Five-and-a-half hours across the Gobi Desert
Hong Kong to UK by train: Day 6 continued
We arrived in Hohhot on the Beijing-Hohhot train on time, 20:30, enough time to buy a ticket for the Hohhot to Erlian train leaving at 21:38. But not only were there no tickets left that night, there was no train to Erlian at all. There was no bus to Erlian when I walked across to the bus station, they’d all left earlier in the day, and though I bought a ticket for the next morning’s train anyway to save having to go through the ordeal of queuing again, I still needed to get to Erlian faster than tomorrow’s train would get me there.
As always in China though, if there are no trains and there are no buses, there are always cars. Outside Hohhot bus station, drivers were going to places like Beijing and Datong. None of them seemed to be going to the border. But when I asked one guy if there was anybody going to Erlian, he said “follow me.” We were soon driving through the outskirts of Hohhot on a 500km journey that he said would take four-and-a-half hours. He was driving as if he wanted to make it in three.
Before we’d even made it out of the city, however, after only twenty minutes of driving, something was wrong. There were strange noises coming from the wheel on my side of the car and we were beginning to veer worryingly left. We were forced to pull over and saw our left rear tyre was worn to the rim and hopelessly flat.
There were three of us at this point. We were dropping another guy outside the city on the way, and though I offered to lend my wheel changing lack of expertise, they wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, I hung around feeling rather redundant taking photos until we were ready to be on the move again.
I started thinking what I would do if anything serious happened. I was in the middle of Inner Mongolia, with nobody knowing exactly where I was, soon to be being driven alone by a driver who may not have the least intention of taking me to Erlian. A driver who may instead be taking me a safe distance out into the Gobi desert where he could relieve me, at the very least, of everything I had.
I could see nothing from my window but distant lights on either side and the headlights lighting up the road markings as they streaked too quickly past. The speedometer was at a constant nervous shake above 100 km/h and we could go forty minutes at a stretch before another vehicle or any sign of civilization became locked in our twin beams before disappearing into the night behind us.
There was even a point at which I’d woken from dozing as we were turning off onto a dirt track that was to lead, in a half hour detour, across potholed and puddled fields until we could rejoin the formerly closed Hohhot to Erlian road. I’d wrapped my camera strap tighter round my wrist in preparation for using it as a fairly hefty bludgeoning device as I asked him where we were going. And though he explained as innocently as he could, my grip never lessened until we were safely back on tarmac away from the potential midnight desert burial I’d feared. I was at the mercy of the trust I’d put in this stranger.
But trust is a curious thing, and mixed with desperation, it can lead to a foolhardy over-confidence in the good will of all men. But I thought I knew well enough a little how China works by now to be fairly confident I’d get to Erlian, barring accident, just as he said I would. I put my chances of accident at a generous 30% after I saw the way he was driving. There were no seat belts in the car, and after our earlier tyre problems, we had to pull over on several occasions to give it a solid couple of kicks to see if the bolts were holding. I kept having visions of the car dropping, sparks flying and the tyre rolling after us as we careered of the road into the blackness. But the bolts held and we survived, and after making stops for petrol along the way and a stop for food at a one-street, five-joint town 120km from arriving, we arrived in Erlian, after five hours’ driving, alive and mostly well.
