The most horrible ride we have had so far.....

10/16/2005

So we met up with our three fellow passengers, Andrea, Virginie, and Mr. Ma.

The route from Daocheng to Zhongdian goes throught the mountain range.  We were warned by many about how dangerous this route was.  The road was VERY bumpy, as the road was not paved at all and full of rocks.   It was also very dusty...during the trip we (excluding Ma and driver) had to cover our noses and mouths with wet papertowels a lot of times to avoid breathing in too much smoke and dust.  (Thanks, Andrea)  Oh yeah, and Mr. Ma and our beloved driver were smokers.

We wanted a save driver.  Mr. Ma found a safe driver... maybe too safe.... He was driving VERY slowly the whole time.  Mr. Ma even took over the driving several times to speed up the painful process.  The driver coughed the whole time that we wondered if he could make it to Zongdian.

The minivan itslef was no better than its driver.  The space, of course, liked any other mini van we've taken, was cramped.  The tires were kind of worn out.  But we only found out about that later.  The journey was supposed to take about 9 hours, it took us longer than that.....

We had our first flat tire along the Jingsha River; good thing we had 2 spare tires.  Our frail-looking driver took some time to put on the spare and we were on the way again.  After another rocky stretch of road, the spare went flat too.  Great.  So our driver took out the second spare.... only to find out that it was already flat!!!  How stupid was that!!

So there we were, stranded in the middle of no where.  Our driver hitched hiked to get the tire repaired, and that took about 1.5 hours.  It was getting dark as well..... Andrea was getting some serious case of stomachache and Virginie was near collapse from serveral days of insomnia. We were not very happy with the whole situation either.

We didn't get to Zongdian until well past 9pm.  By then we were all very exhausted .....  It took us more than 13 hours.....

As we unloaded our stuff from the torture chamber, we found this thick layer of dust, covering everything we owned including ourselves.

What a day... glad it was over.... oh but we still don't have cash.... had to borrow from Andrea... thanks again Andrea.