A mob pushes through the main entrance to the West Railway Station, clamoring to shove bags and gear onto the X-ray conveyor. The LCD display board registers trains and tracks incomprehensible when matched against a ticket whose only English is ''Beijing-Lasa.'' A massive neon sign promising INFORMATION beckons, where a woman speaks enough English to direct me to the waiting room. More than two days will pass before another English-speaking Chinese person appears.
Some mysterious paperwork -- written in Mandarin -- is required. The woman at the waiting-room entry wanders off to find an English form, then distributes it to the Westerners clinging to one another in the waiting room. It is a health certificate. Signing it verifies that you know that traveling above 16,000 feet onto the Tibetan plateau is rife with health risks. ''Highly dangerous pregnant women'' are discouraged.
Pens have been known to burst, hard drives to crash. One 77-year-old man collapsed on the journey and died on the way to the hospital. But that was all months ago, during the train's earliest days, right? No one on this July journey seems concerned.
Instead, the waiting room of the Lhasa express bubbles with the air of A Great Adventure. Westerners crowd together, chatting about Beijing experiences -- no English-speaking taxi drivers to be found, all agree -- and stocking up on bottled water. The uncomfortable moment arrives when we must drag luggage -- not a porter, escalator or elevator in sight -- toward the tracks for the 9:30 p.m. departure. And pray we're heading to the right train.
Since opening in July 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet train, as it is officially known, has been packed -- at least during summer months in the tourist-friendly soft-sleeper cars. More than 5.95 million hopped the train linking the Tibetan plateau with the rest of China between its opening and the end of 2007, according to a statement on the official Tibet website, www.ti bet.cn -- delivering about 1.8 million tourists last year alone. Getting a ticket requires advance purchase and more than a bit of Chinese luck.
But this is no Orient Express. Bathrooms are at the end of the car. The dining car menu -- blessedly scripted in English -- doesn't change, and while the food is far tastier than most fear (nearly every Westerner is carrying a stash of trail mix and noodle bowls), the cuisine is basic. The only route map available is stamped on the back of a $7 T-shirt in a size larger than any Chinese person aboard. English-speaking staffers don't exist on this late July journey; heaven forbid you should have an emergency.
My bunk mates are a young Dutch couple, Gerhard Laan and Chevon Stokhof, midway through a post-school jaunt. Fresh off the Trans-Siberian Railway, they're heading now -- like the rest of us -- across the Roof of the World, to Tibet.
WORLD'S HIGHEST RAIL
Engineering marvel crosses
2,500 miles in two days
The China-Tibet rail is the world's highest, reaching more than 16,600 feet at its apex. At maximum speed, it will hit 100 mph, hurtling from the smart modernity of the Chinese capital to the dusty color of Buddhist Tibet. Though controversial because of its environmental and cultural impact, the train is heralded as one of the world's engineering marvels.
We'll have plenty of time to check it out. The 2,500-mile trip takes 48 hours.
By now, every Westerner on the train has read some story -- in the Economist, the New Yorker, in newspapers -- about the railway's technological achievement ($4.2 billion, 100,000 oxygen-masked workers and five years to build over this fragile environment) and serious concerns that the invasion of tourists, Chinese and investments will destroy Tibetan traditions. The trip itself is another matter; some reports call it ''breathtaking,'' while others decry the food and service.
What we find is a gleaming new train, complete with video screens on the wall playing Chinese and American movies (though dubbed in Chinese); standard iPod ear buds fit the plug. A white linen cloth covers our fold-out table, with a pot for hot water -- Chinese tea is a mainstay -- and a silk rosebud. A hanger allows for jackets; an outlet above the bench provides oxygen; a plug beneath accommodates electric appliances.
My Dutch pals and I share a soft-sleeper: Full-length bench beds, upper and lower, with surprisingly comfy pillows and silk-filled quilts, four people to a cabin. (Thankfully, our last mate doesn't join until late in the trip.) Hard sleepers have six, and you wonder how passengers there manage with luggage. Even in our posher quarters, the baggage spaces are too slim for a fat rolling duffle or large-size suitcase, and I sleep intimate with my bag.
The washing area at the end of the car offers a trio of sinks in a widened hallway, plus two toilets, one Chinese, one Western. The Chinese one clogs quickly and goes uncleaned for an entire day. The Western one quickly runs out of TP, one of China's rarest commodities.
''The bathroom is disgusting!'' says an American teenager the next morning.
But that's then. For now, I chat with my new roommates, then tuck into my cradle on the rails of progress.
CHINA SLIDES BY
A tasty breakfast,
fields and factories
The day starts at 7, with the Chinese equivalent of elevator music and the announcement that the dining car is open. American breakfast -- two eggs fried, bread with jam and butter and coffee -- costs 20 yuan, about $3.
Most of the soft seats on this mid-summer trip are taken by Westerners, filling the dining car as well. The Americans -- Rick Wardley from California, traveling with father and sister; Mike and Julie Allport from Portland, Ore., traveling with a group of teens studying the martial art of wushu -- trade tales (nobody got train tickets until just days before) and watch China slide by.
Vibrant fields of corn, lettuce and beans are rimmed by trees and hedges and muddy rivers, groomed by straw-hatted farmers armed with rakes and hoes. Brick villages slip past, replaced by soulless cities stacked with utilitarian apartments and the belching factories of the relentless Chinese economy. The rain clouds of early morning lift, and in the distance low mountains appear.
''You can't really go to Tibet that easily,'' says Oliver Garnier, 15, part of the Portland contingent, explaining why he'd signed up for the long ride. ``So I really wanted to go.''
''It's a pretty mysterious place to us,'' chimes in pal Chris Allport, 16.
Gerhard and Chevon feel much the same. ''It's more still like the idea of a forbidden land,'' he says. ``Now with the train it's more easy to go to Lhasa. I think it will be quite interesting to search for some real Tibetan people, but of course there are a lot of Chinese there now. I think we will have to search.''
The dining car closes and we crowd into a hallway, an Italian, a Swiss and two Americans, pondering the effects of the factory spew clouding the countryside. It's a delicate balance: the long-term cost of pollution against the need for economic development. Giorgio Stevanato, an Italian living in northern China, likens China now to Italy in the 1960s: full of hope, longing for a better lifestyle.
''This is one part of China you don't travel through without taking the train,'' he says. He's been just about everywhere else in the country.
The express is truly that, and hours lapse between quick stops. The city most recognizable to most Westerners is Xian, home to the legion of terra cotta warriors buried with their master more than two millennia ago.
The fields turn to yellow, glowing miles of mustard blossoms. The surrounding hills grow tighter, and we begin to climb through rounded hills of green and sharp-edged pyramids carved by winds. Lakes have gathered in the flats. Occasional flocks of black-faced sheep or hairy black yaks dot the hillsides.
Our ears tell us we're going higher, higher, higher onto a long flat plain that disappears into the darkness of the end of this first full day. We will sleep on the vast Tibetan plateau.
THE HIGHEST PLACE
Flying on the flats
that pile toward the sky
The plateau's massive upthrust stretches nearly two-thirds the size of our Lower 48, thick layers of crust piled toward the sky. Far to the south, beyond our view, greedy Everest and K2 grab for the heavens.
We are flying on the plateau's flats, between brown crusty hills that crowd the tracks. Here we are in the permafrost zone, where nature cools land below the freezing point and construction requires finesse and a protective stack of rock. By 9 a.m., we reach 15,000 feet. In another few hours, we'll be at the height of 16,600 feet-plus as we traverse the Tanggula pass. At this early hour, the outdoor temperature hovers around 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but it should reach 30 by day's end.
''It's so beautiful,'' says Gerhard. ``I used to think the Trans-Siberian Rail was the best trip in the world, but not anymore.''
The hills loosen their grip, reassured but still watchful and keeping their distance across the wide swell of green. They are iced now with snow, powdered sugar on uneven ridges dotted with silvery lakes. Small antelope graze or rest on the low swell.
Nomadic tents woven from yak hair dot the plain. There's a bit of construction, though limited in this fragile environment. A ribbon of tarmac runs nearby, and we spy the odd truck bringing supplies to the west. Cars simply don't exist.
''I can feel the altitude,'' says Gerhard. He's moving a bit more slowly, he says. Chevon sleeps. Next door, Zanny Allport, 14, of the Portland group, is down for the count. Though I've taken a Diamox -- prescribed for altitude sickness -- my head feels tight, as if it's shrunk a size. Oxygen whooshes through hoses in each cabin. No pens pop open, and though my own laptop is behaving poorly -- perhaps from overuse -- others show no signs of stress.
A low-volume commentary in English plays from the car's loudspeakers, offering weather updates and tips on health in high places (wear a sweater, avoid taking an oxygen hit unless you're desperate). The spiel includes a track on environmental cautions used during design and construction to avoid disrupting wildlife migration patterns -- one of the criticisms of the project -- in this ``liberation of Tibet.''
The landscape grows flatter, less dramatic than earlier in the day; a yak sighting counts as a big event. The azure puddle of a vast salty lake seems to meld with the sky in a netherworld far from the ordinary. A herd of yaks grazes nearby.
The constant menu -- eggs for breakfast, noodles for lunch -- has grown too familiar, and no one complains when breakfast and lunch are offered as the final meals.
With the last few stops, the train fills completely. Passengers grow restless, nudging their way through halls tight with crimson-robed monks, locals and foreigners eager for the terminus. Enough of the journey; it's the destination that matters now.
The landscape greens. Then, suddenly, we're on a smart modernistic bridge more suited to Buenos Aires or Bilbao, and into a once-remote outpost, now a city of the world.
