Homecoming from Darchen, Western Tibet...
On the evening of July 27th, we had a farewell dinner with Kalsang and his younger brother Zhaian, I don't eat meat, but sometimes I do... now there was yak meat on the table. We toasted with honey ginger tea... I didn't see alcohol anywhere around Kailash, but it wasn't missing either.

I woke up after 4 am without an alarm clock, the car was already in front of the hotel entrance at 5 am and we set off towards Ali airport.
The nearest airport, Ali, is a 3-hour drive from Darchen. On the way, we saw many wild donkeys, they wandered along the side of the road and on the road at night, sometimes they didn't even want to get out of the way of the car...
By 8 am I was at Ali airport, I had to wait for the plane, which took off at exactly 1:40 am according to the schedule and arrived at Lhasa airport 2 hours later at 12:40 pm.
In Lhasa, I picked up my luggage, said goodbye to Kalsang and went up to the departures area, checked in for the flight from Zunnan Province to Kunming and went into transit.
My flight was supposed to take off at 15:45 so I still had time and I comfortably ate a noodle soup and then walked to the boarding gate.
Shortly after, the news came out that boarding would be at 17:30... then it became 18:oo... This is not good news because no matter how I calculate it, if I have 2 hours in Kunming for a transfer and the plane takes off more than 2 hours later, then I can cross it off... but whatever... we'll see what happens. Why be nervous... everything will be as it should be anyway.

The time came, we boarded. At the check-in there were only Tibetan airport employees who had no idea about China Eastern's internal system, when I boarded the plane I quickly told the head hostess what my problem was, she was helpful, took a photo of my boarding passes and asked for some time. The plane took off, I had a tea and the head hostess came and explained that there were several of us like this, and there would be a China Eastern person at the departure gate who would take care of everything.
She apologized for the inconvenience, told me that the plane was flying from Guangzhou to Lhasa and was not allowed to take off due to local atmospheric phenomena. These are storms, wind, lightning... there is a system that measures these and only allows planes to enter safe atmospheres. The lady was very nice and extremely pretty... she even brought me extra orange juice, asked me what Tibet was like, what the age was... so we had a nice chat.
We arrived in Kunming at 9:30 pm in the dark... The sun was still shining in Darchen at this time... but Kunming is 3,000 km east of Darchen.
At the departure gate, the pretty hostess came out to me and introduced me to the China Eastern employee who told me to pick up my luggage and gave me an address inside the terminal where I could arrange everything.
The package came out quickly... Kunming airport is huge... I think it's bigger than Frankfurt... I went up to the 3rd floor, looked up the address and there we quickly went through the options for where I can fly tonight... unfortunately there is no flight to Zhuhai until the next evening at 8pm...
Well, if I go to Shenzhen or Guangzhou today, which are close to home, I will arrive around midnight when there is no metro or express train... I don't want to take a taxi... in the end, we stayed there, he gave me a comfortable place to stay for the night and I fly to Shenzhen at 9 am.
An organizer came and would have taken me to the bus... I asked for an hour to eat something in a restaurant because there are many better restaurants inside the terminal... I had to go to a Yunnan restaurant and eat something good... After I was full, he took me back to the desk and the guy already took me to the bus. 10 minute bus ride to a green ecopark with airline buildings... where there was also a section full of American-style garden houses... These are sandwich panel houses that are everywhere in the USA, Americans live in these...
I got the key to my house, the directions were nicely painted on the concrete, I walked through the small park to the house... inside I was greeted by a modern interior equipped with everything. Disposable towels... it was quite futuristic yet conservative...
I took a shower and slept for 6 hours. Freshly washed, crisp, spotless white sheets... I love sleeping in them. The bed is neither soft nor hard... everything was 100% accurate... I slept well.
I have a habit of setting my alarm for any time and waking up a few minutes before... it was the same today, I woke up a few minutes before 6 but at 6 there was a knock on the door because I asked to take the 6:30 bus to the airport...
I quickly packed up and as I stepped out the door the pleasant smell of the park after the rain hit me... bananas and palm trees here and there... Yunnan, Kunming is further south, has lush vegetation.
I was out of the airport in 10 minutes... an incredible amount of people... a huge crowd of people... uhhh... nevertheless, with the ticket I wrote yesterday, I was able to check in at a separate gate which took barely 5 minutes... from there to the security check... judging by the crowd, it took hours to get through... but the Chinese system is a source of wonder again and again... they say the Germans can organize it but I think Germany would be paralyzed in such a crowd...
although Germany no longer exists only on a map... in any case, this hopelessly unmanageable huge crowd was handled and absorbed by the security gate so confidently that it is believable. The security people change every hour in military parade order, the attention is 100%, they check everything everything everything with relentless attention.... and they do it extremely quickly. So I was inside in barely 20 minutes... but they also checked the blood oxygen measuring element that can be clipped to my finger... and that's a small thing...
I was inside and what I noticed out of the corner of my eye was Starbucks... because I'm from Hong Kong after all and we here in HK can't really do without Starbucks coffee... I came in early, I had time, I like to get to airports much earlier and look around inside... Of course my profile worked at Starbucks... pretty lady at the cashier, I asked her to help me check my bonuses... her eyes lit up that I had more Ingenes coffee... I asked for a venti cappuccino and a Kunming sealable cup with it... the venti didn't fit in the largest one, so I got another cup of cappuccino...
Here I have to say a few things about China:
The service is 100%, the girls are pretty, cute, helpful... men too but what can I say...?
Airlines don't hire old and fat women or men... and in the Western world they say: oh well, they're poor, they need work too... but please, if I buy a plane ticket and want to feel good, why should I look at a bloated, sweaty, ugly person whose uniform has buttons coming off because it doesn't fit... well, Europe and the USA... China is not like that. In China, lose weight, live a healthy lifestyle and don't be fat... because if you're fat, go to a job where not many people need to see you... If a pretty, beautiful and kind woman brings my coffee, it tastes much better... I think so... So Europe is not missing, nor is the USA. Here in China there are no rainbow flags and sick activists, everything is somehow naturally good here.
I feel good in this world. I drank my coffee that didn't fit in the thermos and headed towards the boarding gate...
The airport is huge and there are so many people... I thought about the immense wealth that is reflected everywhere... expensive specialties in the shops, the amount of money, the wealth is reflected from everywhere. The airports of Europe and the USA are bare, poor compared to the Chinese airports.
I reached the boarding gate, sat down on the bench, drank my coffee and thought about what I had changed on Kailash... What I can probably feel now is that I am not nervous... The many people, the queue, the crowd made me upset earlier and I was involuntarily in a hurry... not now... why... the outside world will judge what I have changed... in any case I feel good... much better than before.
The flight to Shenzhen took off exactly on time, and we arrived in Shenzhen exactly 2 hours later.
After picking up my luggage, I had to go up to the departure level and eat fresh seafood!!! I chose fresh crabs and octopus arms and they cooked them in a spicy soup for me... I couldn't get enough of them!!!
I spent 2 hours with the soup, again I wasn't in a hurry... then I walked down to the taxi and took a taxi to the FoTian high-speed rail station... which is about 1 hour... I didn't want to take the metro with my big luggage because there is a security check like at the airport... going down and coming up... I took a taxi instead, it's easier.
used to take about 2 hours... now the high-speed rail arrives under our house and is there in 14 minutes...
You can only buy a ticket on a mobile app, I bought my ticket and went through the gate. Everything went quickly, within half an hour I was at the elevator on the lower street with the access card in my hand and within minutes at the home reception... the reception staff came running to say that LongGe (Uncle Long) had arrived and everyone asked where I had been... I had grown a white beard... no one had ever seen anything like it... I talked for a few minutes and then went up to the apartment.
Linda and Meimei are still in Suzhou, they will arrive tomorrow. Meimei's mother took her on a trip to the Shanghai-Suzhou region after she passed her exams.
There was nothing at home, so I went down to the convenience store on the 2nd floor to buy some... I was in the apartment for maybe 15 minutes... but by the time I went down again, the security guards and receptionists were already at every gate, and even the salesperson in the convenience store was asking about Tibet... and there are 3 70-story towers here, with 6 apartments per tower and level, which is more than a thousand apartments and about 3,000 people... but LonGe came from Tibet, and 15 minutes later the cashier and shelf organizer of the Fusion chain of stores knew about it... interesting... When I went home, there were several receptionists at the reception of Tower A and everyone was interested in Tibet... how is the food there, everything...
So I arrived. I'm home. Everything is fine.
I was 93-94 kg when I left. Now I'm 81 kg.
Since I came back from Tibet, I've had a severe lack of fruit... so now I eat whatever fruit I can fit in...