May 5, 2007
Free Camp up Kampa La: Hotel owner gives us a Khata
Today we set off again, down the Friendship Highway towards Kathmandu. Today is also 14 years since we met near Nelson New Zealand and 12 years since Patrick flew to Chicago with his bike and one suitcase to meet up again with Rachel.
The hotel restaurant doesn't open until 8:00am, so we get to sleep in a little to have one more good breakfast. We can't leave without one last muesli, French toast and coffee. That's good since we had a late evening, watching the semifinals of snooker. As we return to our room, we are given the traditional offering of a white scarf called Khata symbolizing friendship. We ride to the Dunya restaurant to pick up two cheese sandwiches to go that we ordered last evening. Another two hundred meters we stop at the Spin Cafe where we wake up Pazu Kong and his partner. They slept in the cafe so they would not miss us this morning. It's too early for Kong to ride his bike, but his partner will show us the way out of Lhasa for about 27km. We have some group pictures and they also present us with the prayer scarf and some chewing gum for the road.
We ride to the Potala for some more pictures of us and our bikes. We are joined by a friendly pilgrim for one shot. Then we are off, down a long (at least 10km) concrete boulevard amidst Chinese buildings and military compounds. After about 15km we are clear of the city and start following the Kyi Chu River. Just before a Buddha carved in a rock wall our Chinese guide leaves us. The rock carving is pretty, there is an entrance gate, but very unlike the Chinese, there's no entrance fee... We meet several groups of tourists and three boys begging for money. We'll have to get used to that, tourism has made the people along the Friendship Highway very different from the people in Eastern Tibet.
In Chusul, an ugly little town, we pick up take out Chinese, two bottles of Lhasa beer and drinking water for tonight's dinner. About 12km further we leave the Central Friendship Highway, the most direct route to Shigatse, and cross the Kyi Chu River over a heavily guarded bridge to start the Southern Friendship Highway. Our road notes promises us a campsite amongst willow trees at about 12km onto the newly paved road...but we miss it. The road starts to climb from here though, we do another 4 km with about 250 meter altitude gain to a campsite at mile marker 16. Just before that we have our first run in with some pushy kids that harass Rachel. A little further are some stone throwers that Patrick threatens back with his bike pump.
The site we choose is up a hill, on some terraced fields that have not been worked for awhile. Above us are the ruins of a house. We have a nice view down the valley from here and are fairly well hidden from the road. Later a couple of sheepherders do discover us, but they cause no trouble. We are both feeling the effect of the altitude again even though we are only about 200 meters higher that Lhasa. We both feel dizzy when we exert ourselves or get up too quickly.
Of course this could also be blamed on the Lhasa beer.
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Today's ride: 87 km (54 miles)
Total: 8,734 km (5,424 miles)
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