We left from the beautiful viewpoint at Feilashi with a blue sky and great view at the white mountains. Our first kilometres where downhill. A good start of the hardest part of the journey, Tibet! But after not too long, the pavement was gone. From now on 345 km unpaved. And that was hard! Some parts were OK, some parts where horrible. There was dust, so much dust.
The second day we officially crossed the Tibetan border after we passed through our first checkpoint in daytime without problems. The border was only a small pole in Chinese, but it still felt special, probably because of the photographers, Chinese tourists who were taking our picture! Then HELL started. We had to drag our bikes over stones as big as footballs. Because it was also uphill, we only did 27 km. In a whole day!! Everywhere construction, workers blowing up the mountains with dynamite. Sometimes jeeps with Chinese tourists stopped to offer us a ride. When we found a horrible campsite there was another jeep that offered us a ride. We were very close to the crest of the pass, but the road was just so terrible, we decided to ride the 60 km with them to Markham. The ride with the car was maybe even worse then cycling, but it didn't last so long! Markham is an infamous spot for cyclists without permits. There is a lot of police and a bad checkpoint. We did not want our nice Tibetan friends to get in trouble for offering us a ride, so we tried to explain to them that the police might be a problem for us. "Oh, don't worry", they said, and put on their sirens!! The driver turned out to be police! Great! They dropped us off at the best hotel in town.
We did think it would be better to cross the checkpoint at night. We found ourselves cycling in pinch dark, temperatures below zero climbing a pass of 4300 m on an unpaved road. We were extremely nervous, because we were warned about wild dogs. Thank God everything went without problems and we watched the sun rise over the beautiful valley. On the downhill that followed we saw beautiful people in traditional clothes with their yaks. It felt magical.
The next days we were climbing, climbing, climbing. A pass of over 5000 metres!!! Above 4000 m you really suffer. Breathing is really hard and you have to stop many times to catch your breath. We spent a night in the tent at 4500 m and a great German cyclist, Stephan, joined us. Next morning our water was frozen! The last 16 km of the pass took us 4 hours! You can see the top, but it doesn't get any closer! It was really hard, but the feeling to be at the top is amazing. We decided we deserved a hotel and went to Zuogong. We found a great hotel, but as I was unpacking, Pat was brought to the police station to register!! "I don't think so", he said, when he finally realized what they wanted to do. In front of the station he turned around and we got away as quickly as possible. After this very hard day we had to find a place camp just outside of the city. Not very nice.
The next day we finally had a really good day. There was pavement! And the road was quite (Tibetan) flat. We rode more then 100 km and even found a cute little guesthouse, off course without a toilet, let alone shower, but still...Outside it was very cold and snow was covering the mountains around us, so we were happy we could sit beside the hot stove of the kitchen. The pass at 4600 m the next day was the most beautiful one so far, with a great view of the mountains and valleys. We were surrounded by snow. Amazing.
The downhill that followed could have been the best one ever, but it became the worst, because of the bad road. It seems to happen a lot in Tibet, that when everything goes great, there is always a setback that follows. Like a strong headwind on a flat road. We passed another checkpoint without problems in day time and finally arrived in Bashe. Finally a place where we could find a good hotel, with a hot shower! READ MORE... |
