Greenville-Atlanta-San Francisco

So that last (first? whatever) blog entry was done at GSP Airport. This next one is from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport but I was too cheap to pay $7.95 to put up a blog entry and so waited till I got here (SF - I have 3 hours to go before we take off).

It’ll be about 48 hours before I get to sleep on a bed. I left Swanna-no-where around 1030hrs on Wednesday for GSP Airport in South Carolina and will not arrive in Xining, China until 2030hrs on Friday (China time is 12 hours ahead of North Carolina time). Curious about the routing? Greenville-Atlanta-San Francisco-Hong Kong-Beijing-Xining. OUCH! The first time I’ll meet everyone in the group will be at the Beijing airport. Buddha willing (ok, that’s not buddhologically-sound but I needed an excuse to use the word “buddhological”), all twenty of us make it to Beijing in time to catch the flight to Xining. We’ll get to sleep a night in Xining and have a full day in Xining before catching the 26-hour Qinghai-Tibet train to Lhasa.


Right before I left I spoke to Jampa, one of the managers of Tibet Windhorse Adventures on the phone. The good news was I finally got to speak to him and got a confirmation that there will be someone at the airport in Xining picking us up. Relief. But the bad news was that our group will be in two separate trains – they were not able to get all 20 “soft-sleeper” seats on the same train. Bummer. And, the (2nd) good news is, they have sent Bhuchung-la to Xining to pick us up. Bhuchung-la (pictured here in a photo taken last year at Terdrom Nunnery) was our guide last summer. Fantastic guide, hands-down, no questions about it.
With Bhuchung-la coming to Xining to meet us, I can be in one train with one half of the group and Bhuchung-la can be with the other group in another.

A couple is about to watch a movie on one of those mini-TV/DVD units you cant rent at airports, an older lady is reading the magazine Kitchen Trends while nibbling on a burrito (I hope she’s getting remodeling ideas and did not just randomly decide to read that….), another woman is reading one of those gossipy, celebrity magazines (what goes on in some of these minds? Curious minds would like to know….), and a guy is reading some intelligent-looking book (tried to read the cover from across the row of seats but no success). People sitting across from me at the waiting area at Gate A26 at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. So that’s the “random report” that Dustin asked for – “to make it read more like a blog.”

Hmm... Ben & Jerry’s or Starbucks?

Sometimes, it is like
the sound of one hand clapping;
"Caution: Contents Hot!"