We paid for the former for our seven-hour journey to Shangrila (see
tomorrow's post); when it arrived almost an hour late it turned out to
be the latter. The driver struggled to find room for our luggage, then
we struggled to find room for our legs. Having climbed over the bins
in the aisle, placed there for rubbish and spit, we found there was
even less leg room than on a Ryanair 737. I'm certainly not tall, but
my legs were dug into the seat in front. Not possible to survive
seven hours in those conditions! We hauled ourselves and our luggage
off the bus and demanded our money back from the woman from the travel
office. In the row that ensued I was severely handicapped in having
to speak through an interpreter. He was reluctant to translate "lying
cow" (she had shown us a photo the previous day of a bus "just like"
the one we would have), and I'm fairly sure he left out some of the
linguistic embellishments I used in explaining that opening the window
of the van did not constitute air conditioning!
During this exchange a few people on the street seemed particularly
interested in what was going on. I was about to tell them to move
along (or something along those lines) when we realised they were
offering their services as driver. I guess they hover around the
travel office for just such an opportunity. We took a van that was no
better than the minibus, but it had plenty of room for luggage and
legs (two passengers in a six-seater).
As it turned out, the road is in very poor condition for long portions
of the route. So much so that after four hours we decided to make an
unscheduled overnight stop in the old town of Lijiang which is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, altitude 2400 m (7800 ft).
We'll probably be able to do a little exploring this evening. Knees
and backs would be broken by now if we had taken the original bus.
