Why travel to remote places? Why bother with the hassle, the expense, the danger? Because it's actually cheap, intoxicating, and easy.

Bruce A. Dale/ National Geographic Society

WE HAVE COME OUT THE other end. After two months of walking and hitchhiking atop the Tibetan Plateau, crossing range after desolate range, living with the Tibetans, eating yak meat on the high plains under a blazing blue sky, we have fallen out of the mountains into the lowlands of China and its ocean of mankind.

A black night and the train station overrun. We are being crushed by a mob of hundreds, perhaps thousands. The train is days late. A thundering, prehistoric steam engine cleaves the crowd, whistle screaming, a velvet column billowing into the dark. We are shoved against the moving wooden cars. People are clambering onto one another's shoulders and crawling through the windows. Spence and I are wearing packs and will have to make it through a door. The crowd presses us up the steps and into the car as if we were made of Play-Doh.

Inside, the fourth-class passenger car is so packed it makes me laugh out loud. I can see nothing but people through the ribbony haze of rising cigarette smoke. The wooden benches are hidden beneath piles of people sitting on other people's laps. The aisle is teeming with travelers wedged against one another, all standing, some atop boxes and suitcases just to get a little smoky air. There are sleeping passengers lying jammed together in the squalor of spittle and trash underneath the benches.

I wink at Spence over the heads of those squeezed between us. He is in shock. He is a very tall, very taciturn young man, and this is his first immersion in ordinary Asia. Spence, an expert outdoorsman, is quite capable anywhere where there are few people: mountains, desert, tundra. In the hinterlands of Tibet, where there is more elbowroom than in Alaska, he was a calm and elegant presence. Now he is on the edge of panic. In China, elbows are mostly used for working your way through a seemingly impenetrable crowd.

Tibetans require what the Han Chinese abhor: wide-open spaces. They're cowboys, nomads, claustrophobes. A herd of yaks and the sky and a 360-degree view of the horizon and they're happy. The Chinese, by and large, are horrified by wide-open spaces. The last thing they want to witness is a distant horizon. They want to see streets and shops and people. Tibetans revel in the silence of their austere landscape. Chinese need noise. Tibetans ignore the ferocious cold and wind and snow. Chinese hate cold and wind and snow—they like warm rain. Tibetans are outdoor people, preferring stars or a black wool tent overhead. Chinese are indoor people who demand tile roofs, close quarters, and reassuring hubbub.

Which means that the 300-plus people crammed into this train car must be having the time of their lives. It is 2 a.m. and practically everyone is awake and staring at Spence and me. The men are smoking away and shouting at one another, and the women are rocking their babies and spitting on the floor and shouting at one another. No one is angry; this is how Chinese converse—they yell.

A commotion starts next to me. I have no idea what's going on. We're still wearing our backpacks, so I think we might be taking up too much space. I try to move sideways but am held firmly in place by all the other bodies.

Suddenly five inches of bench opens up below me. They want me to sit down. Of course I can't with my backpack on. After considerable effort, several men and women manage to pry the pack off my back and push me down onto the bench. They attempt to do the same for Spence, but he scowls when they tug on his backpack.

I sit on one tilted cheek, my knees dovetailing into the knees of the people seated on the facing bench, and slip a tiny Chinese dictionary from my shirt pocket. Eventually I say, "Xièxie." The dozen or so people pressed against me look perplexed. I repeat, "Xièxie." Someone finally realizes what I'm trying to say and pronounces the word properly, and everyone starts to chuckle. Word of my mangling of Chinese passes through the car like a breeze, raising waves of smiling faces. I smile back.

That's all it takes. A one-word attempt at thank you and a smile. Food immediately begins to be passed our way, hand to hand. Onions, oranges, peanuts, exotic concoctions in paper wrappers. Spence and I try to refuse, but this is unacceptable. We eat and they nod. Pretty soon, out comes the beer, big green bottles of píjiu.

It was cold waiting for the train, but now I'm roasting. When I stand up and strip to a T-shirt, one of the men grabs my biceps, squeezes, and whistles. This draws hoots of laughter. From several rows away a young man begins crawling over his neighbors. When he gets to me, he removes the person sitting opposite, flips down a tiny wall table, and bangs his elbow on it, hand open.

He wants to arm wrestle. I try to demur but I already have a coach (the guy who squeezed my arm) and a coaching staff, not to mention a big audience. What can I do? He is a sinewy working kid, a miner or a farmhand, and eventually I overpower him. The crowd roars. The young man shakes my hand and proudly waves to everyone like it was the Olympics. Before he can drop his arm another man has taken his place.

After lonely, spartan hardships, there is nothing so pleasurable as the great, enveloping affection of the proletariat. The train lurches along through the rain. I take on all comers, one after another, right through the night, until a female bricklayer triumphantly twists my arm flat.