Tashi delay :-)

The adventures of TwoWheelsWhirled just keep on growing :-) Having been inspired by the The Narrative of Arthur Gorden Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe I now bring to you our latest shenanigans in a journal format. Unlike the aforementioned book though, I have no stories of ghost ships or cannibalism (and no prizes for guessing who would get to go into the cooking pot first) - thank the Lord! :-)

Thursday 10th May:

Captains Log, Stardate 490... no, no that is not right.

Cold and hungry with wolves chasing us, vultures hovered above with sharp talons ready to pluck us from our ... no, no, sorry that is not right either - or true for that matter (well some of it :-).

We had a great ride leaving Lhasa, we did not leave the city as early as we had hoped though - K insisted on a quick shopping trip before our departure :-) Apparently Uncle M, you would have been proud of her, she managed to purchase a pair of trousers (I believe that you call them pants) in a time of a little under four minutes :-). Again I digress so moving on...

The bikes were loaded up with everything that we would need for a weeks worth of adventure into unknown realms (K will place a post on the kit) and surprisingly, despite the extra 25 lbs or so of additional weight, we both sped out of Lhasa and up the pass faster than we could have anticipated. At the top of the pass (the same pass that we went over on our way to Drak Yerpa) gasping for breath with a look on our faces that could be mistaken for HUGE grins, we were greeted by three excited Tibetan women who were picnicking. They were surprised to see that we had ridden to the top and stood watching us as we both parked up the bikes and climbed up the embankment to place the small stones that we had carried up the climb - next to the many others that dotted the mountainside. They signalled that we should come and drink with them but fearing that it was Tibetan yak butter tea and coupled with our late departure we decided to press on :-).

We had a great ride down the switchbacks on the other side, although I have to admit that for once I erred on the side of caution due to the extra weight on the bike and the uncertainty of the handling when cornering so sharply. K on the other hand, in a switching of roles, threw all caution to the wind and decided to take on a truck that was closing in behind her in a game of pursuit. It was very amusing to watch and she would have won if she had not waited for me at the bottom :-)

Next we followed the Lhasa river valley. The road which followed the rivers course has a false flat and we only discovered upon our return journey that we were gradually ascending the whole time. We passed by an abandoned village. All of the residential dwellings looked as though they had been deliberately smashed up some years ago rather than having naturally crumbled. There were remains of a kitchen stove as well as a mill stone left behind. We climbed above and looked down into the rooms that still showed a little of the decorative red stripey paint inside. We were not sure if there was a connection with the Cultural Revolution or not, naturally our imaginations ran wild with thoughts of Tibetans fleeing for their lives as the Red Guards ran them out of their homes. Of course we could be very wrong... or not...

After a little food and watching a woman pick herbs at the roadside, we continued on. We came into a modern "Chinese" town with Tibetan housing on the outskirts. K discovered that she had a flat in her rear tyre and we pulled up (unbeknown to us) at a large school. By the time we had the wheel out and the tools about us there were 30 or so frenzied school children shouting hello out of the windows from the second floor of an ugly looking concrete block. At first we shouted "hello" back but we soon got tired of this. In fact we could not believe the noise that was coming from inside the institution - it normally be reserved for the playground. We fixed the flat as quickly as possible and continued on our way, waving to shop owners who smiled at us as we left town.

We continued along the same road keeping the river to our right and the mountainsides to our left. The mountains were not the prettiest to behold, many of their slopes had been quarried or rock had been taken away. Soon I managed to "catch" the second puncture of the day in the rear wheel, we pulled over underneath a cliff and set about the repair. It was an easy fix (or so we thought) and were soon turning the peddles again only to find five minutes later that we had not found "both" of the holes. Not again! The bike was unloaded and sulking a little we made the repair.

Pressing on we came to the point where we were to leave the Lhasa river valley. We passed a large ugly industrial site of some nature, it's frontage decorated with large red Chinese characters. Amusing to us, there was what looked like a Chinese holiday park next to it.

The road now carried on through another broad valley, with mountains flanking both sides, some were covered with a little snow. The villages a little way back from the main road appeared to be less wealthy or modern, many of the houses were of adobe and the community was based upon agriculture rather than the sale of commodities. Many people waved to us from the side of the road or from the back of vehicles. Toothless women, carrying woven baskets on their backs which contained firewood or other necessities that they had collected throughout the day, smiled at us and replied to our "tashi delay". Women with bold coloured scarves turbaned or draped over their heads and men sporting straw brimmed hats, waved and expressed their happiness at our acknowledging their presence as they passed by in the back of open topped tractor carts. Gobsmacked children waved excitedly too and we were the centre of attention everywhere that we went. Even the 4x4's containing Chinese tourists would beep at us and we would get the occasional "hello" shouted out of the window.

We stopped for more food at the side of the road, down an embankment and next to a small stream. We decided that we should soon look for a campsite but we agreed that the roadside was not a great idea lest we should draw too much attention. We continued to ride for a little longer when K decided that it would be a good idea to leave the tarmacked road and to take one of the dirt roads leading to the villages and to follow the potentially least used tracks that followed the base of the hillsides.

Great idea - after some surveying of the area we found a great little spot at the back of a village. We had to cross a stream to get to it but we positioned ourselves at the point of an intersecting adobe wall and mound of dirt, we even had tree coverage to our right and the hillsides to our left. The track that we had ridden along to get to the spot seemed unused and we were fairly confident that despite our proximity to the village that we would be able to remain undetected and that if we were seen it would be a bit of a jump across the stream to get to us.

We threw our supplies across the stream and K helped me jump across it. Later when I went to get a bowl of water my foot slipped and I got my shoe and sock wet, I had to spend the rest of the evening wearing one shoe and a flip flop :-)

Eeek, just as K had the stove fired up and our bouillon soup noodles, dried seaweed and mushrooms bubbling away we gained some guests. We had only set our tent up next to the path that children used to return from school to get to the outlying villages. The next thing that we knew we had at least twenty or so curious schoolchildren watching us attentively. We politely said "hello" and I engaged with them in a little Chinese (regretfully we do not have a Tibetan phrasebook). Soon we intentionally changed our "hello" to a "goodbye" in the hope that they would disperse. This did work with many of them but a few stragglers remained behind, one of whom we suspect swiped the horn from K's bike. After some fighting, climbing trees, slipping into the stream and stone throwing at one another, the children were down to two in number. I sat with them and went through the alphabet correcting their pronunciation every now and then. Eventually they tired of us. As they left they were shouting and pointing high up in the sky. We did not get this meaning until almost thirty minutes later we were in the tent as the rain poured and the gale force winds buffeted our tent.

Overall it was a great first day and we had ridden 69 kms, we were very pleased with ourselves :-) :-)