From a narrow point in the valley we glimpse the friendship highway for the first time. Wow, we have been cycling to this point for so long and now the road to Kathmandu is before us, but happily we do not have to turn right up the long climb and another 5000 m high pass. Instead we turn left and downhill for once towards Lhasa, passing a large chorten and ruined fortifications, and swing on to the wide but surprisingly still bumpy and corrugated main road. White washed Traditional Tibetan houses dot the valley and loads of ruined forts and manor [View Full Entry]

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The road east from Horchu was bad and we were climbing up towards the high pass of Maryam La. Those two nights were really cold, but the scenery was great. A big salt lake surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of kiang (Tibetan wild ass). That morning we were able to act as hosts as we shared a cup of tea with a nomad guy who was walking across the vast wide valley, presumably to get to the houses on the far side. As we got close to the pass though we were greeted by yelling happy children, part of nomad families, [View Full Entry]

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After a short but well earned rest at Ali it was time to leave again. We had not quite got used to our luxury room with en-suite, breakfast and TV. This was good since we needed to be tough. We had passed the least inhabited stretch of our route across Tibet but the road ahead was not going to fall below 4000 metres until Lhatse, well over 1000km to the east and mostly along the same terrible unsurfaced roads. The first day was a breeze: fresh legs, good new tarmac and easy passes. Leaving Ali we cycled across the Indus valley [View Full Entry]

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High altitude, thin, freezing dry air; intense harsh sunlight, galeforce winds with sub-zero windchill, hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of the worst road surface imaginable; deep soft sand or gravel, rutted, corrugated dirt tracks, many stretches with no water or food for tens or hundreds of kilometres, dozens of high passes, no shower or even a wash for weeks, and nightime temperatures of -25 degrees C or lower. Welcome to the 219; Not an Easy Road, in fact probably one of the hardest and worst roads in the world, but at the same time one of the best and most rewarding. [View Full Entry]

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The Traffic Hotel in Tashkurgan loomed high and soviet-esque above us. It looks a bit posh and expensive I say to Robin, so does this whole place he replies. It was true China looked amazingly different to Pakistan. We noticed it immediately on crossing the border at the top of the Khunjerab Pass, even close to 5000m the Chinese have managed to build a super wide and smooth perfect new road. We watched the miles slide by effortlessly and we lamented the fact that Chinese regulations meant we were on the bus at all, but we were together with our soldier [View Full Entry]

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After a long night and even longer following day on the not-so-luxury "VIP" bus we finally arrive in Skardu. We would have preffered to cycle here from Kargil but the road west of Kargil is out of bounds and it is only possible to travel about 10km along the road east from Skardu. However we are back in Ladakh, sort of. Skardu is the capital of Baltistan and the former winter capital of Ladakh, although at later times Baltistan came to control all of Ladakh along with much of what is now Northern Pakistan. We are back on the Indus and [View Full Entry]

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In Urdu/Hindi "Chelo" means "go" or "to go" and so the phrase"Chelo Pakistan" means literally "go to Pakistan". Seems pretty harmless but no, in India this is the worst insult you can give to somebody - really, you can use a string of F-words and other expletives and they will still be there waggling their head, smiling stupidly and doing whatever it was that drove you crazy in the first place. But tell them to Chelo Pakistan and you get a serious reaction. This is really quite sad and I didn't beleive it myself until the first and only time I [View Full Entry]

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After a bit of a tearful goodbye to Chan we finally set off cycling from Leh on the road to Srinagar. We were heading off into the desert and three prgressively smaller passes later we would enter the coveted kingdom of Kashmir. That first day however the going was tough, we were not cycle fit after 3 weeks in the city and of course our old friend the wind was keen to make his presence known, always trying to keep us in Leh of course! The hills were deceptively long and we never seemed to make much progress. From time to [View Full Entry]

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Our plan when we arrived in Leh was not to stay too long. We had been longing for high mountains and nice people and really were looking forward to leaving India and returning to Pakistan, where we had wonderful memories of just those things. However in Ladakh we found a wonderful "kingdom" full of smiling people, beautiful mountains, massive rivers, different customs and buddhist culture. The vastness of the Indus valley and the scale of the landscape blew our minds and we found ourselves on one of the first nights there sitting at the massive World Peace/Shanti Stupa gazing at the [View Full Entry]

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We had wanted to cycle over the Himalaya from Nepal into Tibet but it was not possible, instead we devised a longer route to China that will eventually take us over the Karakorum from Pakistan, but like crazy fools there was still this nagging desire to cycle over the Himalaya, especially since we had not even managed to get up in among the mountains in Nepal and had then been forced to skip Uttaranchal, thus missing the Nanda Devi range and the source of the Ganga. Except we weren't forced to to miss it, we chose to, 'cos instead we had [View Full Entry]

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