I thought I was experienced in Chinese buses - both local, and more importantly, the long distance buses to remote areas. It turned out that I was only just starting to learn about these buses. The journey from Ganzi to Chengdu was the real apprenticeship in such travel.
I had information from a tourist map put together by one of the hostels in Chengdu. This suggested that the trip from Ganzi to Chengdu would be about 10 hours, and that the bus ran at 06:30. I enquired at the hostel I was staying at, and was told where the bus station ticket office was - though the bus station itself was obvious, the ticket office, during most daylight hours was closed, and was completely inconspicuous when shuttered up. The hostel suggested going to the ticekt office at 05:30 to get a ticket to Chengdu. They also suggested that the bus went at 06:30. So up at 05:15 to walk the 400 yards to the bus station. The first snag became apparent very quickly - the shuttering on the hostel was down and locked, and there was nobody around to open it up. The night watchman only emerged to unlock the gate at 06:00 and I arrived at the ticket office about three minutes later. Business at the ticket office was being conducted in Rugby mode - a total scrum of people waving money; shouting out details of the ticket they wanted; pushing; shoving; rushing for a bus once they had a ticket; trying to buy tickets through the ticket office window, and by entering the doorway of the actual ticket office; all this being dealt with by one woman who was selling the tickets. When I finally got to her, and requested my ticket I was informed that there were no more tickets available that day for Chengdu. I was also informed that (after a lot of pantomime and communication difficulties) that to get a ticket for the following day, I should return to the ticket office at 08:30 that day, when it would be open for advance ticket sales.
So I returned to the ticket office at just before 08:30, having got some breakfast in the interim. The ticket office was closed when I arrived back, and the modus operandi was again a scrum - first to get into position for when it did open, and then to get a position in the queue (?) at the ticket window. Fortunately it was the same woman dealing with ticket sales as had been there at 06:00. She recognised me, and I was sufficiently tall and long armed to be able to pay for my ticket over the heads of those who had pushed, sneaked, or insinuated themselves in front of me. So in exchange for my queueing and 280Rmb I now had a ticket for the trip to Chengdu on the following morning - departure time 06:20.
The following day, I again got up at about 05:15, in order to get to the bus station. Again the shuttering was down on the hostel, but now I knew where the nightwatchman slept, and so was able to disturb him and leave the hotel before six. There was a similar scrum this morning, but it did not extend to the bus I was catching. This bus was full, the first time I have been on a completely full bus in China, but it was the most modern bus I have had here. Think National Express coaches of about five years ago - so not bad, just not bang up to date. There was a lot of milling about and placement of luggage, but embussing went fairly smoothly. It was interrupted only by a group of Westeners seeking tickets (though not to Chengdu) in the same manner I had done the previous morning. Eventually the bus left - only 10 minutes late getting going, which again is fairly good.
Though I should have had some inkling that my information was off, based on the total duratation of the journies to Ganzi, my first real indication was leaving Ganzi. The centre of this town is paved, to a fairly high standard. However, as soon as we got out of town we were on Chinese rural, non-improved roads. In this part of the world this means a road that is basically the rock substrate, and can be anything up to half a mile wide. This entire width represents the area that vehicles of all sorts have chosen to use as their road. The road out of Ganzi was in good condition for such roads, and we only saw the result of one mishap - one of the Chinese 22 wheel lorries had managed to put its front two offside wheels deep into a ditch, so the whole lorry was skewed off the road and into the ditch, and would require some heavy traction to extract it. The misstatement in my information started to be noticable when it took the first five hours of driving to reach a paved road. This period included the first two pit stops - which seemed to come at about two hourly intervals, and lasted no more than five minutes.
Eventually we reached paved roads. Unfortunately these were virtually all is a state of being improved, or being under repair. This meant driving through the road works - no namby pamby diversions or alternative routes in China - when there are road works you drive through the actual works. As there had been so much rain, the surface of these road works, churned up by heavy lorries and other large vehicles had turned into a thixotropic mix of mud, water, and general gloop. This had snared two minivan shared taxis - they were both up to their axles in the mud, with passengers disembarked and looking forlorn. Chinese public buses always have a driver's assistant. This is usually a qualified driver, who can act as a relief driver, but whose main function seems to be to act as conductor; general assistant to the driver; and maintenance tasks such as filling up the water tank that provides boiling water on the coaches, when needed. The driver's assistant was called on three times to aid the buses journey through the road works. The first time it was to remove large boulders lying in the road way that threatened to be axle breakers. Next the assistant had to build up a portion of the gloop, to ensure traction, by laying a surface of boulders in the gloop that the bus could use. The final time, he only needed to guide the bus driver's route through a particularly tricky piece of road work and gloop.
After a total of seven hours driving, the bus finally pulled up for the first meal stop of the journey. This meant that it was a place where there were built toilets, and a bus restaurant. These bus restaurants are quite spectacular - they have a seating area, multiple choices of food, all bubbling away in large cauldrons over gas burners, out in the open, though with an awning to protect against the rain. They always seem to be ready to serve the instance a bus pulls in, and they usually serve 90% of the passengers with a good hot meal. They always seem to be run by four or five people, often (I assume) man, wife, child, neice, and A.N.Other. The meal breaks last no longer than 20 minutes. This is sufficient time for the driver and assistant to get a meal; for the assistant to fill up the water tank; and (in this case) for the driver to run one of the wheels up onto a pile of rocks, to conduct a running repair involving a large wrench and a large lump hammer under the bus. I did not want to know what the repair was - ignorance is bliss, so walked away from the bus while this was going on. The altitude must still have been fairly high, as the direct sun was as hot as I have experienced during my trip - to the extent that it was painful to stay out in it for more than a few minutes.
Onwards and onwards. The roads did slowly improve, but it was getting dark before we started encountering roads that were not under repair with any frequency. After 12 hours travel, the driver's assistant took over the driving for a couple of hours. It was at this point I had managed to sort out my Chinese sufficiently to ask how long the journey was scheduled to take - to learn that the scheduled journey time was 20 hours (not the 10 I had believed). Chinese driving regulations obviously prohibited the driver from driving for 20 hours straight - though 12 hours straight; a two hour break; and a further (as it turned out) 7 1/2 hours straight driving were perfectly OK.
During the afternoon and evening we went through several of the places I had passed through on the way to Ganzi. At one of these, on the edge of the sensitive area, the bus entered a garage went up on ramps and was inspected underneath. I had assumed on the outward journey that this was to detect stowaways and people trying to travel in contravention of the authorities prohibitions. Though this was potentially a part of the reason for the inspection, we could see the bus in front of ours going through its inspection. This made it very clear that a substantial part of the reason for the inspection was that it was a mechanical inspection - they were checking that nothing had fallen off, or had come loose during the rougher parts of the trip.
Anyway this is more or less the way that the trip continued - through another meal stop after dark (not sure what time, but it seemed to go dark at about 21:00 hours. Pit stops became less frequent, roads improved and we finally got into Chengdu and 03:30 - about an hour and a half later than the scheduled arrival time.
Then to get a taxi - which was surprisingly easy - and to get to the hostel I had stayed at previously and which I had booked up by email. The only slightly difficult thing was that all Chengdu motorcycles, motorscooters, and power assisted bikes, are all electically driven, and so silent. This is difficult enough to deal with in the day time when you can see them in their masses, but at night they creep up on you - especially as it is common if there is any street lighting at all, for such vehicles to switch off their lights to save battery power.
And so to bed just before four, thinking that at least I had done the most difficult part of my journey, and that I was unlikely to encounter anything anywhere near as difficult. Little did I know.
I had information from a tourist map put together by one of the hostels in Chengdu. This suggested that the trip from Ganzi to Chengdu would be about 10 hours, and that the bus ran at 06:30. I enquired at the hostel I was staying at, and was told where the bus station ticket office was - though the bus station itself was obvious, the ticket office, during most daylight hours was closed, and was completely inconspicuous when shuttered up. The hostel suggested going to the ticekt office at 05:30 to get a ticket to Chengdu. They also suggested that the bus went at 06:30. So up at 05:15 to walk the 400 yards to the bus station. The first snag became apparent very quickly - the shuttering on the hostel was down and locked, and there was nobody around to open it up. The night watchman only emerged to unlock the gate at 06:00 and I arrived at the ticket office about three minutes later. Business at the ticket office was being conducted in Rugby mode - a total scrum of people waving money; shouting out details of the ticket they wanted; pushing; shoving; rushing for a bus once they had a ticket; trying to buy tickets through the ticket office window, and by entering the doorway of the actual ticket office; all this being dealt with by one woman who was selling the tickets. When I finally got to her, and requested my ticket I was informed that there were no more tickets available that day for Chengdu. I was also informed that (after a lot of pantomime and communication difficulties) that to get a ticket for the following day, I should return to the ticket office at 08:30 that day, when it would be open for advance ticket sales.
So I returned to the ticket office at just before 08:30, having got some breakfast in the interim. The ticket office was closed when I arrived back, and the modus operandi was again a scrum - first to get into position for when it did open, and then to get a position in the queue (?) at the ticket window. Fortunately it was the same woman dealing with ticket sales as had been there at 06:00. She recognised me, and I was sufficiently tall and long armed to be able to pay for my ticket over the heads of those who had pushed, sneaked, or insinuated themselves in front of me. So in exchange for my queueing and 280Rmb I now had a ticket for the trip to Chengdu on the following morning - departure time 06:20.
The following day, I again got up at about 05:15, in order to get to the bus station. Again the shuttering was down on the hostel, but now I knew where the nightwatchman slept, and so was able to disturb him and leave the hotel before six. There was a similar scrum this morning, but it did not extend to the bus I was catching. This bus was full, the first time I have been on a completely full bus in China, but it was the most modern bus I have had here. Think National Express coaches of about five years ago - so not bad, just not bang up to date. There was a lot of milling about and placement of luggage, but embussing went fairly smoothly. It was interrupted only by a group of Westeners seeking tickets (though not to Chengdu) in the same manner I had done the previous morning. Eventually the bus left - only 10 minutes late getting going, which again is fairly good.
Though I should have had some inkling that my information was off, based on the total duratation of the journies to Ganzi, my first real indication was leaving Ganzi. The centre of this town is paved, to a fairly high standard. However, as soon as we got out of town we were on Chinese rural, non-improved roads. In this part of the world this means a road that is basically the rock substrate, and can be anything up to half a mile wide. This entire width represents the area that vehicles of all sorts have chosen to use as their road. The road out of Ganzi was in good condition for such roads, and we only saw the result of one mishap - one of the Chinese 22 wheel lorries had managed to put its front two offside wheels deep into a ditch, so the whole lorry was skewed off the road and into the ditch, and would require some heavy traction to extract it. The misstatement in my information started to be noticable when it took the first five hours of driving to reach a paved road. This period included the first two pit stops - which seemed to come at about two hourly intervals, and lasted no more than five minutes.
Eventually we reached paved roads. Unfortunately these were virtually all is a state of being improved, or being under repair. This meant driving through the road works - no namby pamby diversions or alternative routes in China - when there are road works you drive through the actual works. As there had been so much rain, the surface of these road works, churned up by heavy lorries and other large vehicles had turned into a thixotropic mix of mud, water, and general gloop. This had snared two minivan shared taxis - they were both up to their axles in the mud, with passengers disembarked and looking forlorn. Chinese public buses always have a driver's assistant. This is usually a qualified driver, who can act as a relief driver, but whose main function seems to be to act as conductor; general assistant to the driver; and maintenance tasks such as filling up the water tank that provides boiling water on the coaches, when needed. The driver's assistant was called on three times to aid the buses journey through the road works. The first time it was to remove large boulders lying in the road way that threatened to be axle breakers. Next the assistant had to build up a portion of the gloop, to ensure traction, by laying a surface of boulders in the gloop that the bus could use. The final time, he only needed to guide the bus driver's route through a particularly tricky piece of road work and gloop.
After a total of seven hours driving, the bus finally pulled up for the first meal stop of the journey. This meant that it was a place where there were built toilets, and a bus restaurant. These bus restaurants are quite spectacular - they have a seating area, multiple choices of food, all bubbling away in large cauldrons over gas burners, out in the open, though with an awning to protect against the rain. They always seem to be ready to serve the instance a bus pulls in, and they usually serve 90% of the passengers with a good hot meal. They always seem to be run by four or five people, often (I assume) man, wife, child, neice, and A.N.Other. The meal breaks last no longer than 20 minutes. This is sufficient time for the driver and assistant to get a meal; for the assistant to fill up the water tank; and (in this case) for the driver to run one of the wheels up onto a pile of rocks, to conduct a running repair involving a large wrench and a large lump hammer under the bus. I did not want to know what the repair was - ignorance is bliss, so walked away from the bus while this was going on. The altitude must still have been fairly high, as the direct sun was as hot as I have experienced during my trip - to the extent that it was painful to stay out in it for more than a few minutes.
Onwards and onwards. The roads did slowly improve, but it was getting dark before we started encountering roads that were not under repair with any frequency. After 12 hours travel, the driver's assistant took over the driving for a couple of hours. It was at this point I had managed to sort out my Chinese sufficiently to ask how long the journey was scheduled to take - to learn that the scheduled journey time was 20 hours (not the 10 I had believed). Chinese driving regulations obviously prohibited the driver from driving for 20 hours straight - though 12 hours straight; a two hour break; and a further (as it turned out) 7 1/2 hours straight driving were perfectly OK.
During the afternoon and evening we went through several of the places I had passed through on the way to Ganzi. At one of these, on the edge of the sensitive area, the bus entered a garage went up on ramps and was inspected underneath. I had assumed on the outward journey that this was to detect stowaways and people trying to travel in contravention of the authorities prohibitions. Though this was potentially a part of the reason for the inspection, we could see the bus in front of ours going through its inspection. This made it very clear that a substantial part of the reason for the inspection was that it was a mechanical inspection - they were checking that nothing had fallen off, or had come loose during the rougher parts of the trip.
Anyway this is more or less the way that the trip continued - through another meal stop after dark (not sure what time, but it seemed to go dark at about 21:00 hours. Pit stops became less frequent, roads improved and we finally got into Chengdu and 03:30 - about an hour and a half later than the scheduled arrival time.
Then to get a taxi - which was surprisingly easy - and to get to the hostel I had stayed at previously and which I had booked up by email. The only slightly difficult thing was that all Chengdu motorcycles, motorscooters, and power assisted bikes, are all electically driven, and so silent. This is difficult enough to deal with in the day time when you can see them in their masses, but at night they creep up on you - especially as it is common if there is any street lighting at all, for such vehicles to switch off their lights to save battery power.
And so to bed just before four, thinking that at least I had done the most difficult part of my journey, and that I was unlikely to encounter anything anywhere near as difficult. Little did I know.