There I rendezvoused with 10 riders led by Tuan Nguyen, of MotoTours Asia, who has been working motorbike excursions in Southeast Asia for greater than 30 years.
“Tibet is a particular place: the historical past, the Buddhist tradition, the panorama,” he says. “And it’s a mecca for journey riders.”
Nguyen spent months organising the required permits and paperwork. However the border police at Lao Cai merely refused to allow us to journey his bikes throughout to China.
For 3 days the group waited listlessly in Lao Cai whereas Nguyen pleaded his case with numerous high-ranking officers, till he gave up and led us throughout the border on foot.
From there we took a four-hour prepare journey to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the place we misplaced one other day assembling a motley assortment of Chinese language-made bikes from numerous rental corporations earlier than lastly placing rubber to the highway.
Wish to go to China? How making use of for a vacationer visa may be very irritating
Wish to go to China? How making use of for a vacationer visa may be very irritating
With a lot time misplaced, Nguyen needed to speed up our itinerary. As an alternative of an already difficult 200km to 300km, we must put a median of 400km behind us every day to achieve Everest inside the allotted timeframe.
On the primary day we must cowl a whopping 500km.
An immaculate six-lane toll highway took us from Kunming previous the town of Dali, the place we had been alleged to spend a day exploring the labyrinthine alleyways of the traditional walled metropolis.
As an alternative, we stayed at Lijiang, 2,400 metres above sea stage, the place we had been additionally alleged to spend a day, acclimatising to the altitude. However we hit the highway vibrant and early the next morning.
From Lijiang our route took us alongside one other flawless toll highway interspersed with kilometres-long tunnels and an unlimited land bridge connecting Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of many deepest on the earth, to the town of Shangri-La.
We might hardly include our disappointment on setting eyes on this fabled place: a colorless assortment of high-rise residences infested with stray canine. Aside from the Internal Concord Stupa of Pagoda, the most important and tallest white pagoda on the earth, we discovered nothing to see or do there.
From Shangri-La the freeway gave approach to a winding, damaged, two-lane highway that marked our introduction to the Himalayas.
The temperature plummeted to close zero as we traversed mountain passes 3,000 to 4,000 metres excessive. However with three layers of clothes and insulated leather-based gloves, I managed to maintain the late autumn chill at bay.
Night time had already fallen after we reached Deqen, a frontier city the place China meets Tibet and the locals are indistinguishable from their westerly neighbours.
Wearing technicolour aprons, lengthy sheepskin coats and golden amulets in piled-up hair, deep traces rake the completely sunburned faces.
With no heating in our resort and a mattress as exhausting as a door, we didn’t get a lot sleep on our second evening on the highway. However at dawn we had been rewarded with panoramic views of snow-capped Khawa Karpo, which, at 6,740 metres, is without doubt one of the highest unclimbed mountains on the earth.
After a breakfast of noodles and boiled eggs, we obtained again on our bikes and careered alongside a two-lane mountain highway that curled down the face of the great peaks and troughs of the northern Himalayas.
By late morning we discovered ourselves inside a colossal ravine with sheer rock partitions stretching tons of of metres excessive, tainted pink with deposits of iron ore.
My lips are actually fully blistered and my eyes gained’t cease weeping however I chunk by way of the ache after seeing teams of pilgrims bent ahead, preventing their method by way of the wind and snow
It’s prohibited to journey, drive and even stroll away from an airport in Tibet with out an authorised information. Ours, who requested to not be named, had been shadowing us in a assist car.
Once we arrived on the Yunnan-Tibet border he started working presenting our passports, Tibet journey permits, Chinese language driver’s licences and a manila folder filled with paperwork to unsmiling Folks’s Liberation Military troopers. Then we lined up for mugpictures.
This advanced and time-consuming process must be replicated at a dozen-odd checkpoints throughout the journey, in addition to each time we crammed up with gasoline and checked right into a resort.
Our first meal in Tibet is a celebrated affair held at a comfortable hotpot restaurant the place waiters sing Tibetan folks songs as they bus meats, greens and noodles to our tables. Hugs are exchanged.
From there we proceed west, excessive into the mountains alongside a mud highway punctuated by frozen waterfalls and stalactites clinging precariously to cliffs.
At about 2pm we attain a 4,800-metre mountain go adorned with hundreds of stone piles and multicoloured Buddhist prayer flags, representing the 5 parts. With snow overlaying the bottom and thick mist wafting by way of the air, the local weather will not be welcoming however tolerable for a short time.
The identical can’t be mentioned after we hit the 5,000-metre mark, on the aforementioned Dongda Go. By the point we verify right into a resort after darkish, the freeze has labored its method so deep into my bones that every one I can do is kick off my boots and shiver below the bedcovers.
I curse the day I made a decision to journey by way of Tibet.
The subsequent morning, I resolve to inform Nguyen that I can not go on; using in Tibet simply hurts an excessive amount of. However once I pull again the curtains in my room, I see essentially the most extraordinary sight: an previous Tibetan man strolling up the highway with an animal disguise strapped to his chest and picket blocks strapped to his arms.
All of the sudden he stops and lies down on the highway, touching it along with his brow as vans whoosh previous dangerously quick. He then stands up and raises his arms above his head and claps earlier than taking one other few steps and repeating the ritual.
At breakfast, our information explains the previous man is a pilgrim strolling to Lhasa, the capital and holy of holies for Tibetan Buddhists. His objective? To atone for sins actual or imagined and generate goodwill for others within the hope he will probably be reincarnated as a better life type.
Some pilgrims will spend a 12 months or two on the highway, tenting within the open and surviving on alms or what little provisions they’ll carry.
The superhuman religion that drives the previous man makes me rethink my resolution to stop. If he can cross Tibet on foot, how can I fail to do the identical given the relative consolation of a motorbike and nonetheless name myself a person?
Earlier than setting off, nonetheless, I go to an out of doors market the place I purchase a giant pair of plastic mitts with furry innards designed to be threaded round motorbike hand grips.
Right now, we now have two extra mountain passes to cross. The primary, Nujiang, at 5,218 metres, is very like the Tibet of the image books, with the sunlit, lonely heights of snowy peaks trying down at us from both facet of the highway.
On the prime of the go we meet one other journey rider: a Chinese language man with a protracted, sharp fringe who seems to be like a Manga character and travels along with his canine, Cash, who he clothes in a jacket and ski goggles. We additionally meet a younger Chinese language tech millionaire cruising round in a white Lamborghini. Like most individuals we encounter, neither speaks a phrase of English. However that doesn’t forestall us from establishing a pleasant rapport.
After nibbling on greasy fried meat and soggy, overcooked greens (Tibet will not be a foodie vacation spot), we journey down the opposite facet of the go.
Having negotiated 72 hairpin turns we attain a valley with a large, jade-coloured river working by way of it, a light local weather and dense inexperienced forests that remind me of the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The ultimate 80km of the day takes us up the three,528-metre Zoji La Go at nighttime. A blizzard is blowing.
Now armed with my woolly mitts and as much as 5 layers of clothes – primarily the whole lot I packed – a few of my fingertips nonetheless flip numb however the ache doesn’t unfold any additional.
My lips are actually fully blistered and my eyes gained’t cease weeping however I chunk by way of the ache after seeing teams of pilgrims bent ahead, preventing their method by way of the wind and snow. Some are accompanied by kids.
We additionally go Olympic-fit Chinese language vacationers biking up the mountain.
The next morning we be part of Route 318 – aka the Friendship Freeway. Stretching 5,476km from Shanghai to Nepal, it is without doubt one of the longest roads on the earth and a must-do for Chinese language journey riders, who we see in higher numbers as we strategy Lhasa.
There, we take a relaxation day and go to the Potala Palace, a hovering pink and white fortress that’s the former winter residence of the Dalai Lama; and Jokhang Temple, the ultimate vacation spot of pilgrims in Tibet, the place they take their final bow in entrance of a golden statue of the Buddha.
From Lhasa we proceed west to Everest. The panorama turns into desert-like, with mammoth pyramid-shaped hills underscored by monasteries with gold pointed pinnacles and frozen lakes and rivers that turn into mirrors below the solar.
Each nook and bend within the highway delivers surroundings extra epic than that on the final.
There are solely half-hour of daylight left after we enter the mouth of the great canyon that results in the 5,205-metre-high Pang La Go.
The circumstances are as harsh as they had been within the Dongda Mountains and my physique continues to be racked with ache. However after every week in Tibet, I’ve considerably acclimatised, ripping up the highway with peg-threatening leans that solely successive days of using at excessive speeds can engender.
It’s on this stretch that, for the primary time, I overtake Nguyen, who nonetheless rides just like the wind regardless of having caught a chilly and shivering from fever.
“I do know issues haven’t been good,” he confesses in a while. “It’s one of the crucial tough journeys I’ve carried out in my life; not solely from a logistical perspective.
“The altitude, the climate, the highway circumstances. It’s not straightforward and it’s actually not for everybody. However the folks on this group are all very skilled riders and I warned them it might not be straightforward.
“I’m going to do issues very in a different way on the subsequent journey. No using at evening. And as a substitute of crossing at Lao Cai we’ll undergo Laos to get to China to keep away from issues. I’ve crossed over with bikes there 100 occasions.”
The Everest North Base Camp is a little bit of an anticlimax as a result of, 25km earlier than the end line, we’re pressured to dismount at a navy checkpoint and full the journey in a bus.
There isn’t a denying the fantastic thing about Everest, the icy beast that has claimed the lives of at the very least 322 climbers since data started, in 1922, in accordance with the Himalayan Database. But it surely pales compared to what I see the next day, after we return to Lhasa, to drop off our bikes to be freighted again to Kunming.
Document-holding Everest climber blames Nepal companies for deaths, urges inquiry
Document-holding Everest climber blames Nepal companies for deaths, urges inquiry
At first it seems like a mirage below the evident solar, so white and phosphorescent it looks like the seat of God himself: the Kharola Glacier. A gargantuan tongue of ice set between the peaks of Mount Noijin Kangsang, Kharola is essentially the most accessible glacier in Tibet, set solely 300 metres from a bit of highway that has greater than 100 glaciers in its neighborhood.
I snap a photograph in complete daylight from a couple of kilometres away and goal to take a couple of extra on the base of the glacier. However with out warning, a gale is whipped up and the temperature drops like a bomb.
Quickly we’re using by way of complete snow and the horrible numbness returns to my fingers and toes with a vengeance. And simply once I assume issues can’t get any worse, ice begins to type on the within of my helmet and I’m pressured to raise the visor, wincing with ache each time a snowflake lands in my eyes.
I inch my bike by way of the now whited-out world in blind hope I don’t journey headlong right into a wandering yak or a swerving truck.
At that second I realise what it means to dare to tackle Tibet, a land of extremes the place the fantastic thing about the panorama is matched by the ferocity of the local weather, and blue skies are as fleeting because the happiness of the human soul.
