Dunhuang! Did you miss me?

Well, I spent a couple of hours today doing detective work. I ended up getting different stories from every person I talked to about getting to Charklik. This is a perfect example of losing face. People in China will tell you a complete lie directly to your face rather than admit they don't know, or lie to cover up things that could cause them to be humiliated. This has been a problem while I traveled, but this is the first time it has effected me so directly... that I know of. So this is how I understand things happend. I bought a ticket from a bus station in Dunhuang of the Gansu Province. The lady at the window didn't know that the area around Dashaidan (in the Qinghi Province) had been closed to foriegners and sold me a ticket there because its the only place that has buses to Xianjiang outside of the roads to Urumqi. When I got on the bus with a ticket to Dashaidan, the bus drivers knew I wasn't supposed to be there but decided it would be better to lie to me and tell me that Galmud, which was three hours past my destination, was Dashaidan.

I arrived in Galmud and spent the night becasue the ticket office was closed and I was unable to buy tickets or get information. There was a sign above the ticket window saying "sleeper bus to Chakrlik 130RMB". When I arrived in the morning I was told that I was in Golmud by the ticket lady, who then handed me a piece of paper from a Polish man who had also attempted to get to Xianjiang. It told me that as he understood it, he had to get a permit from the PSB to make the journey. As I later found out, the permit, which was expensive was only to travel back to Dunhuang, and not to Xianjiang, and that travelling from Dashaidan to Charklik had been completely stopped as the area was under tightened security. There is no bus going to Charklik from anywhere. This could be for a number of reasons and possibly means that other chunks of the southern silk road are completely closed. At that point I beleived my only choice was to wait to buy a permit plus a more expensive bus ticket back to Dunhuang. So, I checked into a hotel and was just about to figure out my day when I ran into a German/Czech couple who in a similair perdicament and needed another person to help hire a taxi to Dunhuang. On a whim, I decided to go with it, and we set off to Dunhuang without permits. There was some minor police checkpoint dodging, and now here I am back where I started two days ago. I guess this only leaves me with one option: the northern silk road to Pakistan.

I'm going to rest for a day and then head towards Urumqi. Its been an interesting two days, chocked full of, what I have come to understand as, very Chinese experiences. I think I'm ready to leave China. Staying is only going to make me more drained from constantly dealing with certian aspects of this culture. Everything is still good, I'm just a little tired.