Traveling into a Snowstorm
Today was our first of several "travel days" - days where most of our time is spent traveling to different locations around the country. We awoke early this morning, left for the Beijing airport with plenty of time to spare, knowing the crazy traffic we were stuck in a few mornings ago. Our taxi just flew and we were at the airport in no time.
After we figured out how to check in for our flight, we spent our waiting time looking at all the shops and restaurants in the airport, eating at the "Flavor Tang" for breakfast and checking our email at the internet place.
Our flight to Lanzhou was uneventful and very pleasant - Air China is a very decent airline with great food and service during the flight. In Lanzhou, we found out we could only check in for our flight an hour ahead of time. Meanwhile, we knew the reality of the Chinese airlines is that sometimes, if they don't have enough people on the flight, they just cancel it. A huge sigh of relief came when those boarding passes were printed! It was also snowing heavily in Lanzhou when we arrived - the runway was not plowed, which we thought was a little ominous! It kept snowing the whole three hours we were there.
Our final destination tonight was Jiayuguan, a small town in the middle of Gansu province (big enough for an airport) where there is a cool Ming dynasty fortress and the end of the Great Wall. We landed through heavy clouds and snow, and realized that Jiayuguan was getting just as much snow if not more! Our taxi took us to the fortress - our guidebook said there was a cool hotel at the fort. No one to be seen at the fortress complex or the hotel there, so we had him take us back to the center of town. It's quite a surreal town... You pass a huge nuclear power plant on your way in from the airport, and large Soviet-style buildings make up most of the town. Our hotel in town is quite ancient, but the room is pleasant, warm, and we get one channel of English TV. It kept snowing through nightfall, making our search for a "wangba" or internet cafe and food for the night rather treacherous. This is the first true snow storm we've been in on any of our trips - we hope it clears out of here because there are apparently really beautiful mountains and desert scenery beyond them!
If the storm doesn't let up, we'll beat a path toward Dunhuang in the morning - according to weatherunderground.com, it's supposed to be drier and warmer there tomorrow.