April 19, 2007
To Mile marker 4138 Logging road: Pilgrims on the way to Lhasa
When is a downhill not a downhill?
That is the question for the first 16kms today--unsealed, losing elevation yet the road has steep up hills, sometimes so steep Rachel has to push her bike; or narrow and traffic coming so close, we have to get off the road. Once a stream covered the road with a rocky bottom, Patrick takes off his shoes and pushes the bikes across, a cold mountain stream!
Another time we are flagged to stop by a construction worker; we wait close to 30 minutes taking a food break. Then traffic starts coming through from the other direction and a car from our direction goes past, so we cycled on--a group of construction workers are around the corner stringing a powerline up the side of the mountain--not sure why we had to stop?!
At marker 4112 (with a lost 9 kms) the road is asphalt again!! Yeah!
Yet we are still climbing, at least for now on a good surface. Our guesthouse last night was located across from a military compound, so we woke to a beating drum and cymbals along with soldiers singing and shouting. Patrick says they are probably saying "Hell no, I won't go" as they drove off in a truck convoy. Not far out of town we cross a bridge and get a beautiful view of Mt. Guyala Pebri (7151 meters). We follow the Rong-chu river.
At Donju, Patrick buys from a roadside store 2 bottles of beer for tonight's camping. We start looking for a campsite at mile 4133. The markers are off from before Tongmai. After 15kms, Patrick spots a road and explores it; we push our bikes up to a spot for the tent. Patrick's happy because...."there's plenty of firewood". We pitch our tent quickly, clouds are forming, the wind picking up as a storm is brewing. Patrick goes back to the river to filter water, Rachel gathers wood and stones for a campfire. We enjoy the beer, finish the whisky and for dinner have one of four of the "emergency" meals we've carried from the beginning of the trip....beef stroganoff.
We've moved out of the lower elevations where the trees are leafing out and more again into a pine forest. When we crossed the bridge this morning, we met more pilgrims and not until the end of the day did we see even more pilgrims. These pilgrims wore the leather aprons and wooden gloves, taking 3 steps then flinging themselves prostrate on the road sliding forward. They have a support cart and on the back a small solar panel.
Tomorrow we go higher to position ourselves to get over the Serkhyam La Pass (4515m) and down to a lower elevation. Our next milestone will be getting past the PSB in Bayi.
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Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 8,184 km (5,082 miles)
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