Migratory Musings: Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing

Leaving Lhasa

Viking had our travel plans laid out for us: depart Lhasa on a late-morning flight with lunch aboard, arrive in Chongqing in the early afternoon, board the Viking Emerald and have a lovely afternoon getting everything organized on the boat in preparation for the week of cruising. So simple, so easy...so you know it didn't happen that way, right?

At all the other airports we'd had porters to take care of our bags but here we had to handle our own. That might not have been so bad except that we all had to use the same line since we were checking in as a group. And apparently we'd arrived at the airline counter "too early" to check in. Not that there wasn't airline/airport staff there, just that we'd arrived more than 2 hours before our flight. So we had to stand in line, all 31 of us, just waiting for the clock to tick to the magic 2-hours-ahead-of-flight-time mark.

Once that happened the process was for person 1 to check in then hang around while their bag was inspected behind the counter and person 2 was checking in. If the bag inspectors had questions about something in the bags then person 1 had to go to the back and open it up for inspection. A long, tedious process but we finally got through.

Then, as a group, we all went upstairs to go through security. Not terrible, just a slow-moving process. At least we weren't in danger of missing the flight! (If we'd only known...)

The post-security area of the airport is not really a concourse, but rather one giant rectangular room with a high ceiling. There's a small store in the middle and a couple of small stores on either end though I heard they were pretty expensive for what they were selling. But just like at airports around the world, once you reach this point in the airport you're pretty much captive to whatever price they want to charge.

The airport only has five gates and they were spread out from one end of the building to the other. It was tough to find seats near our gate but there was actually a lot of seating throughout the secured area so at least we didn't have to sit on the floor.

Unless your phone was issued through a Chinese telecom carrier, you couldn't access a cell signal and there was no wi-fi so we were all stuck reading actual books or (gasp!) talking with each other until boarding time approached. That's when Jack gave us the bad news that our flight was delayed. We'd seen the military planes taking off and landing on the runway but since that's the only runway we didn't think too much about it. What we hadn't realized was that while the fighter jets were doing these maneuvers, civilian planes weren't allowed to take off or land. So not only had our plane not yet arrived, it had not even taken off from its previous city and there was no estimate of when it might arrive. Oh boy!

The airline or the airport or Viking did furnish us with meals though it seemed a number of us weren't crazy about what was offered. But it was edible and at least it prevented me from getting a hunger headache. So we had no cell service, no wi-fi and no idea when we'd be leaving Lhasa. As my favorite rock 'n roller said "the waiting is the hardest part" and boy was Tom Petty (RIP!) right. All we could do was wait. For nearly five hours.

When it was finally time to board, we each stepped to the podium by the gate to have our boarding pass scanned. Our next step was to cross a blocked-off walkway that is used during the deplaning process. It was roughly three steps across that walkway before we reached the jet bridge so you'd think we were ready to board, right? Wrong! A soldier (rifle slung over his shoulder) was standing there to check the boarding pass that had just been reviewed literally 2 steps earlier. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish but at this point we just wanted to get on the plane so we let him see it.

Our flight had been scheduled to depart at 11:35 but we didn't push back until 16:21, 4h 46m late. The flight from Lhasa to Chongqing is not a long one so even flying faster than normal didn't make up much time. We landed at 18:30, 4h 35m late, so we gained 11 minutes.

Lhasa (LXA) to Chongqing (CKG)
map from gcmap.com

Unlike our previous domestic flights, this one was on Sichuan Airlines though the flight experience was just about the same. At least this time my seatmate wasn't pushy! C had an aisle seat with an empty middle beside her. The window seat was occupied by a local man who apparently did not have much experience flying. We think it may very well have been his first flight ever as he sat with his face glued to the window and those of us in front of him kept hearing what sounded like him moaning. But all was fine until we were parked at the gate. As those in the front of the plane started making their way out and those of us in the back were starting to slide toward the aisle, we heard this man hawk a loogie and spit it on the floor. We've never been so glad to get out of an aircraft!

Chongqing

Maybe you've never heard of Chongqing (chong-ching) but perhaps you've heard of Chungking? They're the same city with Chungking being the old way of Romanizing the city's Chinese name. We asked Jack how many people live in Chongqing and he said about 30 million. Looking that up later I realized that while that's the common answer, that's actually for the entire municipality, which is similar to a province or state. The Chongqing municipal area is 31,816 square miles, or about the size of South Carolina. The urban area - the city - is 182 square miles but has a population of 8 million or 45,000 people per square mile. If that sounds like a lot in a small area, it is. New York City has roughly the same population but is 67% bigger at 304 square miles.

It was dark when we landed but at least there were porters to handle the luggage. One thing that worked in our favor was that as we made our way down to the river we found the whole city lit up. Some buildings have displays, some have messages but lots of the buildings are just colorful. It was nice to be able to relax on deck and enjoy the show before we unpacked our bags.