Sihpromatum - Backpacks and Bra Straps

by Savannah Grace

  Just beyond the gates, we could see tourists riding on paragliders, sand boards, ATVs, dozens of trams, and camels that were tied nose-to-tail in an unsightly parade. Part of the magic of sand dunes is watching as the sand covers your tracks and become instantly flawless again as soon as you’ve passed, but what we found here was more like an overturned sand box.

  “Entry fees to the sites around here are pretty much the highest in the country, and from what I can see, you get precious little for your money. I’ve gotten mixed reports about Dunhuang and its attractions, and I’m inclined to agree with the more negative ones now.” Ammon decided almost immediately. “Preservation is one thing, but fencing off a piece of landscape, throwing in a ticket booth, and charging people to enjoy them not only ruins their inherent natural beauty, but their very authenticity.”

  Briefly inspecting the sign outside the ticket booth, he said, “It says here that it costs eighty yuan (US$13) just to get in to the dunes. Then you can rent the camels for sixty yuan (US$10), and the ATVs or the paragliding equipment for a hundred and twenty yuan (US$20). This is a complete tourist trap.”

  “Is it really that bad? I really, really, really wanted to go on an ATV,” Bree insisted.

  “It helps put it a bit more into perspective when you consider that our entire Turpan adventure the other day to the gravesite, two ancient ruins, an all-day private taxi, and visiting the depression was about twenty-six bucks each, including food. Riding an ATV in circles for ten minutes here costs over thirty dollars. I say screw it. I’m just not going to pay that much for this.”

  “And we’ve already explored more beautiful sand dunes than these anyway,” Mom added, “though not on an ATV, I guess. Sorry, Bree.”

  I felt somewhat let down after cycling all this way, partly because I’d really looked forward to experiencing sand-boarding. We’d even made a detour to come out to Dunhuang and had planned to stay a few days. But as I stared through the gates, I could see where Ammon was coming from. It didn’t look much like I had imagined it would. Though I was disappointed, I had to accept the fact that sometimes the destination itself isn’t the adventure but, rather, the surprises that happen along the way.

  We were walking our bikes back out through the commotion when we spotted the three backpackers we’d met the night before. They were keeping their distance over by the curb and shaking their heads. One guy was of Asian descent, but his expensive hiking boots and the backpack with a big red and white maple leaf flag sewn on it were a dead giveaway. Our fellow Canadians were pretty easy to spot. Kat from Vancouver and Lewis from Ottawa had been on the road for an impressive ten and eight months respectively.

  The one who didn’t have a Canadian patch was American. He introduced himself as Jonas, a new friend to the Canadian couple we’d actually met on the fourteen-hour sleeper bus from Turpan. Jonas was working as an English teacher and spoke Chinese, a good kind of friend to meet while on the road.

  That morning, a devastated Kat had rushed up to tell us, “My passport. It’s gone. I can’t find it anywhere. The last time I saw it was with you guys, at that bus stop. Have you seen it anywhere? Did I put it back in my money pouch? I was sure I did.”

  “Yeah, I remember you putting it back. Definitely saw you put it back,” Ammon assured her. But it was gone now, and we felt terrible for her, knowing not only the travel importance but the sentimental value of a passport. She’d proudly showed it to us that night, and I was totally enthralled because I’d never seen an entirely full passport before. I was amazed how well she was taking this huge loss and the upcoming struggle involved in replacing it. This was every traveller’s worst nightmare. Mine wasn’t even half full yet, and it would’ve broken my heart to lose it.

  “What were you guys planning on doing at the dunes? We’re kind of contemplating whether it’s worth paying to get in,” Lewis said.

  “Yeah, I’m just surprised by this whole thing. I don’t think we’re going to bother.” Ammon told them. “I wonder if we can get around the fence, or if there might be some empty dunes somewhere else near here.”

  “Really? ‘Cause we were just discussing how we might sneak in. I’m sure there’s a way around this stupid fence,” Jonas said, pulling up his sunglasses.

  “They can’t possibly fence off an entire sand dune. That’d be almost impossible,” said Lewis.

  “Oh, I don’t know… For the Chinese, I think anything might be possible,” Ammon observed.

  “Plus,” Lewis added, looking to Kat for confirmation, “we met someone who kind of implied there was a way to get in without paying.

  Jonas shrugged. “It’s worth having at least a short look around, don’t you think? Should we see what we can find?” With that, we set off along the fence to find another way in, just so we could say we’d at least touched the dunes of Dunhuang. I think it was only because of the confusion caused by everyone outside the gates buzzing around trying to keep their red-hat tours separated from their blue-hat tours that seven westerners were able to sneak away unnoticed. Or so we thought…

  We’d found our breaching point a ways down through the thin grove of desert trees. Pushing back the bushes, only a weak spot in the metal mesh fence separated us from the dunes.

  “Do you think you can get under it?” Jonas asked.

  “Oh, yeah. For sure. Just hold it up here, like this, and I’ll crawl under,” Lewis volunteered as he squatted to lift the loose fence. As he shimmied through on his belly, the back of his shorts caught on the bottom of the chain-link fence, and he began wiggling like a fish in the sand. “Uh oh, I’m stuck. Just let me…” He slid backwards to create some slack, and Bree quickly unsnagged his shorts to free him. He popped up on the other side of the fence with a big smile and brushed off his pants, flashing a thumbs-up signal to say, ‘I made it!’ before he turned uphill to scout the area.

  “Okay, you guys go under and tell us if the coast is clear,” Ammon said as he held the fence up for Bree. You never have to ask Bree twice to take this sort of risk, and in a flash, she was down in the sandy tumbleweed. Just as she was about to crawl under, though, two men in uniform appeared from nowhere and started shouting at us.

  Jonas immediately started sputtering away in Chinese, and I wondered what he might be saying. He could have been accusing us of just about anything right now, I thought, feeling slightly unnerved. Though breaking into a tourist attraction in broad daylight couldn’t be considered more than a minor crime in any country I’d been in, I hadn’t yet researched Chinese law regarding the penalties for sneaking into sand dunes. You just never know, and now that we were cornered by two small but stern-looking uniformed police who had caught us red-handed doing just that, I sure wished I knew more.

  After Jonas had a quick conversation with the officers in Chinese, he told us, “He wants to know what we were doing. So I just said that Lewis is some crazy guy taking pictures and that we didn’t know him, and that we were just going to go get him to say he’s not allowed to do that.”

  Having disappeared for a second over the sand, Lewis came running back, shouting and waving a hand. “The coast is clear. C’mon guys, it’s easy. You can get right onto the dunes from here. C’mon!”

  Jonas instructed him in a calm tone, “Run.” If he could just get back up and over the hill, they’d never catch him.

  “What? Why?” he asked, squinting down from above. “You guys gotta come up here. We can get in from here easy.”

  “Hey, um, Lew, did you meet my new friend?” Jonas asked, through what would have been gritted teeth had he not had to yell up to him.

  “Oh, does he want to come, too?” Lewis asked, waving blatantly for us to join him.

  “No, he doesn’t want to come. It’s the police. Now, get down here,” he shouted. The game was over. Lewis stopped in his tracks and looked down at us, hesitating about his next move. Taking a wary step forward, he stopped and shouted down, “Wait a second. Is he going to arrest me?” Before he committed to coming back, he ra
ther wisely wanted to know so he could decide whether he should run or not.

  Turning back to the officers, Jonas asked in Chinese, “He wants to know if you’re going to arrest him.” He translated their response quickly, so there’d be no chance the officers could understand his advice. “No, he says he’s not going to arrest you, but I told him you’re a little insane. So act crazy.” Putting cheek to shoulder, Lewis proceeded to hobble down the sand, shaking his leg out to the side as if he had ants in his pants. His absurd performance made me giggle, despite my concerns regarding what might happen to us next. The security officers were waiting for him as he crawled back under the chain-link fence, shame written all over his dirty face. The guards were actually pretty understanding about the whole thing, and Lewis even had his picture taken with the cops, striking a dramatic handcuffed pose with his arms placed behind his back. Those photos must have made great souvenirs, but I couldn’t help but wonder how differently the security guards might have handled this situation if we weren’t tourists. Whatever the case, the experience had once again demonstrated that it wasn’t what we originally came to see but the experience along the way that made the day memorable.

  “Well, at least we know where we can get in for next time,” Bree said.

  “I’m pretty sure there won’t be a next time,” Mom said as we stepped back onto our bikes. “That was a close enough call for me.”

  School-To-Go

  24

  “With the dunes being such a bust, we’ve actually done nothing here except eat,” Ammon had said the night before, “so I say we should just keep moving forward. Tomorrow we head to Tibet.” Just like that, the few days we’d planned to spend in Dunhuang were cut short, and we were once again waiting for an overnight bus that would take us directly south to Golmud. We intended to stay there just long enough to get permits for Tibet. If that went smoothly, it would be a direct shot over the mountains to Tibet’s capital city, Lhasa.

  “That’s one big advantage of being on a long-term trip with no set plans,” Ammon said, after closing his Lonely Planet and giving us the rundown. “We can just come and go whenever we want. You can try to plan things, but you don’t really know if you’re going to like a place until you actually get there.”

  As we sat on our bags in the noisy bus station the next morning, fanning ourselves with the cards Bree had just dealt us, a cluster of local men gathered round to watch our ongoing game of Jerk. The Chinese loved playing board games and checkers on the sidewalks, and they were more curious about our game than the people in any other country we’d visited. Jerk required switching our seating arrangements each round, depending on our rankings. This always threw off any onlookers trying to learn the game from watching us play.

  A tanned traveller with a dark goatee and long, perfectly groomed hair popped up at Ammon’s side, pointed down at the centre pile of cards, and said, “Oh, that must be Diafugo. Is a very nice hand.” One of our ESL students had taught us the Japanese version of the game, but this was the first time on our trip that anyone had recognized it.

  The stranger’s comment provided a good excuse to end our game before the locals took it over, so Mom swept up the cards and put them in their box. Every once in a while, people in a crowd much like the one that had now started to form around our game would gradually invite themselves in to play, and before we knew it, the game would change, we’d lose our cards to them, and we’d be left sitting on the sidelines. When our bus or train arrived, it was always a challenge to get the deck back without disappointing them.

  “Yes. It’s our favourite game ever,” Bree piped up with a big smile.

  “How long you are playing this game?” That’s a new one, I thought, expecting a more common question like, “How long have you been travelling?” or “Where have you been?” But I knew those questions would come soon enough – they always did. I answered them proudly these days, ‘cause we’d been on the road long enough that I no longer felt like a complete travel rookie.

  “Ammon is in the lead and has three-thousand, two hundred and eighteen points.”

  “That is very long time you are playing,” he said. Each game is normally played to fifty points, with a maximum of three points earned per round, so that high a figure meant we’d been playing for ages.

  “I take it you’re from Japan?” Ammon said.

  “Hai,” he said, with a reflexive bow which meant yes. “I am Daisaku.” It turned out that he was also headed to Tibet and was taking the same overnight sleeper bus as we were to the next town on the map. Although Japanese backpackers tend to be very independent and usually travel solo, we always got along great with them. Having lived among ESL students for years and being familiar with a few Japanese phrases, songs, and games gave us something in common.

  The sleeper bus we’d all climbed aboard together was, by far, the worst of the bunch we’d been on. I found myself packed tight in the middle aisle on a bed so narrow that a harness would’ve been more helpful than a seat belt to keep me from falling out on either side. With nowhere else to put the daypack, I strapped it to my ankle, and it nearly pulled me off the bed every time the driver swerved left or right. The beds were too cramped to sit on and too narrow to lie on in a fetal position without your bum hanging over the edge, so the only option left was planking.

  “Imagine if they had hammocks in here. How cool would that be?” Bree said. I had a sudden vision of hammocks flinging passengers out the open windows as they swung back and forth, pendulum style.

  “Yeah, that would be interesting,” I said, staring up at the ceiling, “but it would likely involve a lot of bruises.” We couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep in those cramped conditions, so everyone else was hidden behind books when I crawled to the end of my bed and interrupted Ammon. “How old were those mummies, again?”

  “About seventeen hundred years old. Why?” he asked.

  I quickly jotted down some notes. I was turned around and lying on my stomach, head to head with him and talking in his ear, “And who were they again?” I had my pen at the ready to record the answers.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Aside from my usual notes, you mean?” I asked, looking up from my small notebook. “Well, I was just thinking I could make a school project out of the whole Turpan day.”

  “Yeah, definitely. That’s a good idea. We learned more than enough about that area to make a great history project. Plus, you took lots of photos. Seriously, you’re going to be fine with your schooling. You’ll probably end up teaching the teachers something.” Somehow this idea was so intriguing that it helped ease my mind about falling behind. If I could bring something new to the table that even the teachers didn’t know, how bad off could I be?

  When we’d left on the trip, I’d brought math, science, and English distance-education modules with me, but Mom was right when she said I couldn’t juggle carrying all those books around and finding Internet access when I needed it along with the regular demands of backpack travel. I could hardly expect to do science experiments on the road without the right supplies, either. This was a great educational environment, but not a great school workplace. Ultimately, I had dumped the modules in Beijing and was now focusing more on the option of doing I.D.S. (Independent Directed Studies), a challenging program designed for bright, self-motivated students.

  “You could blend it in with material about Genghis Khan…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that, too. That’s really cool. That should cover history class, but what about the rest of my subjects?” I was still stressing about my future.

  “Don’t worry about it, Savannah. You’ll do fine,” he said, almost the same way Mom had said it a hundred times before. But coming from him, the relatively unbiased guy who wasn’t obligated to comfort me or to lie to make me feel better, I tended to believe him. “Let’s see. English? You’re reading tons of classics and writing every day. I think that’s more than most people your age do. Gym? Pft!” he snorted. “I thin
k you’re walking an average of about ten kilometres a day (6.2 mi), and how heavy is your pack? About fifteen kilos (35 lb)? So that’s not an issue. Math is a bit more of a problem, but at least you’re converting currencies and using exchange rates every day to keep your brain working. Wish we could say the same for Mom,” he added, and we both chuckled. It would have gone unnoticed had I not leaned over Ammon to check on her across the aisle.

  “What?” she said. “What are you two giggling about?”

  “Oh, nothing. She’s just worrying about school again, so I’m going to give her a hand,” Ammon replied before turning to me again. “As for science, I can help you with the basics. Just give me a piece of paper.” That was all the encouragement I needed. I promptly whipped out a pen and paper and grinned at him. Now we’re talking, I thought.

  Ammon was a year short of completing double degrees, so I knew I could learn a lot from him. Being stuck on buses for days at a time offered an opportunity to not only pick his brain, but also to get to know my big brother better. He was more than happy to share his knowledge about the places we travelled to, and a whole lot more. He was a good teacher, too; always patient and helpful, as long as I expressed a genuine interest in learning.

  Our family had always been closer than most, but I never actually spent much one-on-one time with Ammon. Because he was eleven years older, we hadn’t often had a chance to do things together. Skylar was the one who loved entertaining his two little sisters. He played lots of games with us, whereas Ammon had always felt a bit awkward around kids. I remembered going on a date with Ammon to an Aliens 4 opening and feeling really cool that I was going out with my big brother, but it came with long, awkward silences on the drive there and back. Now I was interacting with him on a level where he felt comfortable, and it was really reassuring. I took notes until I could no longer see in the failing light, and we were forced to bring our lessons to a halt.