"Sleeper Bus" is an oxymoron...

...just for the record.

I spent the first 10 hours of my bus trip to the Yangtze in an
oversold bus that had people sleeping in the aisles. I was in the
center bottom bunk in the last row of the bus, bouncing along all
night through rough roads, frequent stops and the aftershocks of an
immediate neighbor to my right who every few minutes would utter
something plaintively in Chinese (my hunch: "fuck, this is
uncomfortable!"), then throw himself skyward writhing like a fish out
of water to land in a new position, for the next five minutes. At one
stop, my immediate neighbor and his immediate neighbor (who I took to
be his wife or girlfriend) got in an argument -- full volume, several
minutes long, people all around. It was perhaps 2 a.m.. I'm guessing
one of them was questioning the other's choice of transportation.

When I say immediate neighbor, I mean we spent the entire evening with
our bodies pressed against each other. Flying fish on my right, and a
Brit traveling for seven months through Asia to my left. (That poor
guy got moved by the steward when I boarded from the relative comfort
of a second story bunk to an aisle mattress adjacent to me. We could
only infer it was so we fellow English-speakers could keep each other
company.) I was grateful for the sleeping mask on loan from my honey,
as the cabin lights would periodically turn on when people moved
around or at various stops, and the rampant road construction and toll
stops lit the place like a rock show.

Remarkably, though, when I arrived in Wuhan at 4 a.m., and got off the
bus and said "Yichang" (where I will board a boat for the trip
upriver), I was whisked into a taxi to the other bus terminal by the
shepherding hand of a woman who at first I thought was also traveling
to Yichang, but who in fact was acting as travel-agent-on-the-spot. As
we drove to the other station, there were frantic cell phone calls. I
exited the cab and a moment latter, a bus rounded the corner which she
flagged down, asked for about $20 cash (150 yuan) and ushered me
aboard. Her commission for this service, as best I could tell from the
money changing hands, was 10 yuan, about $1.50. Well worth it.

Thankfully, the bus is far more comfortable, with smoother roads and a
comparatively cushy second tier bunk. Even with the chain-smoking
driver and steward just in front of me, I even managed a little sleep.

Plus, I am now going to be arriving in Yichang around 8 a.m., which
might mean I can board a ship directly and be in the river today.
(Tourist boats leave in the morning, so I'd been anticipating needing
an overnight in Yichang.)

So, although nowhere near as restful as the bus-train-bus connections
I originally envisioned between the Yellow Mountains and Yichang, it
has been logistically far simpler and quite a bit quicker, too. And
most importantly, an experience I am not soon to forget.