Train to Lhasa

I am on the train to Lhasa right now, we arrived to the station last night at 9 p.m. the size of the station was amazing... I think we could fit all of winnipeg into that train station. Beijing is a huge, beautiful, surprisingly clean city, but I was happy to leave and move on to something else. On our last day, we visited Tianamen square and the Forbidden city. Again, I could not quite understand to size of the area, it was unreal. Tianamen square is the "Mecca" for all Chinese, they make a point of visiting it at least once in their lifetime. I think us foreigners were a travel destination as well - most Chinese who travel from rural areas to see the square don't have much caucasian contact - so we spent a lot of time posing with them. So we did not get in line to see General Mao decomposing in his glass box, which was fine with me because the queue was halfway to Shanghai. we pushed on through to Forbidden city where the Emperor of the day lived with his wife, 9,000 concubines and 10,000 staff. The forbidden city is surrounded by a moat and in the day, the common people were not allowed to step foot in it. Again, the area was insanely large and after walking though a dozen gates and squares, everything was starting to look the same until we reached the garden. That was my favorite part, there was this beautiful tree (or two trees that joined to one and formed an interesting archway) that was growing in the middle of the garden.

I will explain a little about my tour group, there are fifteen of us, six canadians, three english, three german, three australians the age range is between 18 to 65. We have become, in the past few days a close traveling family. Everybody gets along very well (which is important when you are spending 48 hours on a train...) The conditions on the train make Via Rail seem like a luxury paradise, but all in all it is not too bad unless you have to use the facilities (I will be throwing out my flip flops at the end of this trip...) we are very cozy in our 6 person berth, I somehow managed to get a bottom bunk (which is a tad roomier) I had a great sleep last night.