The Swede

Here’s some update for you guys!

After spending about 5 nights in a chilly dormroom at loft-hostel in Chengdu, conversating with a future canadian serial killer, waiting for my train to departure for Tibet, Lhasa, my brain was about to go numb.
In these hard times I met an interesting american, who joined me for some chengdu-strolling for a couple o days, before his train left, also for Lhasa, only two days before mine.
The guys name was Sean.

The train

A fourtyeight hour ride with an expresstrain
The next two days I spent in bed, due to altitude sickness. I had pretty much every illness there is to have. Hello diarrea!!

On the fourth day me and Sean went to climb a mountain nearby. Just to have done something in shitty Lhasa, beacuse it is shitty with capital S!

It’s a dirty city with unfriendly people. People having too much religion for my taste. I actually got disgusted when I looked around.
Anyhow we went on a stroll down the road and just turned off at some random point that led us to a small house with the entire family inside.
We just wanted to ask for directions but they wanted to have us for lunch. So we had some fried ricepaste that we dipped in sugar. Delicious!!

With full bellys, off we went to the huge mountain just waiting to somehow kill us.

In what seemed like a small wind we started climbing. First 100m was easy, with only about 5 stops before heartattack but then the wind turned to storm, and the prayerflags that were hanging in huge ropes from the top to bottom became leathal weapons as they almost dragged us down.
In the extreme panic we saw a fire starting down below. Thinking it was some sort of buddhist ritual we continued. But so did the fire.
With the extreme storm the fire spread really fast, towards us!!!
All of a sudden we heard firetrucks and policecars approaching from a distance.
Our first instinctive that the fire was some kind of ritual was proven wrong, and since we were the only two idiots on this godforsaken mountain, when a huge fire burned up all the prayerflags, we felt pretty sure we were gonna get arrested. This including that we were outside of the actual Lhasa-border, without a permit
We had to sit down and hide for the officers below for about 45 minutes before we had the courage to continue. Unfortunately the wind was to strong, the mountain too steep and our throats too sore, so we gave up and went down again.
Lucky to be alive and not arrested we felt pretty satisfied with the days accomplishment.

The next morning I woke up some hours before Sean, and since he had already been to the huge Potala Palace, I went there for a look.
It sure was impressive with huge tombs made out of solid gold. We’re talking tons of gold. Cool as hell, altough I will never understand the policy that you have to pay to enter a holy/religious building. Another way to make money I guess.

And then it happend

I walked out on the top-backside of Potala, and began walking the long road to the street.
Just as I was to exit the area a dog came running towards me and from out of nowhere the dog bit me in the leg. I turned to kick it, but it had already run away.
Me and another guy chased it and threw brick at it, but no luck.

So what the fuck to do now!!??
Did the dog have rabies or some other fucking disease?

Angry as never before I almost ran back to the hostel, woke up Sean and told him I would not stay one more day in this shitty dump of a city. (more or less that’s what I said)
I called SOS-International and they told me to get to a hospital ASP for cleaning and vaccine.
Off we went to the Military Hospital, which is a joke for a hospital.
Ofcourse they had no vaccine for me, and instead sent us to a clinic that would be able to help me. Nooooot!! It was closed saturday and sunday
Instead I walked across the street and got some fishy rabies-shot for a hundred kuai.

The following day we left Lhasa for Kathmandu.
We had made plans with a travel agency taking us with a 4WD all the way to the border.

Since they had lied about how many ppl were gonna be in the car, like all tibetans do, we bargained the price down about 180kuai.
The first half of the trip was awsome. The road between Tibet and Nepal is called The Friendship Highway, and it is so beautiful. Once again, mountains everywhere. Huge ones and with the sunset coming, we just enjoyed every second of it.

The Nightmare

…zzZ..Zz…oooaahhh….clock…..2.34am….I wake up…and I stay awake!!

The driver has gone from normal old man to psycho-redbull-speedster with no fear for anyones lives.
We drive the jeep on a non-constructed road along the mountainwalls. We are so far up that there’s ice everywhere on the “road”. The driver dont seem to care about that. He drives so fast that we almost go over the cliff a couple of times.

At around 4am the horror is over. We came down to the bordertown connecting China and Nepal. The driver, now very tired tells us to check into a hotel, ofcourse so he will get a comission. We turn him down and say to him that he has to fix a place for us to sleep for free. He points to the car…and there we settle down til the border opens at 10am.

Everything works out fine when we finally get to the border, but those fu**ing tibetans are not trustworthy!!

From the town of Khodari in Nepal we took a truck towards Kathmandu. Instead of doing the normal thing, that is sitting in the actual truck, we took place on the back of the truck, but soon we got more courageous and jumped up to the roof aswell! Don’t let my mom read this!
The nepalese countryside is among the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I know I say that alot of times, but once again, I truly meen it!!

After about 4 hours ride we arrived to the shitty dump called Kathmandu. You could actually see the smogcloud when we drove into it.
The driver took us to the central parts of the city called Thamel, where we made resort at a fancy 80 rupee guesthouse. That is the equivalent of one euro or $1,5.

We took a tour through the extremely dirty city center and actually had to pay to walk through a dirty-as-hell square. Since when do you have to pay to walk on a square. Total bullshit!

Children sniffing glue, beggers and straydogs everywhere.

Motorbikes and cars allowed on the shopping/walkingstreet. People trying to sell you stuff everywhere!!!
So this is what a 3′d world country is like! Someone once said that Man will destroy this world and I am ready to agree on that!

After waiting five extremely long days, doing absolutely nothing, my brother finally arrived to Kathmandu. The day that followed we went on a trip to the small village Chorbar which had very beautiful views.
We ended up eating late lunch at a restaurant/guesthouse on the top of a hill. That was very relaxing, with the mountainviews ahead of us.

Sitting there, relaxing, all of a sudden an old man approaches us and tells us his life story.
He revealed for us that the guesthouse and restaurant was his idea and he made everything pretty much from scratch some ten years ago, and that the construction was an allways ongoing project
The man had some visions alright, altough I never understood why he had a tiny white dog with a pink dress??!

The next morning me and Sean had had enough of this fucking town and decided to go on a trip with motorbike.
I didnt have a license to drive one, but in Nepal it’s more like you need it in theory, not so much in practical.
My brother who was more concerned about his own life did not want to go with us through the massive Kathmandu citytraffic.
Instead we got a visit from the friendly and original tourguide Milan, who we by now have gotten to know pretty good.

The ride through the city almost killed us a couple of times, but after half an hour we drove off to smaller roads and the traffic got minimized and much safer.
We drove for about 2 hours up a huge mountain to the small village Nogarkot.
We had lunch in the restaurant garden with views, once more, of the beautiful surrounding mountains. You just cant have enough of that
It was unreal!

After that we drove back down in the dark. And it gets dark fast when it gets dark.
We got back around eight o clock in the night.
All doped up by smog from the way back, we crashed in bed and slept for about 11 hours!

Today is monday, and we’ve been talking to different travelagencys the whole day.
Tomorrow we leave for Chiduan, where safari with elephantrides and birdwatching is awaiting us.
My brother, Erik, and me has also paid a deposit+flighttickets for a 14-day trek to the Mt. Everest Base Camp, where I intent to spend my 25′th birthday!

Have a nice day!

From the great day in Guilin, led me to an early busride for 1,5 hours to a small town called Yangshuo. A.ka. “The most beautiful place on earth”, as some bloggers claimed.
I have not been everywhere, but yes, this could might as well be the most beautiful place I have ever seen.
I am so blessed to have done this trip, these 2,5 months, and to have seen so much of the world as some never will see and experience.
The weird thing for me is that I still have more than half the trip left…

In Yangshuo I calm alone, looked at a few hostels. I bargained pretty hard and got some places down to 10kuai a night, but the problem was that noone was sleeping in the dorms. Some think thats a good thing, not me. I love company, especially as I travel alone.
So I went to the International Youth-hostel where I knew I’d find human existence.
Checked in the 9-bed dormroom and dont you know it, there’s the canadian guy I met in Shanghai a couple o weeks ago. Aint travelling fun

I started scouering the streets of this lovely villages almost. The center felt more like a large village than a city. Really nice shoppingstreet and friendly, happy people. A reocurring thing in China.
I had some bad luck with the weather the first day so lets jump to day 2.
I woke up really early, took a shower, had an english breakfast at a cafe nearby the hostel, and then I rented a bike the whole day for 10kuai.
At first it doesnt seem that great, but when you get further out the countryside you wish you were born here!!!

I climbed the extreme Moon Hill-steps. The rain had not dried up so the climbing was a life/death-experience
I made it though…this time.
Beautiful scenery, really stunning. I sat at the top, talking to an Israeli-couple who also travelled around China. We were three groups at the top and every group were accompanied(either you wanted to or not) by one lovely local woman trying to sell us some beverage.
I bought nothing, but I did share my sweet Pomelo with them, and everyone else at the top

We slipped down the hill and I countinued peddling away on the countryside.
I had some fried rice at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and then I headed back to town.
A really great day. I will post as many pictures as possible, because Yangshuo is a place everyone should see!

On the same night I talked to a group of people in my dormroom. One really funny brittishguy who claimed he was from Hong Kong. An american, two chineseguys who could have been brothers. And then there was one more. A chinese girl who introduced herself as Yu Si. I had no idea of what was gonna happen later on…

Yu Si went on a rivershow I had no idea that it even existed. We decided to meet in a movie-cafe later on to watch a flick.
I had not seen a movie since sometime in Shanghai, so I ran from place to place to find the correct cafe.
I couldnt find Yu Si, so I sat down and began watching Mr.Bean 2 in one place I thought was the one.
After about 1 hour she entered the cafe and took a place next to me in the sofa, and by some reason we started talking about the movie Dumb & Dumber, and that’s when a rastarafi chinese started laughing when I tried to do Jim Carrey in that movie.
He introduced himself as A boo, living in Guilin and Yangshuo, working as a tattoo-artist from time to time to get enough for the rent.
We talked all night long and had the best of times, getting to know each other.
Before we left we decided to meet up t he next morning and have a bicycle-picknick outside of the town.
Unfortunately we were quite unlucky with the rain that bursted down, and we made a quick decision to watch a movie instead.

This is gonna be too long to read I’m afraid…

Yu Si had already made plans to leave Yangshuo and A boo was going to follow her to Beihai, a rather newcoming city along the southern coast.
After heavy thinking I recalled my already paid dormfee and we headed of for warmer climate.

After almost getting lost from eachother at the busstation we had to wait 45 minutes before the damn busdriver left Yangshuo.
Because of that we missed the connecting bus to Beihai, and we had to take a train to Nanning, where we connected to our final destination instead.
This didnt bother me much because I’ve allways wanted to try the “hard seater” on the chinese trains. You can definately feel and see the difference in classes. But I loved it. Felt more home than in the ‘rich apartment’.

Me and Yu Si came to Beihai a day earlier than A boo since he had to finish of a tattoo before leaving.
We walked down to the harbour, sat down and just talked about the meaning of life
Later on we stumbled across a restaurant(not yet opened). We started talking to the managers, which led us to having 5-6 pots of tea for free. We were the tea-testers

We checked into a much to expensive hotel(60kuai for both) and at 5.30am A boo woke us up by ringing on the room-phone

We took a day off and explored the city, bought some tickets for a ferry that was going to take us to a place called Weizhou Island the next day.

The last day of the year:

We woke up and checked out of our hotel really early, to be able to catch our ferry that left at 8am.

A two hour ride led us to a pretty big fishingisland.
We had apparently paid for a 6hour tour, because that’s what we got
After that a happy lady picked us up down by the fishmarket. She drove us with a “3-wheel-1″(not tuktuk or rickshaw) to a house on the other side of the Island.
I was stunned when we got there because we had a whole beach to ourselves.
Cristal clear water, newyears eve(not chinese) and two already good friends. What else could I ask for.

We had fun all night, BBQ’ed, drank champagne and shot the fireworks we bought the day before, high up in the sky.
A truly magic night! Thanks guys!

The day after was worse than the worst hangover. Not because of the liqour the day before, but the fact that this was the last day together for us three in a long time.

That night both Yu Si and A boo left me in the busstation. Yu Si headed back to Shanghai and A boo went to Guilin.

One sad moment, but one thousand happy ones!

I slept one more night in Beihai in a freeezing hotelroom, but cheap nontheless!
On the following morning I jumped on a 26 hour sleeperbus that led me to Chengdu, where I currently are. Waiting for my train going to Tibet and Lhasa…

Congratz to those who actually read this

Take care!