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Sleeping CarI was concerned that I would not sleep well on the train. I actually had no problem sleeping on the train. The bed was quite comfortable, there was very little noise and the train was very smooth. As I described earlier the cabin has four beds and a small table to place items on. Each of the cabins have a door that can be shut for privacy. While 48 hours is not a real long period of time, I thought it would have been nice to have some sort of effort by the staff to freshen up the cabin from time to time. This never happened. The common areas, especially the toilet and sink areas were kept reasonably clean. It did seem they did a better job of keeping things clean the first 24 hours then the last 24 hours. The closer we got to Lhasa the more the staff seemed to disengage. There were numerous occasions in which the staff would stand directly under a no-smoking sign and puff away. You can see from the photograph what the sink area looks like. There are three basic sinks that have the push type water faucet where you push and then the water stays on for a few seconds and then you need to push it again. It gets the job done, but once again it gets the job done very efficiently. Over all the sink stayed relatively clean considering these two sinks needed to accommodate I am guessing 20 or 30 people in our car alone. I would recommend that you pack a small towel which is not only useful for the train, but in many other situations as well. It is very easy to pick these up at a local market before you get on the train.
One nice feature was the hot water dispenser. Each of the cars had a hot water dispenser located by the toilets and sinks. This was very handy for adding hot water to the ready made noodle cups that are available in so many places. Overall there were not many places to sit and pass the time. Your options were either sit in your cabin, sit on little fold down ledges in the walk way of the sleeping car or sit in the dining car. The windows in the cabin of the sleeping car were quite large and I spent a large part of You can see from the photograph that the aisle ways were very narrow. It was so narrow it was difficult for two people to pass. If you choose to sit on the fold down seats in the aisle way then about every five minutes you needed to get up to let someone pass. There were quite a few announcements that came over the speakers in the roof and the English announcements were in very understandable English. The problem was the system was not loud enough to ever hear what they were saying. There were also a number of announcements that provided commentary on various things we saw along the way. It was interesting to listen to these because once again the Chinese government did not miss an opportunity to voice their propaganda. There was one piece that was at least five minutes long talking about how the once barren Tibetan plateau is now being vitalized by the Chinese government. From what I understand and was told the Tibetan people never requested to be vitalized. At the end of each car was a scrolling LCD display that provided basic information. Mostly it was train speed and a message thanking you for riding the Tibetan Railway. It would also state what the next stop was, but not when we would get there.
Since we are relatively young and were already starting to take medicine for altitude we had no problem with it. During the second night the train climbs up onto the Tibetan plateau. Waking up on the second morning you could feel the tug of the altitude. I am guessing from this point on we were at 12,000 feet (3,600 Meters) or above. It is my understanding that the highest point was above 16,000 feet or 5,000 Meters. The terrain also changed drastically and you could just tell that you were in Tibet. I can still vividly remember the first time I saw prayer flags. The second morning after waking up we were told that they were injecting the cars with oxygen and that smoking was strictly prohibited. It seemed even more ironic after they made this announcement to see the employees standing directly under the no smoking signs and smoking. I don't see how it would be possible to release enough oxygen that would make any difference. For one the train cars were not sealed enough to keep in any type of released oxygen and for any type of pressurization to take place. Not to mention the cost for this would be way out of line with the rest of the other services provided during the train ride. There were outlets in the cabin that I believe could be hooked up to a oxygen mask. I saw employees a number of times carrying these masks to various parts of the train, but I never saw anyone actually using them. |
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Again it seems this train is run very efficiently and there are very few extra thrills on this train ride. 
There were two toilets available at the end 
of each car. On one side was a Asian toilet and on the other side was a Western toilet. Over all they were kept clean, but by the end of the trip and since I am a male I preferred the Asian toilet since it seemed to stay a bit cleaner. There was toilet paper available, but I am guessing it lasted a matter of hours and then I never saw any more. A word of advice for this train and any travels in Asia is always keep plenty of spare toilet paper. Not only is toilet paper useful in bathroom situations, but it makes a decent paper towel if needed. 
my time staring out the window of our cabin. The windows along the walkway in the sleeping car were quite large and provided a very nice view of what was passing by. The only problem we encountered 
At no time were we ever provided a schedule or any other brochures showing what would happen or what was available on the train. Thankfully I brought a schedule that I had printed from the internet. At the foot of each bunk was a very nice video monitor. At the other end were volume and channel controls with a place to plug in some ear phones. (None were provided) Even though there were I think six channels, the few times I checked nothing was ever playing on any of the channels.