May 7, 2007
To Past Karo La summit: Namru Chu valley
The wind picks up and blows hard for most of the night. Because of the exposed spot Patrick put the extra storm lines out and the tent stands firm except that the flapping of the rainfly keeps us awake for quite awhile.
In the morning the weather is beautiful again, blue sky and the sun is just peeking over the Eastern mountains as we break camp around 7:30. We push our bikes back to the road and set off around the lake, first to the fishing village of Pede Drang, then by 1100 to Nagarbe. The scenery around the lake is very nice, there are some spots with nice reflections of the mountains.
At lunch stop we get company from a sheepherder and his daughter. It's time to part with our yellow Gore-Tex Bike Nashbar rain jackets. They are wearing out and we bought some new North Face (hopefully the real thing) gortex jackets in Lhasa. We mailed the fleece insert jackets home and hope now that the jackets are really Gore-Tex and waterproof.
In Nagarbe, we order a take out dinner at a Chinese restaurant and buy some drinking water. From here the road climbs away from the lake, first a long straight road that slowly gains altitude. When we come to a junction where the road to Shigatse starts following a river into a canyon, the road turns to gravel. The road will probably eventually be paved in the near future. There are already concrete culverts in and they are building stone retaining walls. For the first 20km the surface is good. We stop to filter water enough so we can camp away from a river later this afternoon and decide to continue over the Karo La Pass.
We have very nice views of the mountains and glaciers. The last part gets steep and the surface bad so we have to walk sections. The pass is at 4942 meters, a new cut has been made for the road, a little higher is an old monument and prayer flags. After a short descent we come to the face of a massive glacier. There are some kids trying to sell us crystals and a couple of children and women that check out our bikes, but none cause trouble. Patrick takes some pictures of a chorten in front of the glacier and at a shop he buys a bottle of beer. The beer does not survive the corrugated road down the pass, it bounces out from under Rachel's bungee cords and shatters.
We go down about 8 kms until we reach the upper end of the Namru Chu valley. We pull off the road and find an awesome flat spot just across an irrigation ditch. We have an impressive view of a glacier flowing off the 7190 meter high Mt. Naijior Kangsang and a wide green valley in the three other directions. We heat up our Chinese take out food, have coffee and cookies and settle into our tent to read as the sun disappears behind the clouds.
And it turns cold.
Today's ride: 74 km (46 miles)
Total: 8,842 km (5,491 miles)
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