We hadn't even pulled out of Beijing West station and, with still 48 hours before we reached Lhasa, I was already struggling to breathe.
I wasn't sure what to expect of the 4 000km-plus train trip from Beijing to Lhasa, but thoughts of the Blue Train rapidly evaporated as my travelling companion (TC) and I pushed our way through the crowds on platform T27 waiting for the 9.30pm train to Lhasa. I wondered what we'd let ourselves in for.
Some silent signal saw the crowd move en masse towards the train. Our guide helped us locate our four-bed compartment and said goodbye. This would be the last English-speaking Chinese person we would come across for 48 hours.
TC and I had booked a four-berth compartment in the most luxurious section of the train. Most of the train offered only "hard seat" accommodation.
We had crisp clean sheets on each of the beds and a plastic rose in a glass vase on a table at the window. Our bags were too large for the space available for four travellers, so we used the spare beds as luggage racks and settled down to watch the train pull out of Beijing.
Suddenly it struck me: where were the shower and toilet? I went in search of them and, at the end of the corridor, I found what were to be our ablution facilities. Two toilets, one "Chinese-style", the other "Western-style", and, in the corridor, three basins, with only boiling water available from the taps.
I thought regretfully of the wet wipes I had left in my friend's flat in Beijing and with relief that I had my sturdy mountain-climbing boots with me. These are useful for tackling China's murky public toilets.
I returned to tell TC the news. We decided to go to the buffet cart and comfort ourselves.
"Where had I got any Blue Train notions about this trip?" I wondered, as I looked through the menu for something comprehensible, if not edible. (Unlike the Blue Train, this Lhasa train trip had cost us just over R2 500 each for a four-bed compartment, great value.)
"Potato braises in soy sauce the chicken; cook chicken and vegetables; steam the perch; cook deft bean curd; the water boils the fish; cook the fish." This was to be our lunch and dinner menu for the next two days, with rice wine and beer.
After a beer and delicious "potato braises in soy sauce the chicken" everything seemed considerably cheerier.
Back in our compartment, TC and I gazed out the window at the lights of what seemed to be an unending sprawl of industrial-suburbia. I had been told there was little attractive scenery in Hebei province, home to Beijing.
The next day we would travel through Shaanxi province, home to most of China's coal deposits. I had been warned it would be as attractive as doing loops around Witbank, so when I awakened at 7am, after a great night's sleep, I was surprised to see quite pleasant scenery outside the window. Its pleasantness was a little diminished by the garbage along the railway line and the smoggy haze that seems for ever present in China
First stop, about 12 hours later, was Xian. The only other non-Chinese passengers we had seen got out here to see the Terracotta Army. After 10 minutes we were back on the move and the scenery was quite delightful - mountainous, with lots of intensive hand cultivation of small plots. As throughout much of China, there were signs of road and tunnel building everywhere.
As the train travelled west, the land became drier; peasants were dotted across clay-like mountains, trying to scratch out an existence. But coal dominated everything on this stretch - huge coal-burning plants spewing out filthy smog could be seen every few minutes.
The next stop was Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province. Lanzhou was an important stronghold along the Silk Road and for centuries was the principal crossing point on the Yellow River. When the train got moving again we could see the 21st-century crossing - an enormous multi-laned highway. The only thing on it was an ancient truck loaded with branches. As we moved, it was apparent from the increasing number of mosques that we were entering a Muslim region.
By now TC and I had slipped into that institutionalised frame of mind that seems unavoidable when you travel in a large capsule with limited access to the outside world. It was all very relaxed; although the train was travelling at an average of 100km/h - up to 200km/h on stretches - we were content watching the scenery. The only challenge I faced was how to delay visits to the loo.
At 6am I was awakened by a hissing sound above my head - oxygen was being pumped into the compartment. We had reached Golmud on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and from here we would be travelling above 3 000m.
We were travelling through Tibet, the Roof of the World, a country so remote that it did not have a rail network until mid-2006.
The remoteness was partly through the choice of the Tibetans, whose lifestyle is rural nomadic and overtly spiritual, compared with the consumerism that typifies China. But its remoteness was also down to the inhospitable terrain. Most of the plateau was barren and devoid of people, bar the occasional mud hut and Tibetan with yaks, sheep and horses.
But for the Chinese government, keen to secure closer control over the Tibetan Autonomous Region, nothing was impossible.
In 2001 it launched a project most engineers thought impossible - building a 1 100km railway line from Golmud to Lhasa. By 2006 it had succeeded in building the world's highest passenger railroad - Tanggula Pass is at its highest point, 5 072m. The line also has the world's highest railroad tunnel - Fenghuoshan at 4 905m - and half of the track was built on permafrost.
It was no doubt for all these reasons that the train seemed to zig-zag its way across the plateau.
At about 8am a porter, the first we had seen, delivered thin nasal pipes so we could inhale the oxygen directly. Apart from a slight headache we felt none of the signs of altitude sickness, but that could have been down to the calming effect of the train's motion and endless sameness of the scenery.
We spent a few hours spell-bound and then went to the dining cart to watch plastic bags of crisps burst open. After 36 hours on a train, the smallest of things becomes hugely entertaining. At 8.58pm, two days after departure, we pulled into the Lhasa station. I felt relaxed to the point of sedation.
It had been a great 48 hours, not action-packed, but a fascinating opportunity to see huge parts of this vast country that I would not otherwise have seen.
If you go, take wet wipes, some good books on China, and enjoy your fellow passengers, 95 percent of whom will be Han Chinese and all of whom will be friendly.