As mentioned, the newly constructed Dunhuang railway station closed the day before we left for Turpan and our guides Robin and Sophie informed us that we had to take the 150 km trip by mini bus from Dunhuang to Liuyuan, the closest town connected to the railway.

At the outset, we thought this was yet another tiresome hiccup in our travels but we had to admit that our rough mini bus trip across arid desert terrain, interspersed with small oases villages to Liuyuan was fascinating.

Leaving late in the afternoon from Dunhuang, we crashed and bumped along what the locals called "jumpy" road. Not far into our trip, we came upon a number of small farming villages seething with endless bicycles hitched to over laden cotton trailers. They had no lights at all and it was amazing we didn't hit anyone with semi trailers coming along at 120 km per hour in each direction. The cotton season was in full swing and the evening shadowed road was alive with people, bikes and trailers.

The road was the width of a narrow lane and our mini bus on several occasions had to pull off the road to allow oncoming trucks and semi-trailers to pass. As we moved on into total desert, the villages disappeared as did the people, and as the long shadows of evening settled in the road carved a dark and eerie moonlit trail through a tortured desert moonscape. Unfortunately, from then on it was then too dark to see the countryside clearly but from what we have read it sounds like a fascinating daytime trip.

Liuyuan is described by Lonely Planet guide as being "a forlorn little town" with its (former) main claim to fame being the site of the railway station from Dunhuang on the Lanzhou-Urumqi rail line (it was formerly known as Dunhuang Station). The town may have been forlorn but the station was frenetic. The boisterous, bustling station was packed with literally hundreds of anxious passengers pushing, shoving and shouting and with more phlegm spat per square meter than you could imagine possible. We never did get used to the Chinese habit of spitting. We always consoled ourselves that the loud snorting crescendo sounding like a long "quaaaaaark" that leads up to the final golly hoik, at least gave us enough time to try to duck out of the way....

We were relieved that our guide Sophie was committed to staying with us and ensuring that we boarded the right train. It was almost impossible to determine from the large railway display board what train we were on, let along the correct platform. And finding the platform once you knew was an even bigger challenge. Sophie spoke French as her second language and very little English. We think she was mightily relieved that her French speaking guide friend was also at the station with her two French tourists. Sophie was delightful and we were pleased that at least she didn't have to try to make conversation with us.

We didn't need to converse. The people waiting at the station were entertaining enough. In the huge waiting room a grubby middle aged man in a tattered suit sat next to two beautifully dressed young attractive Chinese women. Intently picking his nose and scratching his balls was bad enough, but he then began to hoik up gollies of phlegm and wandered over to spit into them the garbage bin next to where I was sitting. I was horrified but interestingly no-one took any notice of him at all. The two young women next to him were seemingly oblivious and kept chatting to each other. Even Alan was resigned to the situation. It seemed like I was the only one in the waiting room who was at all upset. Perhaps this is indicative of a tolerance that comes of close living, but all through China we were amazed at just how seemingly tolerant local people are with each other. 

And out of this boisterous and chaotic scene, a young Chinese man and his wife tried their utmost to befriend us. They were obviously intrigued at what we were doing at Liuyuan. So were we by this stage. A lot of gestures helped and we spent a very pleasant hour or so "talking" to this charming couple, and we worked out they were travelling to Lanzhou for a holiday. The young woman, a pretty reproduction of a Chinese Barbie Girl, suddenly ran off but gestured us to stay where we were seated. She then returned with an armful of yoghurt drinks for us. We thought it was very special to receive this generosity in such chaos, especially as the couple did not look like they had much themselves.

When our train finally arrived we were so grateful to have Sophie to help us board it. The pushing shoving to the queues was amazing and it would have been almost impossible with our lack of language skills to work out when and where to go. Even on board the train there was still a lot of effort in getting to our sleeper compartment. Sophie's friend's French tourists pushed and shoved more than anyone and painted themselves well as some of the ruder and more obnoxious European travellers we had ever encountered.

We shared our sleeper compartment with a lovely young Japanese woman. She spoke excellent English and was travelling through western China as a student. It was only when the compartment doors finally closed we became acutely conscious of the overpowering smell of our kebabs we had brought on board for our evening meal. It smelt absolutely horrible and it must have been awful for our Japanese friend who was fortunately very gracious.

Our friend was very anxious about security and insisted that we lock our compartment door before we fell into bed. This was fine by us - until one of us tried to open it again to use the toilets. Try as we might the lock would not move and acute anxiety set in. It was potentially a horrible situation. There was no emergency button and the three of us privately freaked out about being stuck on the train until we reached Urumqi, some 150 kms past our next destination of Turpan. Finally the door lock gave way and with a huge sigh of relief, we fell back into bed. To our dismay our Japanese friend once again locked the compartment door. Luckily, it opened again with no trouble.