China
Population: 1,306,313,812
Population Density: 133.69 per sq/km
Life Expectancy: 71.4 years
Average Income: $960/yr
Fact: In China the average person eats about a pound of rice every day. There are more English speakers in China than the United States. China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year, causing 25 million trees/yr to be chopped down.
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The Lhasa Express
China - October 22, 2006
View during the journey.We had an amazing opportunity recently to travel on the Lhasa Express, the world's highest rail track at 16,640 feet. The train travels across an immense number of landscapes as it makes it's way from Beijing all the way to Lhasa, Tibet. The $4 billion project just recently began service in July of this year, so it was a delight to be able to be one of the first to take part in the adventure.
Here's a quick video during our adventure.
We booked a midrange (and somewhat cramped) hard sleeper for the 48 hour journey, which cost around $150. The berths were stacked three high in sections of six beds, without a door or individual reading light. The bottom bed functioned as the social sofa during the day.
The journey traverses over 2,500 miles of permafrost and towering mountain passes over three days, going right through the heart of China. According to rail statistics, more than 600 miles, or over 80% of the railway, is built at an altitude of more than 13,000 feet, over half of it is laid on permafrost, and 675 bridges on the line. The train's sealed windows also prevent passengers from littering Tibet's fragile ecosystem. The squat-variety vacuum toilets compress waste, zap it with disinfecting ultraviolet rays, and discharge it only in stations.
According to a recent Wired magazine article, there was concern during construction that the rail tracks would not hold up, as nearly half of the tracks were built on permafrost that thaws and becomes muddy during the summer. Chinese engineers dealt with this problem by building elevated tracks with foundations sunk deep into the ground, inserting vertical pipes that circulate liquid nitrogen and cold nitrogen gas into the ground, building hollow concrete pipes beneath the tracks to keep the rail bed frozen, and using metal sun shades. However, global warming may require new methods to be invented in the coming decades to keep this railway operating.
Due to the thin Tibetan air (35-40% of the oxygen of air at sea level), special passenger rail cars were used, which are sealed and have the abillity to provide passengers with oxygen-rich air (witnessed in the video).
We will spend a few days in Lhasa, Tibet before traveling overland (via guided Land Cruiser) through the Himalayas to Kathmandu, Nepal. Our plan is to also spend a few nights at Everest Base Camp.
