July 15th, day 89, Golmud - Bushcamp en route to Lhasa
The most notable feature of the day was the roads and how they start to conspire against us now we're nearing Tibet. Around here the standard way to do roadworks is to close the whole section of road and build another temporary road to the side. These temporary roads are narrow, rough, and very very muddy. Chinese lorries are very big and overloaded and frequently get stuck in the mud so nothing can pass in either direction. Here we are delayed by about 2 hours.
Apart from the traffic jams, the road starts to wind up higher and higher mountains, and we go over a pass of more than 5000m altitude. I've kept on popping the Diamox and this is helping me to adjust to the thin air, so the altitude is not a huge problem apart from getting breathless more easily than usual.
That night we come down a hill and camp amongst the mountains at about 4600m altitude.
July 16th, day 90, another bushcamp en route to Lhasa, entering TibetToday we are half way through the trip!
Another high pass at 5000m+ brings us into Tibet. Tibet is where Tibetans wish they could live independently of China and the Chinese are having none of it, so every few km along the road there are police checkpoints where our papers are checked, and we are given a minimum time limit for arriving at the next checkpoint a given distance away. The Chinese are very touchy about Tibet and foreign tourists have no right of travel without very strict limits, and we may only travel on a specific route as determined by our permit. Welcome to Tibet, Land of the Oppressed!
July 17th-21st, days 91-95, in Lhasa
No comments:
Post a Comment