I mostly say good things about Chinese trains but… this is where I draw the line. Anyone who’s been on one will know what I’m talking about. The Ks, the un-lettered… Even some of the T trains. It might at this point be helpful to explain that each Chinese train is given a letter to identify the type, followed by a number identifying the route, ranging from the super-fast Gs to the super-slow Ks (below them are trains with no letter at all, and just a number, but those are a horror I have never personally experienced).

I found K trains to be old, slow, and unreliable. They were the first to get cancelled, and the last to arrive. There was very little distinction between the seat spaces and people never seemed to stick to seat reservations (in China a seat is always booked with a ticket, unlike British trains). In Karamay we had an overnight K train in each direction between Beitun (right at the Northernmost tip of Xinjiang) and Ürümqi. Both passed through Karamay in the early hours, guaranteeing a sleepless night and unsociably early arrival at the destination.

If the hours were unsociable, the opposite problem was true of the other passengers. I was lucky on most of my excursions to avoid too much attention, besides the usual politely curious conversation in broken English (and much more broken Mandarin on my part); Kieran, however, once told me about an old farmer who sat down next to him, then proceeded to pull Kieran’s headphone out of his ear and jam it into his own hairy lughole. Even if you’re not a germaphobe, that’s gross.

They were slightly more bearable if you had an emptier carriage (space to lie down and sleep) or a sleeper ticket instead. Travelling China by sleeper trains was actually rather enjoyable: if going overnight you essentially had free lodging, and unless you had somewhere to be, delays were less of an annoyance (having a bed to sit or lounge on took the sting out of it somewhat). Even the passengers were generally quieter and less intrusive. I think the only questionable experiences I had on sleepers (even the K variety) were en route to visit Kieran in Fuhai on the nightly Karamay K train, during which journey Tom and I were plagued by mosquitos (rare enough in Xinjiang).

I only made the mistake of catching the night train to Ürümqi once, instead of getting the faster and more reasonably-timed T trains. We met Kieran on the way to the Xinjiang Christmas meet-up (in Ürümqi), looking suitably bedraggled from the four hours he had already spent on the train trying to sleep. I ended up with some old lady sleeping against my shoulder in the overcrowded bay – overcrowded not just with people, but with luggage too. People take so much on trains! Thankfully Christmas wasn’t much of a holiday there, so it was no busier than usual, but still stifling inside, and a few hours late into the station. I was exhausted after seven hours on the train; heaven knows how Kieran felt after eleven.

—TJC

Featured image: Calum and Becca snoozing somewhere between Guangzhou and Hainan.