From Xi’an, our next port of call was the grim, smoggy manufacturing city of Wuhan, in central China’s Hebei province. With ever-popular Yangtze River cruises departing five hours and several hundred kilometers west out of Yichang, we were at a loss to explain why our Chinese travel agent chose to route us through Wuhan, a city best known for its unbearable summer heat.
Adding further insult to injury, the agent proceeded to book us for a four-night hotel stay in a setting that even the blitheringly-saccharine Rough Guide to China damns with faint praise. The whole fiasco will likely remain a head-scratching mystery and a colorful bit of Banerjee and Murthy family folklore for the ages, especially because our forty-eight hours in town inspired us to begin using the word “Wuhan” as a pejorative term. In all fairness to Wuhan, circumstances soured our mood on the place considerably. One bright spot, however, was our hotel – the Shangri-La (insert your own irony here) – which proved to be almost as good a place as any for Vik to fully rehabilitate his balky ankles. During our stay, we also enlisted the diligent Shangri-La front office managers to truncate without penalty our stay by two nights, reserve a cabin on the next suitable Yangtze River cruise and, upon learning that Yangtze River excursions terminated much closer to Chengdu than to Wuhan, cancel our Wuhan to Chengdu flight scheduled for four days later.
Limited availability of berthings rendered our plans to neatly fit a Yangtze River cruise into our existing itinerary moot. Despite the hotel staff’s best efforts, they were only able to secure a spot for us on a 5-night sailing (which required an unsettling full cash prepayment). This posed a more vexing problem in that it cut short our time in Chengdu by one and a half days, potentially interfering with our ability to secure entry permits to Tibet in time for our scheduled departure to the Dalai Lama’s homeland ten days hence. Nevertheless, the unflappable Shangri-La staff modified our Chengdu hotel reservation and ascertained that the Chengdu hotel’s in-house travel agency could secure Tibetan travel permits (for a substantial premium, of course) provided that we fax over copies of our U.S. passports and Chinese visas within the next 24 hours.
Breathing a sigh of relief to finally have formulated a viable plan, we retired to our room to enjoy a much-needed break from itinerary-planning. Little did we know that our efforts would prove fruitless so soon.
Upon confirming receipt of our fax with the Chengdu hotel, our Wuhan hotel concierge informed us that the travel agent in Chengdu had stopped issuing Tibetan entry permits. Flustered and dismayed, we appealed to the general manager in Chengdu. From his assistant, we learned that the Chinese government had suddenly stopped issuing Tibet travel permits altogether to unaccompanied American travelers because of a recent political incident. Kaberi’s subsequent Google search yielded a terse Reuters India article indicating that five American college students had been deported the day before for posting a “Free Tibet!” banner at Mount Everest’s base camp. Sympathetic to their sentiments but not to their tactics, Vik’s suggested that we fly back to the States and personally visit each of the 5 protesters with a “Dumbass!” banner. Kaberi’s suggested banner employed slightly more colorful language.
Crestfallen and decidedly more ill-tempered, we were forced to cancel our onward flights to and from Tibet. Subsequent hours poring over the Internet for alternative destinations proved equally frustrating. Flights to Nepal were prohibitively expensive and invariably connected through Lhasa, Tibet’s largest city. Bhutan presented another option, but the thought of backtracking through India (flights connected through Calcutta) seemed less than ideal.
After a restless night of tossing and turning, we woke up in particularly-foul moods. As we made our way that afternoon to Wuhan’s cramped and third world-caliber bus station, we still had no idea where we would end up after two nights in Chengdu. A five hour journey to Yichang awaited us, after which we were to find our way to the passenger reception center for Victoria Cruise Lines, an American operator. While we did not know what to expect from the 5-day excursion, it certainly appeared that our travel fortunes had taken a rather significant turn for the worse.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Woeful In Wuhan
From Xi’an, our next port of call was the grim, smoggy manufacturing city of Wuhan, in central China’s Hebei province. With ever-popular Yangtze River cruises departing five hours and several hundred kilometers west out of Yichang, we were at a loss to explain why our Chinese travel agent chose to route us through Wuhan, a city best known for its unbearable summer heat.
Adding further insult to injury, the agent proceeded to book us for a four-night hotel stay in a setting that even the blitheringly-saccharine Rough Guide to China damns with faint praise. The whole fiasco will likely remain a head-scratching mystery and a colorful bit of Banerjee and Murthy family folklore for the ages, especially because our forty-eight hours in town inspired us to begin using the word “Wuhan” as a pejorative term. In all fairness to Wuhan, circumstances soured our mood on the place considerably. One bright spot, however, was our hotel – the Shangri-La (insert your own irony here) – which proved to be almost as good a place as any for Vik to fully rehabilitate his balky ankles. During our stay, we also enlisted the diligent Shangri-La front office managers to truncate without penalty our stay by two nights, reserve a cabin on the next suitable Yangtze River cruise and, upon learning that Yangtze River excursions terminated much closer to Chengdu than to Wuhan, cancel our Wuhan to Chengdu flight scheduled for four days later.
Limited availability of berthings rendered our plans to neatly fit a Yangtze River cruise into our existing itinerary moot. Despite the hotel staff’s best efforts, they were only able to secure a spot for us on a 5-night sailing (which required an unsettling full cash prepayment). This posed a more vexing problem in that it cut short our time in Chengdu by one and a half days, potentially interfering with our ability to secure entry permits to Tibet in time for our scheduled departure to the Dalai Lama’s homeland ten days hence. Nevertheless, the unflappable Shangri-La staff modified our Chengdu hotel reservation and ascertained that the Chengdu hotel’s in-house travel agency could secure Tibetan travel permits (for a substantial premium, of course) provided that we fax over copies of our U.S. passports and Chinese visas within the next 24 hours.
Breathing a sigh of relief to finally have formulated a viable plan, we retired to our room to enjoy a much-needed break from itinerary-planning. Little did we know that our efforts would prove fruitless so soon.
Upon confirming receipt of our fax with the Chengdu hotel, our Wuhan hotel concierge informed us that the travel agent in Chengdu had stopped issuing Tibetan entry permits. Flustered and dismayed, we appealed to the general manager in Chengdu. From his assistant, we learned that the Chinese government had suddenly stopped issuing Tibet travel permits altogether to unaccompanied American travelers because of a recent political incident. Kaberi’s subsequent Google search yielded a terse Reuters India article indicating that five American college students had been deported the day before for posting a “Free Tibet!” banner at Mount Everest’s base camp. Sympathetic to their sentiments but not to their tactics, Vik’s suggested that we fly back to the States and personally visit each of the 5 protesters with a “Dumbass!” banner. Kaberi’s suggested banner employed slightly more colorful language.
Crestfallen and decidedly more ill-tempered, we were forced to cancel our onward flights to and from Tibet. Subsequent hours poring over the Internet for alternative destinations proved equally frustrating. Flights to Nepal were prohibitively expensive and invariably connected through Lhasa, Tibet’s largest city. Bhutan presented another option, but the thought of backtracking through India (flights connected through Calcutta) seemed less than ideal.
After a restless night of tossing and turning, we woke up in particularly-foul moods. As we made our way that afternoon to Wuhan’s cramped and third world-caliber bus station, we still had no idea where we would end up after two nights in Chengdu. A five hour journey to Yichang awaited us, after which we were to find our way to the passenger reception center for Victoria Cruise Lines, an American operator. While we did not know what to expect from the 5-day excursion, it certainly appeared that our travel fortunes had taken a rather significant turn for the worse.
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