The Glamorous Life

As part of my continuing series designed to dispel the notion that my travelling is one long romantic getaway.

When it was time to fly out of Kasgar - and make it back to Urumqi for a night in a five star hotel, which we were all looking forward to - it turned into a night of disasters. The flight was delayed and it was delayed, which meant that our precious time in the five star hotel was dwindling, and we didn't end up taking off until close to 11:00 p.m. (Beijing time, not the unofficial Kasgar time). Once on the plane we sat and sat, and I fell asleep, which I have a tendency to do, and when I woke up we still had not moved - and so I fell back asleep. And when I woke up we had moved about a hundred yards out onto the tarmac, and we just stopped. And then the pilot asked us to leave the plane because of a problem - and the plane did not return to the gate, so we just stumbled out onto the tarmac. Essentially, we were told that there was a problem with the electrical system and they were going to reboot the plane - turn it off and turn it back on. I laid down on the tarmac and took this self-portrait.

Eventually I fell asleep, and one of my friends took a picture of me sleeping on the tarmac. After the plane was rebooted we wearily climbed back on it and completed the flight to Urumqi, but it was too late to go to the five star hotel, so we slept on the bus - and I slept on the floor of the bus - before getting back on a flight to Xining. So, instead of sleeping in a soft, comfy bed in a far star hotel, I slept on the tarmac of the Kasgar airport and the floor of a bus. And I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.