From Lhasa to Nepal...

The night before we left we went to our favorite bar and had the last dark beer we would have until we return to the UK :) The people that run the place are really nice people....and they have a puppy!


The following morning Tashi, our driver, and I packed the bikes on the roof of the jeep. I had gone out early and chased up some foam pads and some rope and Tashi did a great job of firmly fastening them to the roof. I tried not to worry about the bikes (and if they would be ridable) when we hit the dirt road to Everest.


A and I had toyed with the idea of riding to Yamdrok Tso but we never got around to it...as we drove up the pass we we awed by how much of a leg burner it would have been! It was a great ride up and it would have been a great, if killer, ride up on the bicycles, too...I was glad we didn't try to do it all in one day on the bikes though :) The view from the top was good...but not as good as the pass itself :) Because of road construction we had to turn around and go back down the pass and take the northern part of the Friendship Highway and take a shortcut to Gyantse for the night.


Little did we know that the short cut was a dirt road! On my map is was a real road, but we were learning that Tashi was a bit of a dirt demon. He has been driving for 17 years and knows all the roads (and tracks that pass for roads :) and he took us on a great one - through small villages and across wide open valleys - at high speed and skidding all the corners :) We shortly arrived at Gyantse and we went for a walk to the monastery and to get our first look at the Kumbum and the originals of the eyes that are tattooed on my belly :)



The following morning we toured the monastery and the Kumbum - Kumbum means 100,000 images and there are at least that many images in there! There are tiny chapels and larger chapels on each level of the building and we went in all of them. Inside each chapel there is a statue and the walls are covered in Buddhist images....it was AMAZING, to say the least.



In the afternoon we made our way to Shigatse. This was just a stop to pick up our permits but it turns out they have a wonderful monastery there (if a bit touristy).


The next day we headed to Sakya Monastery which is also quite special. There are 2 monasteries there - the northern and the southern - the former was founded in the 11th century and is currently in ruins and the latter was founded in the 13th century and is undergoing some heavy renovation. The buildings in town (except the assembly hall of the monastery which is always in red) are painted a very unique grey with red and white vertical stripes - as we drove/rode across Tibet we could see the villages that are under the influence of the Sakya order.


After Sayka we headed to Shegar to stay for the night. We got up very early to head for the pass and our first real views of Everest! We got a bit of a late start, but Everest wasn't cooperating anyway and was covered in cloud when we arrived. Slowly the clouds cleared and we had a great view! It was beautiful and an amazing sight to see - Everest and Lhotse on the left and Cho Oyu on the right.


We continued another 60 or so kms to Rongbuk monastery where we really had a great view of the big beast (the big rock in the background, not the horse :)


And then we went 4 more kms up the road in the jeep to the tent village (where we would stay the night) and then A and I headed out on foot to walk 5 or 6 kms up to basecamp and beyond. That is the big boy on the far left, with the cloud caught on the top, and you can see the glaciers coming down into the valley on the right. At the lower end of the moraine field it gets very flat and that is where they have put basecamp (it's out of the photo, but we will post more photos later :)


The next morning it was another early departure. We wanted to ride from Everest, but the agency said we could get out at Tingri and not before :( Since the protest that caused all the permit problems was at Everest, the Chinese are very sensitive about the area and caution was required (we did not want to get sent back to Lhasa....or worse!).

It was wonderful to find out that we were taking another dirt road shortcut to head to Old Tingri and it just so happened to be the route that A and I had planned to ride, so we at least got to see it (it was beautiful and would have made an amazing 2-3 day ride!!!!). There was a checkpoint just before we got into Old Tingri so it was just as well that we didn't try to ride it. At Old Tingri we unloaded the bikes and....they were in beautiful shape!!!! I had been so worried (we really wanted to ride and not have to take the jeep the rest of the way). The rough roads could do no damage with Tashi's fabulous strapping job.

We all had a great breakfast and then said our goodbyes - Tashi taking our fellow travellers to the border in the jeep as we packed the bikes and rode off down the road.


As we left town we were fabulously elated! WE WERE RIDING THE FRIENDSHIP HIGHWAY!!!! We had planned this for so long it just felt great to be riding it....finally!!! 3 kms out of town the pavement turned to dirt and we didn't see pavement until we hit Nyalam, 30kms from the Nepal border (and then it was only paved in town :). Fabulous!!!! A was a very happy bunny as she much prefers a dirt road to a paved road....especially when we are on mountain bikes :)


We almost always had a snowy mountain view - the road parallels the Himalayas and then hangs a left to head through them.


Our first night we camped in a canyon near a road that headed up to a monastery (no traffic :). The weather was good - dry and not cold at all with a fabulous night sky filled with as many stars as could be packed into one sky! We got a good start the next morning after pumping some water from the river and then we stopped at a small Tibetan restaurant for lunch to fuel our bodies for our first big pass. And it was a good thing, too as that pass was hard work at that altitude!!!! But it was really good fun and a beautiful ride, too :).

The second night we camped at the bottom of the pass - between the 2 big passes - next to a river. The first pass was 4950m and we were going to start our next day climbing the 5050m pass :) The valley was gorgeous and the nomads dogs stayed well away (which made A VERY happy :). We had a lovely afternoon of sun and watched the herders bring in their flocks, we made some soup and then it was time for bed.

Overnight the clouds rolled in and we woke to some serious frost! Not surprising as we were camping at 4800 meters. The tent and bags kept us toasty warm and in the morning I fired up the stove and warmed us up with some tea and porridge. It took us a bit of time to get out of there as the fog didn't lift until almost 9am and we had to dry our stuff out before packing up....


It was a great ride up the pass and even better when we started the descent - it's supposed to be a massive 4500m down to the Nepal border and we were ready for it!!!! :) As it was, it leveled out and then the afternoon headwind kicked in with a vengance. We spent an hour fighting the wind on the flat (and slight downhill) and going nowhere fast...like only about 10kph! and the wind was pretty hefty, maybe 40-50mph, so we started to look for a place to camp.


I spotted something that looked to offer some protection and headed over to check it out. We dropped off the edge of a bluff and discovered that there were some caves in the bluff...this looked promising as the wind was blowing so hard we would have a rough night if we set the tent up in the wind (this was wind that was hard to walk into!). We found the perfect cave, not tall enough for the tent but perfect to slide the thermarests and the sleeping bags into and it was calm in there! We cooked up some noodles and crawled in. We had a surprisingly good night's sleep and headed out into the cloudy morning (no need to wait for the tent to dry :)


It was a long day through some amazing changing scenery! We started in the clouds on the Tibetan plateau...


...dropping down 2000m to Nyalam on some great twisty mountain roads (where we stopped and had a good lunch) and then we dropped down some more, through misty rainforest and on some very muddy roads clinging to the canyon walls, the last 30kms...


...to the Nepal border! We had no problems crossing the border - the Chinese let us out and the Nepalese let us in :)


The journey through Nepal is coming...catch you later!