Sichuan, China

Debating taking place in the third beggest moestary on the plaatua

This is Party Tibetan. After buying some eggs for our breakfast he pulled up and invited us to dinner with excellent english. After having excellent meal(this is Sichuan after all). We went for tea and he invited us to stay in his this evening and we accepted . A little bit later he started saying he would put us up in a hotel. NOt wanting to put him out of pocket we said no but he insisted. We accepted and then later he told us that we were staying in a hotel instead of his house because he had just been invited to a party. We laughed and said we’d see him tomorrow and left him to go to his party. The next mornign Party Tibetan arrived half an hour late stinking of drink and looking failry hungover. We walked around the local monestary third biggest on the plataue.

This family pulled up and pilled out i got pictures with them all

We bumped into this chinese cycle coming the opposite way to us. With our broken chinese and his broken english we figured out he was spending three years cycling around just china(you’d need it). And yes he is cycleing with a guitar on his back.

Less than 1000km left as a trio.

These guys ran across a field craxled under and fence and climbed the hill to the road to say Goshe Delleg

These guys were all smiles until the camera came out.

Family Who say us from the road came over to have a better look. This actually happens all the time especially here.

Bye guys

Many people wave you over for tea and unfortunaly you can’t stop at all of them or you wouldn’t get anywhere. This monk was just short of jump up and down so i just could refuse. He was with a group camping in the mountains picking the catapiller fungus. He gave us tea yogurt with sugar and a soft drink for the road.

Long uphills have long downhills

but they don’t last foreve

There aren’t any rocks in Qinghai but getting into Sichuan we began to see mantras carved everywhere

and buddhas

Andre getting of his bike to get the best shot.

Seeing the top of the pass you will be at in and hour

Getting closer to the top of a climb we can be heard chanting tunnel to each other, hoping to will one into existence.

Andre and I joined this Tibetan for a lift up the pass

We often Have the whole monestary to ourselves when we come across them on the road

Unfortunatly this door was lokked, would have been fun to see the inside.

Monastery roof

At the higher altitudes, vehicles have reduced horspower because of the thinner air. So the roads can’t be too steep. This results in beatiful switchbacks winding their way over the pass.

Someone gave this to me on a climb turned out to be soda water. NOt quite as useful as the red bull they gave hugo.

The minorities across China are very popular tourist attractions. So after destroying all the clutures the communist party give grants to to minorities to rebuild their traditional houses

Giant tibetan dwarfing my bike

We got invited for dinner by a some tibetans building a house near our camp spot.

Tibetan food may not be the most exciting but the company is second to none.

It wasn’t long before they were dressing us in tradition clothes

My one was sheaap skin lined and i was dying

Weather can get pretty bad

The pandas are completely focused on eating. They don’t even move they’re heads to see where the bamboo is they just grope at the pile hoping to pidk something up while they still eating

Little guys less than a week old

The panda cubs were hilariously. Seeing these guys climb and wrestle explains why there are so few left in the wild.

While the other two cubs were wrestling this guy was chilling at the top of a tree

Their heads and necks are as long as their arms and legs so they’re used as much when climbing

Gotta get the ‘gram.

That top one is actually stuck in the Y. After hitting the other one in the face until he knocked him off he fell out and landed on his head.

A red panda having lunch.

And the rest of them having a nap

Turns out Hugo is taller than a red panda

Andre roughhousing

Aww, last shot of us.

Qhinghai, China

Everyone who saw us was asking if we were on our way to Lhasa. It’s a popular destination for Chinese overlanders. Unfortunately, we would not be joining them.

Noodles in a filling station. After leaving here, a hilarious chinese guy on a motorbike hung out with us for the evening. After finding out he was going to Lhasa we asked if he was going to see the Potala Palace. Through his translator app he replies ‘No, i travel to feel the feeling’. Right answer.

Our first Prayer flags.

A Chinese businessman chasing an ibex for a photo

A brand new taoist temple. However interesting the temple was we would have been more interested in a restaurant

“Maybe theres a restaurant around this corner” we finally found somewhere well after dark. We were literally jumping with joy.

And we are officially on the plataue. Thats about the height of Mont Blanc for some refernce.

And the plataue is as a flat as you’d expect.

Can’t pass up a swim at 4000 m

The water at over 4000 m was pretty cold and after only few strokes i was gasping for breath. There isn’t much oxygen either at this altitude either. After cathching my breath i decided

Good bye Andre.

High grasslands

It snowed every night on the plateau.

All this snow would be burned off by noon at at this altitutde. As a combination of the stronger sun a and lower melting point.

After every climb there’s a descent, and on the plataue both are pretty big.

A giant Prayer wheel at our first monastery

Thanks for the coffee Vinnie.

Huge vultures scared from a carcas .

Combustion engines loose a lot of power due to the lower oxygen. So the roads have to be long winding switchbacks that never get too steep. make for pretty scenic riding.

A lot of the roads we’ve cycled on have been so fresh that they’re still steaming. This was one of them.

The wind was so strong we could barely stop.

This Brand new bridge towering over rural china sums up the country pretty well.

Evening riding is pretty nice.

Prayer wheels

Hugo and his crew

Stupa

Us and our gang.

Mani wall in Zhidou.

Monks having a waterfight

Someone doesn’t approve.

Hey mister.

Where did he learn that?

This is how we spend most of our days off.

Weather at the passes is pretty volatile.

A shaggy dog losing his winter coat.

Leaving Yushu.

One of our better camp sites.

Newly built temples are quite common as the Chinese realise their value to tourism.

All you have to to to receive a nice new temple is renounce any relation to the 14th Dalai Lama.

Monks practicing their dance moves.

Entering The Princess Yushu Temple valley.

Prayer Flags sending out good fortune to all sentient being. They are a pretty common sight all across the plateau.

Monks taking pictures of each other. They were all to happy to pose for mine when the saw me.

New chinese roads, ancient prayer flags

Hup the Reds.

A wrathful Dharma protector. If you give away any sect secrets and he’ll be coming after you.

The faithfull circumambulating the world’s largest Mani Wall.

This monastery was destroyed. Our guide explains what happened, something involving guns. Couldn’t figure out whart or whom they were used on.

A veiw into a prayer hall while monks chant.

This little guy became our selfassigned guide for the monastery

Chinese make pretty nice roads.

We had all four season going over this pass

We met a lot of families picking caterpillar fungus. They were even more surprised to see us on bikes up this pass then we were seeing them. After chatting with them they gave us a push up the hill to get us going.

The weather cleared up when we reached the pass.

Day 161: Gaichacun to Yushu

The snow stopped and it remained overcast for the morning. Finn woke up feeling the effects of the altitude, finding it difficult to focus his sight properly. The man in the shop opposite which we camped sold him a sheaf of tablets that seemed to cure the problem and so we got underway.
We had camped before a pass so a decent chunk of the morning was spent getting over that. As we approached the top so,e bad weather blew in bringing with it snow and hail, reminding us that we were cycling now at 4800m at the top.

 

Finn observes the surroundings

 
 

getting over a pass in snow is all the more rewarding

 
On the descent we ran into another bike tourer coming the opposite direction. This was Alex, an American guy who had begun cycling from Bangkok. He was still new to bike touring had a bunch of questions for us. We spent over an hour talking beside the road, handing out tips about the road ahead. He informed us that there was a small town at the bottom of this descent where we could get lunch. It’d had been a long time since we’d met an English speaking bike tourer on the road (let alone a native English speaker at all) and Alex likewise so we indulged in conversation.
As we said our goodbye I felt a bit bad for Alex, he had been complaining of riding into a headwind for the last 600km and he would have to put up with it at least one more day as the wind was at our backs, pushing down the mountains. We came down from the brown rocky pass and back into the greenery of the grassland between the peaks.

 

a nice long descent

  
 The road joined up with a river now and followed a wide curve up into a nook in the foothills where a town had sprung up. The main street was lined with one story open front shopfronts that mostly seemed to sell auto supplies or perform auto repair but at the edge of town we found a noodle place to get some food.
Alex had provided us with a valuable piece of information: that the last pass before Yushu that we had yet to climb could be avoided by taking the newly constructed tunnel. The tunnel wasn’t open to traffic yet but was finished and functional, he had come through the tunnel himself on the way up. With this in mind we knew we could make it to Yushu tonight, even though it was still about 80km off and now lunchtime. The final 40km were all downhill, all we had to do was get to the tunnel.
The lunchtime ride had us following the length of this picturesque valley under a now clear blue sky through the grassland. Small huts and monasteries sprang up along the road occasionally. As the road trended upwards we passed another little village of government-built identical houses. On the other side of this village we arrived at the tunnel.

   

an unfinished monastery

 Riding through the tunnel saved as a load of time. On the other side of the mountain the weather was not as clear, but the overcast sky added to the feeling of a complete scenery change as we descended rapidly front the open plateau into a narrow gorge between tall, tough looking grassy hills. We were once again reminded of Ireland, or probably more apt Scotland as I don’t think we have peaks near this high back home. Unfortunately I was enjoying the descent so much I forgot to stop and take photos.

 

the surprise tunnel

 
We pretty much descended right into the city of Yushu. We arrived in under the fading evening light in a misty drizzle, in some ways my favourite time of day and weather in which to enter a city. We pulled up at a cheap but satisfactory business hotel and had our first warm showers in 

Day 160: Zhidoi to Gaichacun

The weather cleared up the following day so we said goodbye to Tashi. His grandmother gave us a thangka, a thin white scarf given in Tibet as a good luck for travellers before we left.
The weather closed in again as we made the climb out of the valley in which Zhidoi sat. It started to hail then snow. The limited visibility was a stark contrast to the wide open vistas we had had the luxury of riding through before. The weather cleared up by the time we reached the top though, it seems to be a law of nature that as soon as you bother to put on the extra gear for bad weather it clears up.

 

Its almost June…

  
  

it did eventually clear up

 
It was a comparatively uneventful ride for the rest of the day. When we stopped for a break there was always at least one car that would stop and its passengers come over to take photos with us.

  
We spent most of the day climbing so by evening the temperature dropped significantly. A cold wind blew in and the snow started up again. We pulled into a small shop on the outskirts of a tiny hamlet and decided there was no point in continuing on and making ourselves miserable. We set up our tents in a field opposite the shop and crawled out of the wind and snow. 

  

Zhidoi

Tashi’s town of Zhidoi was very near a monastery, and a large once, that we were eager to see. Tashi taught some of the monks up there, including the young boy who was reincarnated Lama of this particular Buhdist sect and arranged for us all to go up there and have a look around. In return he wanted us to cook him his favourite western dish from his time abroad: mashed potatoes. 
Mashed potatoes made with yak butter is an unusual but tasty alternative, and Tashi seemed quite pleased with the meal. After lunch we borrowed his uncles car and drove out to the monastery. 
The Gongsa Monastery is huge, though not the biggest by a long shot. Tashis monk friend met us at the entrance and showed us around. Unfortunately we couldn’t get any photos inside the buildings. We saw first the prayer hall, lit by yak butter lamps the pungent smell of which you quickly learn to associate with Buddhist monasteries. Ere were a dozen or so monks in there chanting their sutras, and along one wall a shelf with that held all the monastery’s texts.

 

exterior ofmthe monastery

 
We then went to see two large halls that held, first a large statue of the founder of the yellow hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism that held a Guinness World Record of some category. The second a large stupa, a shrine to one of the Lamas of the monastery. I’m not sure if the stupa held any record, but judging by its size I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Finally we visited a third hall that was in the decoration phase of its construction, about five young guys had been brought in from Tibet proper to paint the detailed iconographic imagery on the walls.

 Afterwards our monk guide had to go off and teach, so we thanked him and said goodbye. The young novices of the monastery were playing in field at the bottom of a hill and Tashi suggested we go over and say hello to them, most of them hadn’t seen a westerner before and were very excited to see us.

 

with the young novices of the monastery, It acts like a boarding school mostly, the majoirty lf these kids will leave when they get older rather than become monks

 
 

with Tashi, our impromptu guide and host

 

We planned to leave Zhidoi the next day but a snowstorm blew in overnight and continued throughout the morning and then all day the next day, so we stayed an extra day taking shelter in Tashi’s place. We helped Tashi write application letters for scholarships to London Film School, where he had been accepted but couldn’t afford the tuition. Hopefully he gets the funding.

Day 159: Qumalai to Zhidoi

We woke up to a sunny day. We had breakfast (scrambled eggs and bread. Eating oats every day can get stale) and then hit the road. The old road that is, the new road ran almost in parallel to the old except 80m above along the face of the hill, rather than next to the river itself.  

the new road soaring high abive the old

 
We passed through a small police checkpost, the police more interested in collecting photos with us than our details. Then then we proceeded along this green valley, picturesque and serene. After a while we got it into our heads that we may as well ride on the new road since it seemed, for all intents and purposes, complete. Just not fully open to the public yet. We kept our eyes open for some way to get up onto it.
The first on road ran right through someone’s house, so that wasn’t really an option. A couple of kilometres down the road though the new road dipped a bit and a dirt track led up to it. We hauled the bikes along the track up to the road, a difficult feat in the thin air that required a lot of breath-catching breaks. But it was worth the effort, we were up on the new road with fresh Tarmac all to ourselves.

 

hauling bikes up onto the new road

 
As it turned out we needn’t have bothered exerting ourselves like that as not long after we got onto the road the old road merged with the new. From here we climbed out of the valley and up into a wide expanse of plains. A town lay on a river nestled up against the foothills of some mountains, we could have lunch there.

 

yet another dam

 
The town was another one of these newly renovated towns. We had lunch in a small noodle place next to a mani wall opposite a basketball court. The kids playing basketball found our presence much more amusing than their game and ogled us from the windows of the noodle place. They were a happy and excitable lot and accompanied us as we went to look at the mani wall after lunch, shouting out the Buhddist mantra ‘om mani padme hum’ as we walked around the wall to peals of laughter from their comrades. It would be the equivalent, I suppose, of a group of Chinese tourists out in some small village in Ireland looking at the local church while the local youths followed them shouting ‘our father who art in heaven’.

 

a large stupa next to communist party hq

 
As we were leaving town a car driven by a monk pulled up and a young Tibetan guy in skinny jeans got out and started speaking to us in perfect, unaccented English. This was Tashi. He invited us to stay with him in his place tonight, ‘just for kindness’. Not to turn down such kindness we agreed. He had to go teach for a coupe of hours, so we had some time to kill. There’s only so much unfiltered attention from locals a person can take at a time, so we rode out of town and hid under a bridge on the dried up river bed and watched a movie on Finns laptop.
We went back to town and met Tashi at the appointed time, 7 o’clock. He took us back to his place where we spoke to his uncle and aunt and said hello to his old grandmother who sat spinning her handheld prayer wheel. Tashi’s parent s were away as it was a holiday period in the region. Tashi explained that now was the time the locals went out into the hills to pick the catapult fungus, a rare fungus with medical properties that would be the sold on to China proper. We didn’t really understand exactly what he meant by ‘harvesting’, ‘medicinal properties’ or even ‘catapilar fungus’ but this is Tibet, there are some things we can’t fully understand.
Tashi showed us the spare room where we got to sleep indoors in a bed.

Day 158: Qumarlê to Qumalai

One of our coldest mornings out on the plateau this morning, not least because we had decided to camp so high up. A biting wind was blowing down and being thrown around in many different directions, funnelled by the multitude of valleys and bouncing off the mountain faces. It was overcast and a light snow had fallen yesterday, hard to believe it’s almost June but it makes sense now why the plateau is referred to by some as the third pole.  
We pedalled up and down many hills through quiet, empty landscape punctuated by prayer flags and yaks. We climbed a short pass and then down into the neighbouring valley where we began to climb a bigger pass with long switch-backs that would stretch for almost a kilometre before turning. Up here above 4000m the internal combustion engine powering the heavy trucks and machinery don’t work effectively, on account of the oxygen deprived air. As a result the road can’t be too steep or else a heavily laden truck won’t be able to get over it.

  
We got up the pass eventually, it’s the highest pass of this leg so that was a nice relief. From the top we could see a pretty big town down in the distance, and where there is a big town there’s the promise of a hot lunch. We took in the view from the pass for a while, waving at the Tibetans who would pass by on their motorcycles or watching the colourful paper flutter in the wind, thrown out of a car as it reaches the highest point on the road. We flew down the other side, propelled not only by gravity but also by the strong, stiff wind which seems to have finally decided which direction it wants to blow.

 

André pleased to be at the top

  

our bikes and the view

 The town of Qumalai was in the middle of receiving what we had started calling ‘the Han treatment’. If the desert towns we had passed through in Xianjiang were the finished product, Qumalai was midway through its transformation. We road in on a wide new boulevard, freshly laid, lined with workers building the footpath. To our left, stretches of identical government housing, to the right building sights with the soon to be towering monoliths of government building in various states of completion. We passed by a huge new hospital, from the outside bright and gleaming though if it was up and running yet I don’t know.
Eventually we got into the old Main Street of Qumalai, where shops and restaurants and hotels were up and running. The road was in the process of being resurfaced and with all the building going on around town and the strong wind blowing through a haze of dust had been kicked up. We had lunch in a Han run establishments, a delicious meal of red fried beef and potato.
Leaving Qumalai we had our backs to the strong wind. Out of town the new road wasn’t open yet so we followed the old road through a narrow valley beside a meandering stream in lush green grass. This valley then met the wide river valley that the stream fed into.

 

this somewhat bizarre statue was on the outskirts of town

  
  

following a small stream down to the big river

 
 The scenery here was dramatically different from what we had been through the previous days. Everything was much more green than before and landscape had left behind the open plains and low rolling hills for the steep spurs of the river valley. The Chinese obsession with construction and improvement here was startlingly evident when we saw the bridge that had been built for the new road to span this valley. It was huge and looked completely out of place, as if some aliens had come down and placed this concrete behemoth in this pastoral scene. Which in some ways is exactly what happened.

 

the towering new road

  

it was almost as if we’d cycled into some sort of exaggurated version of Ireland

 The old road followed the banks of the river. We kept cycling until we came across a big concrete sign slightly apart from the road which could act as a wind break and provide us with some shelter.

camped behind our rather effective wind break

Day 157: Qumahexiang to Qumarlê

Last night it snowed but in the morning the sky was clear and the sun shining. We started the morning off climbing up to the top of the pass. The descent down the other side was long and exhilarating in the cold morning air of the plateau. Minivans full of Tibetans honked and waved and some even stuck their phones out to get photos of the crazy foreigners who had decided to cycle up here. 

Finn greets a Tibetan on a motorcycle

  

André the Swede, happy to be back in snow

 The descent terminated when we reached a clear, fast flowing river in a green grassland. We followed a wide meander in the river into the town of Qumarlê. As we entered a whole load of locals came out of nearby building and swamped us with hellos and greetings. It was as if they were expecting us, some of them must have passed in those minivans.

 

all smiles after a long descent

  

the town welcoming party inspects our map

 We spoke with this welcoming party as best we could, told them where we were from and where we were going then took a couple of photos with them and said goodbye. We decided to have an early lunch at this town while we were here and stopped in at the only restaurant in town, a place run by a Hui.
After our noodle lunch we went to go explore the small Buddhist monastery behind the town, set out higgldy-piggldy in the wide grassland. We looked around the mani wall (sutra-ensribed stones piled up to make a wall) and a small chapel containing a large prayer wheel. We then passed the young novices who, excited to see us wanted to take some photos of us on their phone. Then an adult monk, their teacher probably maybe the abbot came over with a stern look on his face. We thought we were about to be reprimanded but when he arrived he broke into a smile, took out his phone and asked for a photo of his own. Then he took us to have a look inside the chapel, a small building with detailed paintings of Buddhist iconography in the walls and a large gold coloured Buddha statue in the centre. The place was heavy with the musky smell of yak butter burning candles.

 

the small monastary on the outskirts of town

  

a large prayer wheel in one ofmthe chapels

  

the Buhddist mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum” carved infront of the prayer stone wall

 
 

with the novies and their teacher

  
We decided that this would be a sort of cycling half day so after our visit to the small monastery we cycled for only two more hours, enough to get up over the other side of the next climb where we set up to camp and tried to relax on the windswept plain.

   
 

Day 156: ~90km East of Budongquan to Qumahexiang

Last nights snow washed out all the colour of the landscape this morning, leaving only the shape of the rolling hills and flat plateau between. The layer of snow was thin though and had started to melt by the time we were eating breakfast.   

Finn enjoying the brisk morning temperature

 
It was fantastic cycling up here on the plateau, and especially compared to what we had been riding in in Xianjiang. The landscape was appealing, wildlife roamed all around and the air was clean and clear. As we rode we passed by the tents and livestock of the nomadic yak herders, a frequent sight up here. At the top of each hill colourful prayer flags fluttered in the breeze.

 

prayer flags at the top of a hill

 
We had a long climb to contend with today before arriving at a town for lunch, but the gradient up here seems to be mercifully gradual. It was like a series of steps to the top, a climb along the side of a valley, with yaks grazing in the centre around a scattering of white nomad tents, them up over the top of the valley and down into another one. The thin air made the climbs slow as exerting ourselves too much would leave us breathless. 

  
Near the top three western-looking cyclists going the other way sped past on the downhill. It was a bit disappointing that they wouldn’t stop for a chat, I can’t imagine they’d seen many cyclists up here. For us, at least, the last westerners we’d seen had been in Urumqi. At the top of the climb however a fourth member of their group had remained to take some pictures and I got talking to him. His name was John and he was from Ireland. Running into an Irishman up here was a very unlikely coincidence but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. John and his group were cycling from Chengdu, a city about 1000km away in the province of Sichuan to Lahsa, Tibet. They had a guide and all the papers in order and were travelling a lot lighter than we were. In order to get into Tibet you need to be travelling in a party of four of your countrymen, so I assume the other three were Irish too.
John informed us that a town lay at the bottom of this descent and that somewhere there served food. We said goodbye and sped off downhill, pictures of hot bowls of noodles in mind as a brief squall of wind and hail blew up the valley.

 

the grass starting to get greener

 
In town we wandered around before eating as a bus load of passengers were taking up all the room in the one restaurant. The town was just one street, set below a hill on which stood a line of stupas and a load of prayer flags. The town was mostly Tibetans, the woman in their long skirts with colourful jackets and braid hair, the men in thick sheepskin coats with sleeves down to their knees. All of them wearing cowboy hats. There was also a small amount of Hui, a Muslim minority that look more Han (Chinese) than the dark skinned Tibetans.
We ate lunch once the bus left at a Hui run restaurant. Despite having a big poster on the wall with pictures of various delicious looking dishes they only served one noodle dish, but it was more than enough for hungry cyclists.
The town sat in between two high passes on the valley floor. We had come over one this afternoon and now began the climb out the other side. As usual it wasn’t too steep but the thin air made the going slow. Evening set is as we arrived at the top, where a group of Han labourers were working on the road. 

 

I dont know why they felt the need to build those fake mountains next to the road

  
 The road looked to only descend a small bit before starting to climb again so we set up camp here behind a stone wall next to the road. In the night it snowed again.

we may have camped a bit too high up tonight

Day 155: Budongquan to ~90km east of Budongquan along the S308

To change things up a bit today we decided to cycle each on our own before lunch. The landscape was so flat and open and there were so few turn-offs (none really) that there wasn’t much of a chance of someone getting separated. 

perfect riding conditions

 
The plateau was not only stunning in its wind-swept openness but also fascinating in the variety and abundance of wildlife. I’m no naturalist, I couldn’t recognise any of the animal species but roaming around right next to the road were small gazelle like grazers, wild ass and tiny skittish rodents that ran for the cover of their hole was you went past. There were larger rodents too, like a capybara and of course yak. We didn’t see any on this day but later on foxes as well. There were many lakes and small river courses that cranes, geese and big red ducks swam around and way up in the sky soared vultures, eagles and kestrels or hawks (not entirely sure which).

 

I was trying to get a photo of the wildlife but the iPad camera can onky really capture landscapes. Im sure Finn or Andres photos will have some good shots of the animals

  

the Han industry even makes it out here

 We struck across the wide plains then up into the hills. We agreed to meet at the first settlement we hit, which was supposed to be about 60km down the road. I arrived at this small hamlet first. An old Tibetan man was watching me curiosity while I waited for the the others an by the time Finn arrived he had invited us in for tea.

 

a nice lake

  

Yak, first time seeing them on the plateau

 His hut was a one room affair with a yak-dung burning stove in the center and his bed by the window. A small prayer wheel stood at the end of the bed which he spun with a stretch of rope. We showed him the map and some of our photos and then sat in silence waiting for the water to boil. We drank the tea and then said goodbye.
Walking into the settlement proper we came across a small shop run by a Tibetan family. They invited us in to their living room next to the shop and offered us some biscuits and tea. We bought some instant noodles in their shop and ate them in the living room for lunch. After lunch we waved goodbye to everyone in the village who had gathered to see us and continued cycling.
The road had climbed into the hills just before this hamlet and now ran along the side of the hills looking down into the wide plains below. The landscape was almost boggy, like the west of Ireland except 4000m above sea level. Coarse, stunted tufts of grass grew amongst loose black soil and small pockets of snow.

 

Andre cycling

  

Finn cycling

 A nice camp spot presented itself beside the road. That night a heavy wind blew in carrying snow with it. Seems like it snows a bit every night up here on the roof of the world.