After being woken up at 2 o’clock in the morning, calling Lhasa and Beijing frantically for about 40 minutes only to be told that our client would not be able to get his “soft sleeper” ticket from Beijing to Lhasa leaving 9:30pm that evening, I realized that something had to change. All that was available was a “hard sleeper” ticket. It was 5 o’clock in the afternoon in Beijing. The train is leaving in about 4 hours and it was only then I can get a definite answer for whether my customer can get a “soft sleeper” or not. Something is obviously not right.

Although I do disclose that we don’t guarantee train tickets, my heart literally sank when I heard that. Luckily the customer accepted it gracefully, largely because what can he do about it 4 hours before the train departure. I don’t blame him because I would be upset too in his shoes. But unless the train ticket booking system in China changes or the Tibet train demand diminishes, I don’t see how the situation can be relieved. 

Chinese Railways don’t have a central reservation system, only local computer reservation systems based in each city that aren’t linked to each other.  So a station can generally only sell you a ticket for a journey starting at that station, not for journeys starting elsewhere.  For example, the ticket office at Lhasa can sell you a Lhasa-Beijing ticket but cannot sell you a Beijing-Lhasa ticket. Train tickets are on sale 2-10 days before departure and they cannot be booked before they go on sale. Train tickets going to Lhasa are often sold out immediately after they become available.  When you book a flight to Lhasa and send us your flight reservation information, we know when you will be arriving, even if the flight is delayed. However, if you “book” a train ticket, what happens is that we request a ticket from the departing city’s travel agency, they will “try their best” to secure a ticket of your requested category but until they see the ticket, they are not sure if they can get the tickets or not, which is usually a day or two before the train departure date.  By which time it is generally too late to book a flight, change reservations for Tibet tour or change itinerary on Tibet Travel Permit.  The situation creates, maybe opportunities for some but huge problem for us. The success rate of “booking” (if you can call that “booking”) is determined by season, festival and holidays and special events. In China, soft sleepers used to be government officials’ privilege and still are, sort of. In the event of government chartering a soft sleeper car, if you want a soft sleeper ticket, you better try to get on the invitation list.

The result is that hard sleeper and soft sleeper tickets are usually 50% to 100% higher than their face value and only customers who are flexible enough can take the train.  The irony is that about 70% of our Tibet tour enquiries asked about train to Tibet.  Among them, I steer away 80% from taking the train, not because the Qinghai-Tibet train route is not beautiful and not because we don’t make a dime from the inflated train tickets but because of the exact situation I described above. It’s a very hard decision for me because I really want my customers to experience Tibet in any way they want. Train in and flight out seems like the most poetic way. However, promising a train ticket to Lhasa inevitably causes me loss of sleep.   I guess my dilemma will be relieved somewhat if there’s a central reservation system where I can tell customers “No, trains are all booked or, yes, there’s still x number of tickets available but you need to act fast.” 

It is a lot easier to get a train ticket leaving from Lhasa. There are obvious advantages taking the train to Lhasa than leaving Lhasa by train. I think logistics is the deciding factor. For foreign travelers coming to China and Tibet, Beijing is usually the first portal. There’s no direct international flight to Tibet. One will probably have to fly to Beijing anyway and then transfer to Lhasa. It makes more sense to tour Beijing first and take the train to Lhasa, especially for those who would not go back to Beijing to leave for home right away but to continue on to other parts of China or Nepal after Tibet. Since the scenic train route lies mostly within the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, it makes the long train ride more exciting when the scenic part is towards the end of the ride. This is why I did not insist this customer taking the train leaving Lhasa. But after finding out that the customer had to sleep for two nights on a  “hard sleeper” (more to come about the difference between a “hard sleeper” and a “soft sleeper”),  I doubt the risk was worth taking.  Among those whom I failed to persuade against taking the train, this is the second time that my customer has to settle for a “hard sleeper”. But on the other case, it was a young couple who didn’t mind “downgrading” to a hard sleeper. This time it was a part vacation part business traveller with four suitcases of documents and personal items. Ouch.  I feel really sorry for this gentleman. In the past we had been able to get 4 soft sleeper tickets in the same cabin for a family with a young child so my antenna for risk was lowered. Maybe it is close to July 1st, Chinese Liberation Army’s birthday. 

The solution for the time being have to be risk sharing. If we promise to do our best to land a train ticket, the customer will have to agree to be flexible, in terms of ticket category and schedule. Generally speaking, soft seat tickets are harder to get than hard seat ticket, hard sleeper tickets are harder to get than soft seat tickets and soft sleeper tickets are the hardest to get. For party travelling together, customers will have to be flexible enough to settle for tickets that are not together (usually you should be able to re-arrange seats/sleepers with fellow passengers) and it is usually a no when it comes to booking a soft sleeper cabin exclusive to a party.  In extreme cases which we haven’t encoutered yet and I hope we never will, customers’ schedule must be flexible enough to book a last minute flight to Lhasa when train tickets are not available.  Are we going to lose customers by putting out these restrictions? Maybe, but keeping our customers happy is more important than reaching out to more.