole journey that we got all the luggage packed into the van. And so we set off. The journey started off crowded, but tolerable. At LuHuo, which is about the half way point, we were informed that that was as far as "our" van was going, and we would have to transfer to another van. This van was definately in much worse repair than any we had used up to that point; was smaller still than the one we had just got out of, and where the same arrangement applied to the jump seat - but this time the jump seat was supported by the internals of a cable reel, and the legs of the person behind it. Then for the latter half of the journey, which was all on roads being upgraded Chinese style. This involved driving through 125Km of road works (no nice diversions, or lanes closed off - you drive through the actual road works). This was ferociously uncomfortable; to the point that I had to stop the van after about three hours because it was so painful.
One of the strands that has changed intensity substantially is awareness of the application of governance in this area. In Xining the worst effects of the control mechanisms were when the regulations changed for getting into the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Suddenly a lot of backpackers; solo and couples travellers; mixed nationality groups were barred from getting tickets on the railway to travel to the TAR. Add in to this the sight one early morning of a military convoy, consisting of police cars; troop carriers; armoured cars with light cannon; and CCTV vans - vans with at least four cameras mounted on pylons, used when there is a disturbance to identify and control anybody who (in Chinese eyes) might be encouraging a disturbance by photographing it with a long lens, or a video camera. This convoy was obviously going somewhere a long way away. (I learnt later that it was probably joining the three other such convoys present in Lhasa on the day concerned). All in all not a big impact. In Chengdu, again the main impact was on travellers who were being prevented from entering the TAR - this time by air from Chengdu airport. I have an idea that this is the only airport that flies into Lhasa. There was also a response from hostels using notice boards to bring together groups of five plus individuals of the same nationality, to get round the current regulations. By the time I got to Kanding, the specific implications of travel restrictions were becoming visible and important. One of the towns accessible from Kangding is on the main route for travellers heading south. On one day, one of the guests in the hostel I was staying at went to buy a ticket for the following day, with no problem at all. The following day, a couple trying to do the same thing were refused bus tickets at the ticket office, because foreigners were not allowed to visit that town. The owners of the hostel were spending a good deal of time advising people what routes to take, to try and avoid trouble. In TaGong, there was not much overt control in place; except for the armoured column going through (a smaller one than spotted in Xining) at about five in the evening - and they weren't messing. They were travelling fast, and appeared to be going somewhere local. The journey to TaGong was a very different matter. First it was deliberately routed through DaoFu (DaWu) in order to avoid going through DanBa (Rongtrak). DanBa has been a site of several protests, including several immolations. The first check point we came to the driver appeared to lie to get us all through the check point, though in fact he told the police that he was going to the point where we changed cars, because his permits only allowed him to go that far. The second check point was in DaoFu. This is very heavily policed - there are multiple police stations; police staging areas; vehicle yards, where some of the specialist vehicles are stored (armoured cars; CCTV vans; control vans; troop buses); many police; and a checkpoint. Here we were checked thoroughly - our passports taken away and checked for a long time (all except the sole Israli on board, whose passport was returned instantly). We were sitting in the van in the sweltering heat; being captured on CCTV, while the driver was questioned at length (though because this was taking place some way away, they might have been discussing the weather). Scary. Here in Ganzi, all routes out of town have to be checked before they are taken - even if walking to a local monastery - to ensure they are open to foreigners. The hostel I am staying in took it as normal business that foreigners would be "registered" with the police, not in the normal fashion, but by payment to the local police officer.
This has turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, so my next blog will be part two.
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