Tibet

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So after a couple more days chilling out in Kathmandu, the strikes finished, with no outcome!!! Anyway, we hitched a ride to the China/Nepal boarder with a bunch of other tourists (the company we booked our "tour" through thought we need an escort!) which was sweet as, except this loser who thought that he was flying to Lhasa and caught a cab to the airport because the mini van was 5 minutes late, so we all had to spend an extra couple of hours driving around looking for him, no fun at 5am. After a very painfully slow trip, which we could have biked faster, we finally arrived at the border. This crossing was more hassel than the other land boarders we have encounted, but not as difficult as we were expecting. We had to get our temperatures taken, Katherines passport almost didn't make it (the Chinese don't like her passport number), had to hide the lonely planet but the only thing they were worried about was the milk powder, i think they might have thought it was coke.

We were then picked up by our guide in the very palacial jeep, the flashest car we have seen in quite some time. We then were transfered to Nyalam, not very far away but there was so much road works that we were forever stopping and reversing back up the road, they really need to work on the lollypop men!! At Nyalam we realised what the new theme of the next couple of weeks would be, not that Katherine was hungry as everything is still pretty cheap, $3 for a bowl of noddles, but that i was freezing. In a couple of days Katherine would join me in realising how cold it actually was. The other interesting thing about Tibet is that it is based on Beijing time, this meant i didn't have to get up until 9.30 ish but it was still dark at 9am in the mornng and the sun didn't set until 7.30 so dinner was not until after 8.30pm, it took awhile to get use to.

The next day we planned to ride down from the top of the pass all the way to Trigri but it was so unbelieveably freezing that whilst riding i was wearing full thermals, two pairs of trousers, 2 icebreakers, puffer jacket, rain jacket, 2 pairs of socks, 3 gloves, a woolly hat and a helmet, its surprising that i could actually move, but yet we were still freezing. It was a shame that our fingers were frozen solid and could move enough to brake or change gear, makes biking a little more interesting. So unfortunately couldn't ride the down hills (or the up hills thanks to the altitude) so were left with only the flat stuff.

On Christmas day we woke early to watch the sun rise over everst before continuing to Rongpu, where there is the highest monastary in the world before toughing up and riding up to everest base camp. This was pretty cool, made slightly more challenging by the patches of ice encounted (maybe alittle bigger than patches as they were bout 20m long), the views of everest were 10 times cooler that the nepal side, but because there is a road the whole setting probably is not quite as amazing, you don't fell like you are in the middle of the mountains as much.

Stayed the night at Rungpu, which is the coldest either of us have been. We both slept in full polypros (and me with a puffer jacket), sleeping bags and at lest 6 blankets. I took my drink bottle to bed as a hottie, by about 2am it was cold so i put it on the ground, by 5am when i went to get a drink, it was frozen solid. Thats how cold it was. Advice for anyone thinking about going to base camp in the middle of winter, don't buy a "never winter" sleeping bag that has a rating of 1 degree, you will get cold! But the cold did mean that the stars at night were so amazing, one of the joys of altitude, you end up needing to pee every couple of hours, so you get to see the night sky at it best.

For the next few days it was freezing cold so we sat in the jeep in our sleeping bags (me with my trusty hottie) - the heater didn't work in the back, and only really did riding around towns as you couldn't spend more than an hour outside at a time without getting hypertherma. Finally made it Shigatse (the second largest town in tibet). It a pretty cool town, the Tashilhunpa monastary was pretty amazing, very big. Although there were lots of pilgrams doing their thing and at one point we thought that a riot would breakout with everyone trying to get into the temple and us getting in the way so our guide had to come and save us - very embrassing. That evening we tryed to go out for tea at a random place that we liked the look of rather than what the guide said (this was the fist town big enough to have a selection) but they all told up we couldn't eat there or they were shut, so we ended up back where the guide said. But the standard of hotel was better here, the hotels had runing water and we even had our own bathroom. Consequently we thought that we would have a shower. The only problem with this was that you had to rung the water for 5 minutes to warm up and by the time that you went to get into the shower the water on the floor was frozen.

From here we continued to Gyantse and by now Katherine had contracted full blown AMS, which could have been due to all the beer we were drinking (but i was cheaper than tea or coke so there was no other option). In Gyantse there was another stupa that we visted that had 7 floors and 100 rooms, very cool. From here we drove to Lhasa, passing a few lakes that reminded both of us of central otago. Also past quite a few sheep (some of which had bankets on) but i don't think the guide could understand why neither Katherine or i were that amazed by the sheep, we tryed to explan but i don't think i helped that they thought we were from Switzerland.

By this point both of us were getting pretty bored with all the driving and wanted to be biking, but couldn't so we comindered the vehicle and both ended up driving!!! Lots of fun. The only time both the guide and driver had their seat belts on was went we were driving which both of us thought was very unfair as the driver didn't know how to corner, and we are good drivers, we didn't even let on that we drive on the left - i don't think that we would have been able to drive if they new this 😊

Finally made it to Lhasa where we hung out for a few days, visited the Potala, Jorkhung temple and a few other sites that were pretty cool. We had a pretty flash hotel that had underfloor heating and was warm enough to have a shower. But it was in a pretty cool location, over looking the Jorkhong temple where hundreds of people just walked around in circles all day. On my birthday we went out to the flashes restaurant we could find and spent a whopping $30 on dinner including a bottle of wine. Trying to decide what wine to get was pretty interesting but the lovely waitress said the great wall was "gooda" than the rest, so we went with her recommendation, which turned out to be pretty good. On new years we tryed to find a amping party to attend but nothing much was happening so instead we spent the evening watching all the army men practising all their drills and then got KFC sundaes and walked in cirlces around the temple with everyone else, it was snowing and about -4 so we got some pretty odd looks for eating ice-cream, but only made it to about 10.30pm when everything was shut and we had to retreat to the warmth of our hotel.

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Photos

Xmas day ride
Jane riding back down from Everest base camp