Lhasa to Yunnan

Left Lhasa after 13 days. Planned to stay five or so, but caught a cold with a strong cough which I had to cure first. The cough was persistent, but I decided that there was no point in hanging out for a nother week or so hoping it would go away. Don't get me wrong, Lhasa is a great place to hangout (except for bedbugs and some nutcases in dorms...) and I could have easily stayed for another month or two, but the winter was approaching and my visa about to expire and I can't gewt extension in Tibet! So I left on 2nd of October. The road was first flat, and then climbed steadily up the first pass to an altitude of 5010m. Afterwards a long decend down for a couple of hundred km's until it climbed the 2nd pass after the newly build chinese town of Bayi. The scenery looked somewhat like Skandinavia or Kanada. On the other side of the 2nd pass it even looked like in Austria or Bavaria! From the 2nd pass the road dropped down into the Brahmaputra valley from about 4500m to almost 2000m. It was quite humid and in some parts you could have had problems with leeches when getting of the road into the woods. I didn't as I had been warned and I passed this area in 1 day. What followed was a long climb up to the 3rd pass, again almost 4500m.

In the next town, Baxoi, I slept the first time in a hotel since I left Lhasa. This was due to the nature of travelling in Tibet: officially it's illegal to travel individually (or without a travelpermit) which individuals can't get anyway for eastern Tibet. And because I didn't want to get into trouble with the PSB until I made it half way to Yunnan-Province which is regarded to be "safe", I camped all the time (I prefer camping over paid accomodation anyway, but that's another story). From Baxoi the road dropped again into the valley of another big stream: the Salween river. From there, it was an alsmost 2000 vertical meter climb up to the Game-La (pass) on unsealed road. Arriving at the top of the pass at 9pm, I managed to do it in 1 day. Really beautiful climb! Down on asfalt to and on to Zhogang. What I expected to be an easy do, just going down on asfalt, turned out to be more strenous than climbing this pass the day before: loads of roadconstruction, annoying kids, regarding one as entertainment or source to extort presents, headwind...

Arriving in Zhogang I was pretty exhausted and didn't care about the PSB - so I checked in a quite expensive hotel (the only one) to relax for a few hours and there was no campspot before Zhogang anyway. After checking out the room, I saw police down in the yard. They came here for me... I told them that I was going to Yunnan, so the guy just checked my passport for the colourful visas... ;-)

The next day, headwind again, and another 5000m+ pass on unsealed road. As I dropped my camera the day before and it was not working properly anymore, I didn't bother and went downhill as fast as possible (slow...) to reach some warmer regions again. Camped after a small village and climbed a little pas s the next day before the road dropped down into the Mekong Valley.

As I just bought some supplies, and had lunch, which a group of chinese and tibetan guys invited me to (for the first time that locals paid me a meal, thx guys!), a chinese guy gestured me that there is another couple staying at a site further down the road. It turned out that it was Patrick and Sophie from Holland, and the place they stayed was just awesome: nice park with shady trees and they even had a swimming pool! I'm pretty sure there doesn't exist another place like this in Tibet...

The next day another tough climb up a double pass, then dropping down into Markham. Markham is kind of a key-location when travelling from Yunnan towards Lhasa. A I was going the other way, I didn't have any problems, the police even invited me for dinner!

After Markham the bad unsealed road continued through villages with some doubtful kids and adults, but most of them were ok. Climbed up a midsize pass in headwind through roadconstruction sites and camped a few km's down on the other side.

What followed the next day was downhill through 40km of roadconstruction down again to the Mekong. Crossed the border from Tibet into Yunnan. The scenery was spektacular and I was really piied off that my camera was not working!

For some reason I thought from now on it would be piece of cake, as I expected asfalt, and no big climbs anymore... I was so wrong! 3 days followed with climbs ranging from 1600 vert. meters to almost 2000. Yes, there was asfalt. But also some stretches of cobblestone road and headwind... But the scenery was more then rewarding. There was the Meili-mountainrange which glaciers that appears sometimes to be so close, I felt I could reach out and touch them! And then cycling these gorgeous mountain roads climbing up hundreds of meters and 2 meters besides the road there's 1000m of almost vertical drop - and no guard reiling...

Finally I reached Shangri-La (Zhongdian) where I am having some well-deserved restdays...

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