Hello people :)

We are having a great time in Lhasa :) Here is an example:


We have checked with the travel agency and things still haven't loosened up so we are starting to make more solid plans. We have done the 2 big sights in Lhasa and then we went riding in the dirt. Today I got my hair cut and we drank some lovely dark beer :)

Tomorrow we are going to ride to Yamdrok Tso, a lake (that is what a tso is :) that is on the Friendship Highway but still ok to get to without a permit. It's about 40kms there and the lake is about 1000 meters higher than Lhasa, so we have a good test for the legs. We are going to do it on the unloaded bikes to see how our lungs and legs like climbing 1000 meters at this altitude before we try this sort of thing our for real (I'm ever the tester :).

The day after the ride we are hoping to do a 1 or 2 day jeep trip to Nam Tso which is north of Lhasa - it's the 2nd largest salt water lake in the world (I think it's the 2nd) and it's surrounded by 7000 meter peaks - and is supposed to be fabulous. We will try for the 2 day, but the company running the mini bus says the 1 day trip fills up faster and they need 6 for the trip...we will know tomorrow afternoon. We would ride there on our planned north east loop but the dogs are supposed to be particularly nasty to cyclists and we don't want to risk it.

Then we are still thinking of riding to Gyantse and back and doing the north east of Lhasa loop, plus there are a few Tibetan holidays coming up that we want to be around for - Sakyumuni's birthday and enlightenment are 2 of them I forget the third one. They should be around the middle of the month - we haven't gotten an accurate translation from the Tibetan calendar to ours yet :) After that...we are toying with the idea of doing some volunteer work in a village in Tibet for a few weeks and delaying our arrival back in India. Who knows...

We know now that we can for certain get to Nepal via jeep (today, if we wanted to) so we have a way out of the country. Not that Nepal is in great shape at the moment - if you have been reading the news it is not pretty there, politically, right now. We still can't ride the highway without a guide to accompany us, so that is definitely out - we will run out of time before the security loosens up enough to let us do it.

Another idea we are toying with is after doing all the riding we can around Lhasa we could get a jeep to take us to Everest Base Camp and then we will ride to Nepal, with escort. It would be nice to ride unladen and it would make the couple of days of pure off road (something we were planning on doing of we rode the whole way) much easier and pleasurable for us - it's a cart track that we can pick up a few kms outside of EBC which takes you to Old Tingri on the Friendship Highway - not an easy route by any stretch, it goes up over a 5000 meter pass :) but the road is used by the 4x4s, so the jeep can come with us and be our porter and yak :). We also want to do the bombing 3500 meter descent to Kathmandu :):):)

We have a ton of pics to post - they are on their way, but we will probably not be online for a few days, so be patient! Must get back...I left A to take a hot shower and it's my turn next, hopefully she hasn't used all the hot water!!!!!

Later!