Leaving Lhasa

"This morning, the ladies at the hotel wrapped a white scarf around my neck for a safe journey by bicycle along the friendship highway to Mount Everest. I think it was a good omen, because tonight, I'm camped about 90 km outside of Lhasa at about 4100m, just below the roadway somewhere on the Kampa La. It's been a pretty good day for cycling - cool and clear, getting warmer later in the day."

This update took a long time to get online for a number of reasons(details to follow in the next entry), and it's a longer narrative version of my cycling trip from Lhasa to Everest Base Camp with more scenic photos. It might take a long time to load this page if you're on dial-up, but I've tested it here in Katmandu and it seemed to come up fairly quickly. For brief road reports and cycling images, please see the next entry by scrolling down to the very bottom of this page or copy paste this link: http://www.worldsurface.com/browse/live-diary-page.asp?livediarypageid=1670

The Road to Everest: Cycling the Tibetan Plateau

October 10th, 2004

This morning, the ladies at the hotel wrapped a white scarf around my neck for a safe journey by bicycle along the friendship highway to Mount Everest. I think it was a good omen, because tonight, I'm camped about 90 km outside of Lhasa at about 4100m, just below the roadway somewhere on the Kampa La. It's been a pretty good day for cycling - cool and clear, getting warmer later in the day.

In the morning, Pierre thought he had come down with some kind of virus, so he and Sonia stayed in Lhasa, hoping to leave in another day or so. A few days ago, they loaned me their Tibet Overland book to copy a few pages, and even though it is slightly out of date for this section, it has come in quite helpful today, with my on again/off again odometer acting up.

The first part of the road out of Lhasa is smooth as silk, until it starts up the pass. Then it's alternately serene or completely mad with roadwork activity. By 2006, it's going to be one of the most amazing mountain pass roads in China, but right now where it's under construction, there's a lot of people working, a lot of trucks, and a lot of dust. In between those construction sites, as a cyclist, you're the only one on the road as all other traffic is halted or being diverted.

The last village of the day had some irritating children aggressively begging for money or candy, grabbing at the bike and bags, threatening to throw rocks, etc., etc. They were also doing the "repeat everything you say", game, so they quickly learned "F*** you!" and "I" m a nincompoop", courtesy of yours truly. Now with the sun gone behind the mountain, and the light starting to fade, it's almost solitude again. An army officer comes by and says hello. There's also a Tibetan fellow camped in a big tent a little farther down the mountain. I hear the sound of my pen on the page, my breath coming into my body, and the river rushing far below in the valley ¨C and that's all no matter how hard I listen. There are no other sounds. Day one on the Friendship Highway comes to an end.

ROAD REPORT - Cycling Day 1
Distance: 90 kms (approx.)
Ride time: 6:00 hours (approx.)
Avg. speed: 15kph
Max kph: unknown
Passes: none
Sleeping place: Roadside camp 4100m approx.
Tibet Mileage to date: 327 km (includes local riding in Lhasa as well as overnight trip to Ganden Monastery)
Worldwide Mileage 2004: 7313 km
Comment Good day for cycling. Not too challenging. Considering all the sections under construction, the road was not too bad.

Tibetan Glossary:
La = Mountain Pass
Tso = Lake

October 11th, 2004

I wake up early camped on the west side of the mountain, so the temperature is quite cold. My thermos of hot water prepared the night before is not exactly hot, but lukewarm enough to make some instant walnut cereal I found in Lhasa, and warm enough to make a cup of instant coffee. The sun comes around at about 9:30 a.m. Beijing time (all of China is on Beijing time!), and after slopping on some sunscreen, I head for Kampa La. With the massive road building projects, the road markers mentioned in Tibet Overland are non-existent. In fact, the first one I see mentioned in the book, is marker #163 somewhere after the town of Nangartse Dzong later the next day.

The road is mostly smooth, with a few streams to ford, but my focus of the day is not to make the same mistakes I made climbing to Ganden Monastery. I stop a lot, drinking water, having a bite to eat, having lunch, taking some altitude medication, and filling my lungs with air.



View over Namdrok Tso

It's almost three o'clock when I reach the pass - and what a view!!! Yamdrok Tso lies below, and is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It's absolutely stunning! Four Tibetan women and a couple of Chinese soldiers cheer my arrival - as do I. Taking the white scarf given to me by the Banok Shol Hotel staff lady, I tie it to the array of scarves and flags flying from the top of the pass. The Tibetan women and I make some conversation and take some pictures, but after about a half hour, one of the Chinese soldiers indicates that I should move on, so I head down the mountain passing more and more roadwork.

At one point, a jeep passes me yelling "Go Canada!" Okay - I admit it. I have a very readable Canadian flag on the back of the bike, and those people in the jeep - well - they must be Canadian too. A little further down the road, they are pulled over at the side of the road and hail me over. I just about fall over stopping as I can't get my shoes unclipped. It turns out they are on a group tour with a Montreal company called Karavaners, and are waiting for the other jeeps and their guide who have been held up at a roadwork section.

Moving on, I begin looking for a camping spot for the night. With the new road, the suggested campsites listed in Tibet Overland are non-existent. It's a whole new world of Chinese infrastructure development on the Southern Friendship Highway - at least along this section. After bypassing a couple of potential sites, and with the sun fading, I backtrack a few kilometers to a lakeside location and make camp for the night. It turns out to be a less than ideal location.

Just after dark, I begin cooking dinner when a series of very loud rock blasting explosions begin from across the lake, echoing off the mountains and the water. These continue for several hours, but even worse is the steady shuttling back and forth of trucks and tractors on the nearby road. I don't sleep for several hours, and then not at all well.

ROAD REPORT - Cycling Day 2
Distance: 55 kms (approx.)
Ride time: 6:20 hours (approx.)
Avg. speed: 8.7 kph
Max kph: unknown
Passes: Kampa La 4700m
Sleeping place: Lakeside camp approx. 125 kms from central Lhasa at 4400m approx.
Tibet Mileage: 382 km
Worldwide Mileage: 7368 km
Comment Good day for cycling. Took my time on the pass stopping a lot for water, rest, and food. Several road sections with streams running across them, and several areas under construction required pushing through soft deep earth that was yet to be packed down. Other than that - pretty good road surfaces.

October 12th, 2004

It's chilly and I haven't slept that well, but at least my tent is on the sunny side of the hill this morning! I make a slow but good start at around 10:30. Fording streams, pushing through construction zones, dodging around massive machinery, riding through massive clouds of dust, and then nothing. The first part of road from somewhere past Tamalung Village is under heavy construction. Eventually I make it through Pede Dzong, grabbing some water, and then stopping in Nangartse Dzong for a late lunch. Nangartse Dzong has a large Chinese presence, which means lots of Chinese restaurants, shops, schools, and other businesses. Lunch is good, and I fill up on supplies before heading out on the road to Karo La.

Tibet Overland mentions headwinds, and they start as soon as I get to the entrance of the valley, where soldiers at a checkpoint gruffly confirm the direction of the pass. Today, I'm determined to get a nice, decent, sheltered campsite, and begin looking around 2:30 p.m. By four, I've decided to camp in a small gully by the river. It seems to be at about 4650m, and if the road markers were still here, it might correspond to marker 168, about 16 km outside of Nangartse Dzong.

Mountains surround the camp, and if I climb the gully, to the west I can see a small collection of buildings, or to the east, a small habitat for a Tibetan labourer who I meet while setting up camp. After dinner, a few nomadic dogs were wandering around, but they apparently had some other things to interest themselves in, and left me alone. This morning there were another four of them coming down the lake barking at me, but they became distracted by a Himalayan Mouse Hare. The nomadic dogs are notoriously vicious, but so far I haven't had to swing the iron gol I purchased in Lhasa, or throw any of the rocks stored in the pockets of my handlebar bag. Today, I also managed to wash up a bit in the river, just enough to get some of the dust off before donning some long underwear and bedding down for the night.

ROAD REPORT - Cycling Day 3
Distance: 42 kms (approx.)
Ride time: 4:00 hours (approx.)
Avg. speed: 10.5 kph
Max kph: unknown kph
Passes: none
Sleeping place: Riverside camp 4655m approx.
Tibet Mileage: 424 km
Worldwide Mileage: 7410 km
Comment: Rough road in construction zones, otherwise fine.

October 13th, 2004

Another chilly morning, this time at a completely idyllic campsite. After some bike and bag repairs, the local Tibetan labourer came down for a look to see how I was doing. We didn't say much, just smiled and shared some sentiments about the surrounding landscape. I motioned that I had to change and pack, so we said our goodbyes.

The Tibet Overland guide, which has some excellent graphs, warned me to expect chilly headwinds for most of the climb over Karo La. At about 10:30, I'm ready to go wearing the balaclava that my friend Stephane recommended I bring along when we were together in Paris. Again, I take my time going up, stopping for food and water as much as I feel like - and enjoying the scenery along the way. There are several glaciers within view on each side of the road, and today, there were very few jeeps and trucks again. Another nice break was the lack of villages (and the subsequent lack of beggars) along the way. It can get very tiring having to deal with so many people begging aggressively and running after the bike, so I have been quite happy with the quiet.

Carrying on up to the top of the pass, the winds became a bit harsher. Save for the prayer flags and scarves billowing in the wind, the top of this pass was empty of other people - just the flags, the bike, and me. I relaxed and had a snack before taking on the downhill. The downhill was sweet, ending in a vast valley with yak and sheep herds far off in the distance. I stopped in absolute solitude for lunch around 2:30 - no sound but the wind. Contemplating going all the way to Gyantse Dzong for a nice warm bed and a hot shower, I mounted the bike and headed through various small villages on my way to Simi La.

On the way up to the first peak of Simi La, I received word from some American tourists traveling by jeep, that Pierre and Sonia were spending the night indoors in Nangartse. Dale and Fritz (the Americans) invited me for dinner, so I gave them the name of my intended hotel and sped along by a slight tailwind, I reached Gyantse around 7:15. Unfortunately, my intended hotel did not have any running water, so dinner with Dale and Fritz never happened as I checked into the Jiang Zi Jian Zang Hotel just down the street. The room itself was a little cold, but the shower was nice and hot, and it had an added benefit of having a bathtub, plus a TV for 150 Yuan. Settling for some pasta in the hotel restaurant, I met the French-Canadians again, who were leaving the next morning for a trek.

ROAD REPORT - Cycling Day 4
Distance: 88 kms (approx.)
Ride time: 6:15 hours (approx.)
Avg. speed: 13.75 kph
Max kph: unknown kph
Passes: Karo La 4960m and Simi La 4275m (short double pass)
Sleeping place: Jiang Zi Jian Zang Hotel, Gyantse 3985m
Tibet Mileage: 512 km
Worldwide Mileage: 7498 km
Comment: A most amazing and beautiful valley after Karo La. Considering the passes, a relatively fast riding day, followed by a nice hot shower and a bath!

October 14th and 15th, 2004

It snowed here today - just some light flurries, but it did snow here in Gyantse Dzong, located a little more than 250 km from Lhasa. It's a one-horse town with an old fort and a monastery with a Kumbum supposedly containing 100,000 images of Buddha. There's an old Tibetan quarter, and a new Chinese section with big wide empty avenues lined with very non-descript ceramic tile and blue glass buildings. Most of the traffic, if you want to call it that, is the occasional donkey cart loaded up with barley, or a guy riding a horse down the street, but it is a good size town with lots of shops and services, so I decided to get some laundry done, catch up on some writing, and stay a couple of nights hoping that Pierre and Sonia would catch up. Unfortunately, after a couple of days, I was bored out of my mind, so decided to continue on to Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city.

ROAD REPORT - Rest Day 1 & 2

October 16th, 2004

There's not much to say about today's ride. It was not too eventful, other than a lunch stop in an unknown village where, while I had some meat momos in a small restaurant for 3 yuan, about 30 local village children on their way home from school, all lined up against the windows peering through the glass, hands around their eyes to shield the light. They stayed there for most of my lunch, until the owner shooed them away, only to be replaced the next group of children. Arriving in Shigatse, I had some trouble finding the hotel I was planning on staying in. Apparently, it doesn't exist anymore, so I checked into the Sandrutze hotel, which is a little up-market with those glass walled showers, but more importantly considering what was to happen, central heating!

ROAD REPORT - Cycling Day 5
Distance: 100.84 kms
Ride time: 5:25 hours (including 1 hr riding around trying to locate hotel)
Avg. speed: 18.89 kph
Max speed: 30 kph
Passes: none
Sleeping place: Sandrutze Hotel, Shigatse 3825m
Tibet Mileage: 612 km
Worldwide Mileage: 7598 km
Comment: Ultra Flat Road through a scenic valley.

October 17th to 21st, 2004

I spent my first full day in Shigatse visiting the Tashilunpo Monastery, which has had a lot of restoration work and is also the home of the Panchen Lama, who is second only to the Dalai Lama in the traditional order of Tibetan Buddhism. There are loads of shops in Shigatse and a Tibetan market, so they warranted a look as well. Unfortunately, I think I also ate something bad somewhere, so I wasn't feeling so well that evening.

The next day, I arranged my Tibetan Alien travel permit with the PSB or Public Security Bureau at a cost of 300 yuan or approx. $60 Cdn. It took about ten minutes and seemed relatively painless, much like my dealings with the Chinese embassy in The Hague where I received my visa. I looked around the town a little bit more, and later in the day, Pierre and Sonia from Canada knocked on the door inviting me to dinner with some other cyclists they had met. Chu from Singapore, had convinced a guy from South Korea to join him, and another guy from Japan was staying at the Tenzin hotel with them. We ended up going for a nice Chinese meal at a local/tourist restaurant. I say tourist, because they did have an English menu that had prices just marginally higher than the Chinese menu, saying it¡¯s because they serve a leaner quality of meat to the foreigners. We¡¯re not sure if they also serve leaner vegetables, as those prices are apparently also a little higher. Anyway, after dinner I went back to the hotel and now whatever kind of poisoning I had kicked in big time. The next thirty-six hours were spent in gut wrenching agony, with excruciating stomach pains as well as the accompanying dysentery. It was a day or so later that Pierre and Sonia came by and convinced me to take some Imodium and start a course of Ciproflaxin antibiotics. They're both doctors, so I went along with their advice, even though I hadn't had it for more than three days - my usual marker for starting treatment other than rehydration salts, rest, and water. I did start to feel better the next day, and still better the next day, but not well enough to start cycling again, so Pierre, Sonya, Chu, the Korean and the Japanese guy all started off from Shigatse a day ahead of me. During those days, I managed to pick up some more altitude medicine, and while doing so, had the opportunity to visit a couple of hospitals in Shigatse. These weren't the first ones I had visited in Tibet, as my hunt for altitude medicine had also taken me to the main hospital in Lhasa. If you are seriously sick in Tibet, here's my prayer "GOD HELP YOU!" and here's my advice: "GET THE HELL OUT!!!" Get to Nepal, India, Beijing, or Bangkok, because you won't get any help in Tibet. The pharmacists can't even do simple math, the doctors can barely understand how to use a stethoscope, there's no heat, and that brings me back to my earlier point about my hotel. Being sick, I was far better off to be in my nice three-star hotel with central heating, even if it was right next to a construction site that stopped work between the hours of 2:30 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., than I would have been to have been lying in a freezing cold hospital bed with completely incompetent staff that would probably have ignored me and absolutely filthy toilets.

I also had the chance to visit Shigatse's first department store in my search to stock up on some more peanut butter, and it reminded me that sometimes I forget my modern world. I forget that I am a modern child, raised with elevators, automatic ticket readers, supermarket scanners, bar codes, anti-theft clothing tags, metal detectors, and x-ray machines. In the modern world where I've lived for so many years, I take it for granted that everyone is in a hurry and has a busy life, and I believe that everything is or should be possible.

Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes not, I forget like I did today, that some things are just not possible, and that there are still some far flung places where people at the age of an adult, are discovering, and afraid of getting on something like an escalator. When I saw this happening today, I thought I should have taken a picture because it was funny to see, forgetting that my parents held me by the hand as a young child my first time getting on and probably many more times. It was probably kind of funny to see as well, but I don't think anyone took a picture.

In the department store, it's obvious that in the town of Shigatse, word has gone out about the escalator, so locals and visiting Tibetans from the surrounding villages have come to try out this remarkable invention. Crowds of them arrive and head straight for the escalator, milling around the bottom. After I had done my shopping upstairs, I was coming down the escalator and I saw a woman at the top afraid to grab the handle or step boldly forward. I thought I should run back up the escalator going down, reach out my hand and help her out, but it was too late. I had already passed her by. I thought I should at least stop and watch this phenomenon for it's (hopefully) successful conclusion, but it was too late. I had already satisfied my consumer desire for peanut butter to go with my road-snack crackers, so I bustled away out the door, past the SUV's in the parking lot, past the bicycle rickshaw drivers on the street, and past the farmers bringing their potatoes to market on foot. I don't wonder if I should have taken a picture, but I still wonder if that woman made it on to the escalator successfully. I hope so. I really do.

Earlier in the day, I had visited the post office here to send a parcel home. It's a big post office offering banking services, parcel wrapping, philatelic collector sales, and the usual array of post office services - or so it would seem. My parcel contained some CD's of trip photos, a mini-DV tape of trip video and a couple of souvenirs from Tibet. Translated from the Chinese, the encounter as I walked up to the counter went something like this:

The clerk took one look at me and said:
"No".
"Excuse me?"
"No. Go to Lhasa".
"Excuse me. I just want to send this parcel to Canada".
"No. Go to Lhasa".
"Lhasa is seven hours away, and seven hours to come back."
"Go to Lhasa."
"Really? Go to Lhasa?"
"Go to Lhasa".
"Is there a manager?"
"Go to the third floor".

I go to the third floor and it's the same story. They call someone on the phone and hand it to me. The person on the other end speaks English.

"What is your problem?"
"I want to send a parcel to Canada."
"You have to go to Lhasa".
"Lhasa is seven hours away, which means I will have to take one day to go there, one day to stay there and send the parcel, and one day to come back."
"You have to go to Lhasa."
"But don't you have trucks that go to Lhasa with mail from here?"
"Yes."
"So, why can't I send my parcel from here? This is a main post office and a major town that has traffic lights and even local buses."
'What do you want to send?"
"Some CD-ROMs, some souvenirs, and a mini-DV of my trip video."
"You have to go to Lhasa".
"Why?"
"It's Tibet."

End of story. So much for the modern world.

ROAD REPORT - Rest and Recovery Days 3 - 7

October 22nd, 2004

Other than another noisy night at the Sandrutse Hotel with construction work going on at all hours, the day started off well. It was just after noon when I was really ready to go, and not until one o'clock that I was making some progress from the outskirts of town. I'd been warned that it was a dirt road, so I had my dust mask ready, wearing it so I could easily pull it up over my mouth and nose when necessary.

For the first hour or so, the road wound itself along the valley, and the surface seemed pretty good. Then the headwinds began to build. They kept building until there was a wall of dust blowing across the south side of the valley. My pace was slowing as I watched little tornadoes of dust blow around in the distance. Occasionally they would cross the roadway in front of me. A positive fringe benefit of the wind, was that it would almost immediately clear the dust clouds from passing vehicles as they went by me. Unfortunately, the good couldn't outweigh the negative impacts, and things just got worse. Huge gusts of wind began blowing and swirling around, bringing masses of dust that completely obscured the road. At times, I felt like I was in a massive sandblaster that pelted the exposed skin on my legs with tiny pebbles. There was nothing to do but stop, close my eyes, pull tight the dust mask, and suffer through until the air cleared again.

Eventually, the winds died down a little, but only a little. They were still strong and the going was not much fun (unlike the day the author of Tibet Overland rode this route and describing it as "a very pleasant ride"). Did I mention that the Chinese army decided to throw in a few convoys to make the ride that much more interesting (and dusty)? At about 6:30, I was somewhere between five and eight kilometers from the nearest village where there might be some shelter. The wind was getting stronger again and the light was fading. I figured it would be at least an hour more of riding if I was lucky and the wind didn't build too much, and more than that if I wasn't so lucky. Considering the kind of day it had already been, I didn't think it was worth it to push my luck, so I decided to try and hitch a lift. After a few unsuitable vehicles passed me by, I saw a pick-up truck coming up behind me. Waving them down, I watched them pull over in what seemed like slow motion to me. I guess I was that amazed at what was happening. They agreed to give me a ride, and refused any money for the lift to the village.

On arrival in Jiding Qu, I was pointed to a man who led me the short walk up to the other end of the village, took my bags inside a small Tibetan home and said they would bring the bike in later. There was some confusion about whether I could eat there or not, so I went back to the restaurant where I had originally stopped and managed to order some dinner. Nobody in Jiding Qu speaks English. After dinner, I returned to the Tibetan house/restaurant/truck stop crash pad, and watched TV with the family until it was time to turn in on the Tibetan couches/settees.

I slept pretty well until about 2 a.m. when a couple of truck drivers banged their way into the room and had the young daughters fix them some soup and tea before falling asleep on the other side of the room. After some sweet tea, I also fell asleep again until morning.

Source: worldsurface.com
Photos by Wojo/Author: Wojo