April 7, 2007
To Mountain View Free camp: Lunch provided by a road crew
Last night as the evening progressed the workers started returning to the woven polyester tarp covered huts. A few at a time would come to the tent and say hello or offer food and nuts. We retired early, the alarm set for 2am.
Patrick awakens before the alarm. We pack up eat a sugar crisp cereal bar, and with headlamps we set off. The going is difficult. The surface of the road constantly changes, and the headlamps only give enough light to see a few feet ahead. The edge of the road is also very near with a drop off to a deep canyon. We end up mostly walking down the 4.5km to the first checkpoint.
Then through town still walking, our path is announced by waking up every dog until past the second checkpoint. And we continue walking the 4km downhill. The moon is 3/4 waning and lights up the clouds in the sky and snow on the mountain tops. About 6am we stop and fix hot coffee and hot cereal.
Gradually the sun lights the road enough for us to stop using our headlamps, but the road is steep and the surface continues to be unsafe in spots. We can see the road weave through the side valleys. The riding is very tough today, the road is under construction from the Tibetan border to as far as we travel today. They are blasting, digging and pushing rocks to widen it. Nice when it is finished, but for now we have to deal with the very rough and loose surface that together with the steepness of the grade forces us to walk long stretches.
We follow the Mekong river valley but the road climbs higher and higher until we are at least 800 meters above it. There are nice vistas of the green irrigated fields, flat roofed Tibetan houses and the red and brown of the rock. High above soar snowcapped Himalayan peaks. We realize we won't be able to climb the almost 2000meters we need to get over the pass today. We'll have to save some of the elevation gain for tomorrow.
At about 1pm just as a rain and hail storm sweeps across the valley, we are invited for lunch in one of the road construction shacks. An engineer/surveyor waves us down and even though he speaks no English, gets us seated inside the tent, gives us fruit and snacks and water, while the cook fixes us a very nice meal of rice with several vegetable/meat dishes. People in China don't cut the fat off their meat, you can't be too picky here. It's good energy for us! We are stuffed when we continue on.
The road makes a 90 degree turn East, away from the Mekong and up a side valley. We think we can see the pass on the ridge ahead. Too far for today. We filter water at a road cut where a good stream of water appears from the rock, then find an awesome campsite with a million dollar view towards the mountains in the West.
That was the good news, there was a campsite. The bad news it was a chore hauling all our gear in but worth the effort. We are still full from lunch, so we have only coffee and a snack for dinner. Patrick takes pictures of an awesome sunset, we wait and see what the sunrise will do tomorrow.
A long day and we passed the first checkpoint!
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Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 7,646 km (4,748 miles)
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