Greetings from Lhasa, Tibet where we are making final preparations to pedal down to Katmandu, Nepal. We are a bit behind on our updates, but this one should make up for lost time. Garryck is a fantastic writer and has taken the time to write a killer newsletter of about 15 pages. So print this sucker out and find a quiet place to relax and escape. This section of our journey was truly epic!

Newsletter 5

I'm kicking back here in the Well Bistro down a back alley in the old town of Ligang listening to a bit of jazz . If you were to take away the tourist atmosphere, and, of course, all the tourists, it would seem as though you had been teleported back a few hundred years in time. We were able to get small taste of that feeling by waking up early yesterday morning and wandering around before the masses converged - we were also able to get some good footage of us mountain biking down the tight alleyways.

But, the focus of this Tales From the Saddle is not where we are now, but how we got here. So, let's go back a few weeks, or is it months, I'm not sure now, but anyway, we'll start in the city of Hanzhong and take you as far as Litang.

We should have known that 45 yuan, a bit over five dollars, was far too good a deal for a ten hour train ride; however, it had taken us a lot of effort and the help of a recruited teenager to get the tickets, and we didn't want to wait till the next day, so we took them and hoped for the best. We had hoped to get a sleeper car, but later, upon getting on the train, we found that we had the hard seat car.

Woops. I guess I should first explain why we were taking a train. We had an amazing time touring with Philip, through some spectacular countryside, and we decided that the road between Hanzhong and Chengdu would be very similar to what we'd already traveled, and we were in the mood to get out into the rough, way out, to the roads less traveled, way less traveled.

The saying goes, "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst", but we were not prepared for how bad it was going to get. We had enlisted the help of another teenager and a worker from the the train station to help us get all the panniers and bags to the platform, but even then, we we drenched in sweat due to the mad rush to get to the right spot to board the train on time. We arrived at the boarding spot just as the train rolled up, filled, no, crammed full of passengers, with only a few of them getting off. As it rolled in Jamie looks at me and asked, "Do we really want to do this?". I wasn't sure that we did, but we were on the platform with our bags packed, and we really had no other choice. Somehow in a mad rush of movement we were able to get everything on the train, and bid our helpers farewell just before the train doors shut. We stood there for a moment in the space between the two cars being glared at by the two conductors. They were not at all pleased with the quantity of bags that we had stacked around us. We just smiled. There was absolutely no chance of us getting a seat, but with a bit of help from the conductors, realizing that they had no choice but to help us, we were able to get our bags stacked up in a small nook of the car next to us. We had to stand next to them in the sweltering heat, crammed in with all the other passengers and all of their stuff as well. We really wondered what had we gotten ourselves into? A hour or two into the journey we were confronted by a young Chinese girl, Ester, who said that she had a seat for one of us. Jamie took it and I stayed with the gear, or plan being to switch after a few hours. I put one of my small panniers on the ground to sit on and hunkered down in the bags, doing my best to get comfortable and attempt to sleep, and not to be crushed if the bags were to topple over. It was a living hell. There wasn't a position that was the least bit comfortable, but, thank gawd to my ability to sleep nearly anywhere, I was able to fade in and out . From what Jamie told me later, he was in a hell all his own. The seats lacked any coushioning and were ninety degrees, and he was surrounded by smokers. We never did end up switching, one hell was no better than the other.

The train rambled on through the night. When the the early morning light finally filtered into the train we were able to breath a sigh of relief, it meant that we were soon to arrive in Chengdu.

We didn't spend much time in Chengdu, it was just another big Chinese city choked full of cars and pollution. The highlights mostly occurred at the Traffic Hotel that we stayed at: a very relaxing and much needed massage, and the all you can eat breakfast. The other big highlight was going out for Sichuan hot pot - a pot of hot oil that meat and veggies are put in - with Ester, her mother, and her uncle and aunt. We were shocked when Ester's mom came back with the first round of plates to put in the hot pot that included pig brains, eels, and small perch that would have been better used as bait for larger fish. Luckily, her next round of dishes were much more palatable vegetables. Both Jamie and I did try the brains. Once. That was enough.

Getting out of Chengdu wasn't easy, but by the time we made it out to the open road we were super stoked because we knew that every pedal stroke was going to get us further away from the city, and closer to the reason we had came to China, to see the real China.

As far as the scenery went for the next two days, it wasn't all that exciting, basically flat and nothing that we hadn't seen before, your basic Chinese farmland with fields of rice, corn, and other vegetables. Nonetheless, it felt great to be out on the bike and know that we were getting to see parts of China that very few other tourists ever got to see, and of the few that did, the large majority of them saw it out the window of a speeding bus or jeep. After our tour through the mountains with Philip we could feel that our legs had gotten much stronger, and were rolling at much faster speeds.

We got into the habit of of waking up eary so that we could get our riding done before we got hammered by the intense noon sun. Even so, when we'd leave the hotels sometime between five and six in the morning, we'd already have sweat beading up on our skin just from loading the bikes.

On our third day out of Chengdu we began climbing - climbing that wouldn't stop for many weeks to come. We got an early start that day, and, to our surprise, we reached the city of Ya'an before twelve o'clock. We rewarded ourselves by getting an air-conditioned room and napping until it was time for dinner.

We slipped out of Ya'an early in the morning, under the cover of darkness. As the early rays of the sun began to brighten our day, it unveiled a drastic change in the scenery. Soon, after we reached the outer edge of the city, past the last few shops and houses, we began making our way up a magnificent gorge. The road had been cut riight into one of the sides of the nearly vertical redish-brown sandstone walls that rose some two or three hundred meters on each side. There wasn't a shoulder to the road, but the drivers were very curtious and gave us pleanty of room when they passed. The also would honk their horn, normally more than once, which got increasingly annoying with each car that passed. It was a nice jesture, but it was clear that some of them, especially the big trick drivers, had no idea just how deafening their horns were.

We had hoped to camp that night, but the only level spot that we found was right after a tunnel, which meant that we'd have to listen to a continuous blaring of horns all night as each car or truck passed through. We pushed on further down the road and found a dirt turnoff that lead back eight kilometers to a national park of some sorts. A kilometer or so down the road we passed by a couple of very delapodated buildings that looked like they hadn't seen any upkeep in quite a few years. We rode a tad further, but the dirt soon turned to mud, and the mud continued to get deeper as we went, so we decided we'd go back and ask the guys that were hanging around the bigger building if we could pitch out tents there. They didn't agree to let us pitch our tents, rather they offered us one of the two rooms on the second floor. It was little more than four walls, a floor and a roof, but that was all we needed; furthermore, it would make for a quicker exit the next morning because we wouldn't have to take down our tents. The situation got even better. After we had gone to the river and washed up, the guy fried up a huge bowl of sliced potatos, and anther bowl of steamed green beans. After the meal we hung out on the covered balcony in front of the two rooms and watched his two sons throw paper airplanes off. It was simple entertainment - the best kind.

The next day marked a momentous occasion for me, I picked up my first hitchhiker off the side of the road, a young boy, around the age of eight, and gave him a ride from his house to the next town, most likely to go school. I was a ways behind Jamie, I had stopped to do some fliming, when the boy came running out of his house as I passed by. When I stopped and pointed at the rear seat he flashed me a huge smile and climbed aboard. He couldn't reach the pedals so he just let his legs dangle on each side. Jamie busted out laughing as I caught up with him. I was stoked to have the kid laughing away behind me, but because he couldnt' reach the pedals it was like having an extra 20 to 25 kilos on the back, up some steep climbing, so I was glad when the town came into view about 15 kilimeters past where I had picked him up and he started jabbering about something which I assumed meant, 'this is where I get off.

Eventually we came to the inevitable, we could see the road very steeply winding up the mountain in front of us, much steeper than any road that we had encountered before. We took a break alongside the road to stretch and mentally prepare ourselves. We also threw on some tunes - music is always a great motivater. After we rounded the last bend, before a short reprieve downhill seciton, we let out loud bellowing yalps of joy. We felt completely alive; we could feel the blood corsing through our bodies and our lungs were pumped full of fresh mountian air.

Our jubilation was soon broken, literally, as Jamie's chain snapped in two. We coasted down to a bridge just a few meters away so that we could prop his bike against it, to make the repair easier.

From there, the road was a continuous grind that just kept going up and up, switchback after switchback, after switchback.

A pitstop at a roadside shack/shop for cookies and water gave us enough energy to grunt out the last seemingly endless series of long switchbacks that lead up to a 4176 meter long tunnel. We had found that in China a tunnel usually meant the end of climbing. Knowing that the climbing was most likely done for the day, as much as I enjoy climbing, I had had enoungh.

When we got to the other side of the tunnel it was raining. We stopped just shy of the exit of the tunnel and put on our Sierra Designs rain jackets and pants.

We were slighted discourged to see that there was still more climbing to do. Luckily, it was only a short climb up around a village, from where the descent began. As we went down we were able to look back at the village and see that it wasn't just a few houses near the road, but it in fact spread all the way down though the mist and low clouds into the valley far below. It looked like a mystical elf or gnome village. We did not expect China to behold such wondrous sites.

The joy of the descent was soon interupted as the road got muddier and more rutted, and then we came to our first landslide of the day that had all of the traffic backed up on both sides.

We waited for twenty minutes or so to see if they could get the landslide cleared, but it looked like it was going to take at least an hour or two, so we took all the bags off the bikes and hauled them and the bikes over to the other side where we put them back on the bikes and kept rolling - a very muddy endeavor. During the descent, we kept our speed down so that we wouldn't get any flats - there is nothing worse than trying to fix a flat in the rain. We coasted along, slipping and sliding in the mud for about another fifteen kilometers at which point we came to our second landslide. We scoped it out to see if there was a way to portage around it, but there were too many large construction vehicles moving large boulders around to be able to do it safely. They worked quickly and had it cleared in about an hour. From there it was another fifteen kilometers to the city of Lunding. By the time we reached Lunding we, and our bikes were completely covered in mud.

We went to the new fancy hotel just to check the price, but the cheapest they'd go was 150 yuan a night - beyond our budget. We tried to tell them that we were writing a travel book, but they didn't buy it and wouldn't budge on the price. We were both tired and very hungry, and it was getting late, so we nearly caved in and got a room, but we shoved off and rode back over the bridge to the other side of town and found a hotel for 40 yuan a night. It wasn't nearly the plushness of the other hotel, but it was a bed and a roof over our heads, and all we wanted to do was get something to eat and then get some sleep.

Lunding was a basic pitstop with not a lot of frills. We throughly cleaned the drivetrains of our bikes, which took a few hours, they were totally caked in road slime and mud. We didn't bother cleaning the frames because they were just going to get dirty again, plus, it added character to them. About the time we were finishing up with the bikes we met two girls from Slovenia, Bojana and Ursa, who said, without much, if any, hesitation, that they'd join us. We each had stuff to do, so we met up with them later in the day and took them out for a spin on the tandems to adjust the seat heights and get them used to being on the back. They were both naturals, and we could tell they were in great shape. We had dinner with them and then bid each other "good night".

We all woke up early and met in our room at five-thirty for a breakfast of oatmeal and peaches, and bread and peanut butter.

The road out of town was a gental upward grade, which was nice because it gave us all a chance to get used to each other. The traffic leaving town was stopped, they weren't allowed to leave until seven that night because of the bad road condtions ahead, but we had to deal with quite a bit of oncoming traffic. Because of that we had to stop a few times, which led to a couple of not so graceful starts. All in all, we quickly got it together and were charging down the road.

A few kilometers down the road we got fed up with having to stop and wait for the long convoys of trucks to pass by, so we stopped at some large building and sat down at a table insdie one of the rooms. There was a guy there, but he didn't seem to mind at all. There was a set of Chinese dominoes on the table, but none of us knew how to play, so we made up our own games - the guy who was standing around watched on in complete bewilderment. After the games it looked like there was a lull in the traffic so we made another go for it.

We came to our second landslide of the day, the bigger of the two, at around eleven-thirty. Just about any slope next to the road looked like it could go at any moment. We were stuck there with the rest of the traffic baking under the midday sun. It took an hour and a half for them to clear the road. We waited for all of the traffic to go before we went.

It was great to have Ura on back. She's a very interesting woman with a great happy carefree easy going spirit. She told me a lot about Slovenia, about it's history, its food, and the scenery. I look forward to visiting there some day.

I got a flat tire just as we passed a sign that said that we had 25 kilometers till Kanding. I realized that the flat was caused by a serious gash in my tire. I fixed it there by putting a one jiao note, roughly worth ten cents, and some duct tape over it. Later, the tube blew through the jiao and duct tape as we were having dinner in Kanding.

The secery was spectacular. All around us we could see towering peaks streching up into the sky. I kept thinking that soon we will be higher than most of the peaks around us. It wasl hard for me to believe that we would be cycling higher than the summit of Mt. Whitney.

We were all very relieved when we finally reached Kanding, and very hungry as well, so before we even thought about finding a place to stay we went directly to a restaurant and ordered up a bunch of food.

We did a nice short hike the next day, lugging a watermelong with us up to the top. None of us had ever expected watermelons to be so pleantiful in China, but they were, and they were cheap.

We had hoped to find a replacement rear tire for my bike, but there was only one bike shop, if it could even be called that. It was little more than a dude that patched tires and "fixed" bikes out front of a shop that sold tires, a few other bike related items, and a whole lot of non-bike related items. None of the tires they sold would fit on our rims, even with two of us trying to pry one on with four tire levers. My only option at that point was to put on one of my mountianbike tires, a fat GEAX Sedona 2.25.

It was raining when we woke up in the morning in Kanding. The road didn't waste any time in getting steep. It started a half block down from the hotel and it required us to gear down to our granny gears, where we stayed the rest of the day.

Just before we left the city limits we pulled into a gas station to fill the fuel bottle. We wanted to make sure that we'd be able to cook some rice or oatmeal in the event that we couldn't find any food.

The road zigzagged back and forth up the mountain in a series of long switchbacks. Much of the landscape was hidden by the low clouds that were draped over all the mountain peaks, and floating down into the valley.

We were all having a great time riding together. Ursa told me more about Slovenia, her friends, her family, and herself. We really admired Ursa and Bojana; it couldn't be easy for two attractive tall-for-Asia blondes to travel around China.

We found that if we rode on the left side of the road we could escape some of the exhaust from the big trucks. Most of their exhaust pipes pointed out to the right. Even so, on a few occasions we were totally engulfed in thick black exhaust as a truck shifted gears right as it passed by.

About halfway up the mountain I taught Ursa the word "relentless". It was the best way to describe the climb, it was a relentless climb, nothing but up.

We encountered a couple of moving roadblocks, herds of sheep wandering the mountainside minus a shepherd. They weren't the fluffy white sheep of the story books, these sheep had shaggy dirty wool and curled horns. They didn't give us any trouble. They moved off to the side of the road as we got close.

After a couple of hours up the hill, we were begining to get hungry, so we started looking for a place to get some food. Luck was on our side, and after a few turns we came to a few buildings lining the right side of the road. There was a young boy standing in the doorway of the first building so I pulled over in front of him and asked where we could get some some food, but not exactly in so many words. I basically just said the word "food" in Chinese and questionably pointed to the buildings. He pointed inside the the building he was in and gave a nod. From the outside it really didn't look much like a restaurant, it was very small, but we were hungry and there weren't a whole lot of other options, in fact, there were no other options, so if he said we could eat there, We were going in. We parked the bikes and sat around one of the two tables inside. Not long after we got there a small van pulled up and we were politely motioned to sit at the other table. Four men came in and began playing Chinese dominoes. One guy had a cigarette seemingly permanently attached to his lip. He lit it a couple of times, took a few puffs, put it out again, and replaced it back on his lip. While we waited for the food, Jamie pulled out his Frisbee and we started playing with the kids that were hanging around. I'm not sure if they were the owners kids, but a couple of times they stopped playing and came inside to help chop vegetables, and they also later served up our rice and filled our tea cups as we ate. We were served two large bowls of food, one eggplant dish and one potato dish, and we ate every bite of both and two bowls of rice each. After our meal we each got a lollipop and a piece of "tattoo" gum. The Chinese lollipops didn't compare to a Totsie Pops, so they weren't savored. Next came the tattoo gum. It was called "tattoo" gum because inside the wrapper was a small tattoo sticker. Jamie opened his first and I suggested that he put the tattoo on his forehead. After he did, he put Bojana's on her forehead, I was next, and then Ursa. Jamie's was a blue bird, Bojana's was a green dragon, mine was a purple whale, and Ursa's was a little girl. We stated a trend; one of the boys followed our lead and put one on his forehead as well. Fueled, happy, and ready to go, we continued our climb up the mountain.

Because of our late start, we fell short of reaching the summit. At around four-thirty we were beginning to feel the strain ofan entire day of going up hill. According to the map that Jamie was navigating by, there was supposed to be a small town just before the summit. Our eyes probed the the low clouds for any sign of the town. Eventually one lone building slowly took shape and emerged. From the time we saw it, it still took another thirty minutes to reach it.

We pulled over in front of the building and started discussing options. The building looked as if it had been build about twenty some years prior and hadn't been maintained since. It was a L-shaped two story building with a large shed next to it, both enclosed by an eight foot high concrete fence, and a large very rusty metal gate.

Our options were to either push on to the town that Jamie said should be only four kilometers further up the hill, camp in the field there, or try to spend the night on the floor in one of the rooms in the building. As we stood their discussing our options, a lady came to one of the upper windows in the building. We motioned for her to come down. When she came down to the gate Jamie and Ursa took our Mandarin phrasebook and went over to see what they could work out. When they came back I asked them what was up, and they said that they had no idea. The lady went back inside and didn't return. Jamie checked out the area across from the building for a possible camping spot. We also had the problem that Ursa and Bojana only had summer weight slpeeing bags, and at that elevation it was going to get very cold. Since camping pretty much seemed not to be an option, the only feasible, rational option was to stay in the building. There was still the option of pushing on to the town, but it just didn't make sense, mostly because it just wouldn't be safe. It was already late in the day, it was still slightly raining, it was already cold and getting colder every minute, we were all tired, we didn't know if the town was really four kilometers away or if it was even there, and if we didn't make it to the town we didn't know if we'd find a camping spot further up the road. We had to stay in the building.
A small guy dressed in a grungy suit was the next person to come to the gate. They went back over to the gate to see if they could have better luck with him. They didn't. Again, they came back without a clue as to if we were going to be able to stay there. The guy went back into the building. Thirty to forty minutes had already passed since we arrived, we were getting colder, more tired, and hungrier. Something had to be done. Jamie and I took the phrasebook and charged inside the gate. We were planning to go knock on some doors, but our path was blocked by a fierce looking barking dog. The small dirty guy reappeared and tied the dog up on the far side of the building. We thought it was a good sign, but the guy just wandered back inside the building leaving Jamie and I standing there. We waited a few minutes to see if he'd come back out. He didn't, so we went inside. All of the doors opened to the outside so we walked around looking in windows and calling out "Ni How" and "Hello". At first we got no response, but then the dirty guy opened his door, and that's when I got a good look at him. His eyes were extremely bloodshot, his teeth stained a dark yellowish-borwn, and he and his clothes looked as if they hadn't been washed in months. We went to his door, pointed at his floor and showed him the phrase "can we sleep here?". He motioned with his hands that we couldn't. Even when we offered to pay him, he continued to waive his hands in a negative manner. He then walked past us and over to the door of first lady that came down to the gate. She came out and they talked a bit. She grabbed a ring of keys and had us follow her upstairs. She tried several different keys in the lock on the door, but none of them worked so we went back down to the dirty guy's pad. When we finally got it across that we didn't mind sleeping on the floor and that we didn't need blankets, and was going to pay him, he finally agreed to let us sleep there. A huge wave of relief came over Jamie and I. He followed us out to get the girls and unlocked the main gate so that we could bring the bikes inside. We hurriedly parked them next to the building and only took the panniers and miscellaneous stuff that we were going to need for the night and the next morning. We were worried that the girls weren't going to be to happy about the sleeping quarters, but they didn't flinch a bit upon entering the room, furthering our respect for how easygoing they were, and at that point we knew that traveling with them was going to be a total no worries journey.

We essentially took over one room of his two room apartment. We pilled our bags up along one side of the wall and as quickly as we could we put on dry clothes. After we got our clothes on we all huddled around a makeshift stove he had in the middle of the room that was made from a steel bucket and some cement that he had some coal cylindrical blocks burning in. We tried to dry our clothes by hanging them on the table near the stove. As we were doing this the guy left. A few minutes later he came back with a wicker basket lid full of boiled peanuts, and left again. They were veraciously wolfed down. We laughed about appearing to be aliens. We might as well have been. We showed up on strange looking bikes, wearing strange clothing, speakng a langauge that they they couldn't understand. We joked about them talking in the other apartment and saying,"'We'll give the aliens some peanuts and see if they eat them." We were all in good spirits once we were comfortably warm. He came back again, this time with bowls of noodles. There was a bit of sauce on them, and for the most part they weren't so tasty, but they were food, and we were all very hungry. About the time we were finishing up our noodles he came back and squatted down next to us. We gave him a Tootsie Pop. When our Tootsie Pops were finished we started getting ready for bed. We pilled up all our bags in one corner of the room, and then laid out Jamie's and my Therm-a-rests next to each other so that all of us could lay perpendicular to them. At least our upper bodies would have some padding. We also laid out the tops to our Sierra Designs convertable sleeping bags on the outside edges for a little extra padding for Jamie and I.

It's hard to believe that one could sleep so well on a complete stranger's floor that probably hadn't ever been washed and was subjected to constant food spillage, unwashed feet, dirty shoes, and spitting, and in a room where there were scraps of food on the counter top that had likely been there for a few days. When it comes down to it, all that is really needed are a floor, roof and four walls.

It was rough starting out back on the steep grade that we had left night night before, in the same drizzle as the night before. However, the good news was that they guy said, or we think he said, that it was only nine kilometers to the summit. It was a long nine kilometers. Even the trucks were having a hard time going up. Long before they would pass us we could hear the low rumbling groan of their engines struggling to provide enough power to produce forward movement.

The road went up one mountainside, then across the river, and then back. We stopped at 4,000 meters to take pictures. Besides being a momentous event, the first time any of us had been at 4,000 meters on a bike, and the first time Ursa and Bojana had ever been at 4,000 meters, the spot offered a spectacular view of the road, and of a few black Tibetan yak herder tents. From there we could certainly feel the reduced levels of oxygen, but we could also see the summit so that gave us a bit of extra punch to crank it the last few kilometers to the summit.

At 4,427 meters above sea level, the summit was just a few meters shy of the summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest point Jamie and I had ever been. Ursa and I stopped just a few feet short of the summit to let Jamie and Bojana catch up so that we could all reach it at the same time. It was an phenomenal feeling to reach the summit. All of the strain and anguish that was endured to reach that point was washed away by exhilaration and euphoria. Where moments before our legs were laboring to keep the pedals turning, we was jumping around in joy. Soon after we parked the bikes, it didn't take long for our bodies to get chilled so we all quickly put on as many layers as we could. We took turns taking photos, and then started our descent down the other side.

None of us expected what we saw next. Just meters from the summit we stopped the bikes and stood there with our mouths hanging ajar, marveling at the vast open green valleys and rich blue sky. We had entered a completely different world. We had entered Tibet. It wasn't officially Tibet according to the political lines drawn on maps, but it was Tibet. It was awe-inspiring. The whole landscape looked as if it had been smoothly molded from green clay. From where we had come from the landscape was sharp and jagged, and a mixture of various browns and green colors. That was replaced with broad bowl shaped valleys that smoothly rose to peaks equal and higher to the one that we had just crossed over, all of it carpeted in the same lush green color mountain grasses and low shrubs. As astounding as the landscape was, none of us could get over just how blue the sky was. what got me the most was the sky. It screamed blue, a blue like none of us had never seen before, a blue that had never been tainted by pollution. It made the white clouds that were drifting in it seem even whiter. Everything seemed more vivid, more alive, more defined. I looked at Ursa and we both just smiled. Ursa told me that it was hard for her to express her feelings in English. I told her that it was the same for me. There was no way to accurately express our feelings of astonishment at being able to behold such magnificent grandeur. We made quite a few stops so that we could take photographs and video, and just gaze at the surrounding landscape and the distant chains of mountains. It seemed that a hundred pictures could be taken at every turn in the road.

It felt great to be going downhill, but there was a nagging in all of our stomachs. All we had for breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal each. The road began to level out as we got further down into one of the valleys. We came across three kids walking down the road towards us. We stopped and asked them where we could get some food. One of the kids, the older one, spoke a little English and pointed a few meters down the road to a Tibetan style house with some people sitting in front and said to follow him.
As we got nearer to the house more kids came running up to meet us and then ran next to us the rest of the way to the house.

We laid the bikes on their sides and hesitantly walked over to where the people were sitting. It was clear that they were eating, but we weren't sure that we were welcome to join them. The kid had said that it was okay, but the older people sitting down all had questioning looks on their faces. We sat down anyway and did like we always do when we encounter an unfamiliar situation, smile a lot. Soon enough they were also smiling and offering us food. I'm not sure exactly what it was. It wasn't exactly cheese, and it wasn't exactly bread, but more like a combination of both with the taste of yoghurt. It was scrumptious. Next came bowls filled with tea and a lump of yak butter, and a bag full of a powdered mixture. We were shown to put handfuls of the tea and mix it up with our fingers. None of us were quite sure of how much powder to put in so we watched the other people. A lot of the powder was added until it reached a thick mud like consistency. Once the mixing was finished we used our fingers to scoop it out and eat it. When we tasted it we found out that the powder was a ground up mixture of one or a few grains - we later learned that it was called sampa and was made from finely ground roasted barley. Had it had some honey or sugar and some milk in it, it would have been perfect, but even as it was, it was good and it hit our stomachs like a brick and quickly took away our hunger.

It was a good thing that we were done eating becasue the rain came abruptly and sent us scattering for our rain gear. We paid them for the food - more than we should have, 20 yuan was was too much, but we weren't going to haggle over a buck, not when it was dumping rain.

The rain only lasted a few minutes and then the sun was back out. We coasted along taking in as much of our surroundings as possible. We passed many small herds of grazing yaks, beautiful Tibetan style houses, and many waving smiling faces. It was like a dream, a wonderland that we were effortlessly slipping through.

We were about a hundred yards behind Jamie and Bojana when I heard the loud report of one of their tires rupturing. When we caught up to them I could see that the sidewall of the front tire had blown out. He was lucky that it didn't happen when we were coming down the steeper part of the road just past the summit. It was remarkable how quickly a crowd of people gathered, given the remoteness of the road we were traveling on. Even as he put on one of his fat boy Sedonna tires we could see people in the village way off to our left running to come see what was going on. The youngest ones peaked out from behind the legs of the adults. All of them went back and forth between watching Jamie change the tire and watching Ursa and I smile at them.

As we coasted along I looked out at the people in the fields, the houses, the beautiful landscape and dark rich blue sky with its wandering white pillowy clouds and thought how lucky the people who lived there were. All of the current strife and political problems plaguing the rest of the world had no effect on them. They lived a simple existence.
When the tire was fixed we rolled on down the road to a small town to where we stopped to get something cold to drink. They didn't have anything in a refrigerator or cooler, but the sodas were in the shade of the store and were cooler than the water in our Camelbaks and water bottles. Needless to say, we gathered a crowd. Aliens, we were most surely aliens.

The town we were hoping to reach was only a few kilometers further down the road. A couple of kids on their bikes raced alongside of us as they escorted us out of town.

We were stopped a few kilometers from the town by a sign in front of a Tibetan house that read, "The Great Tibetan Hotel". The owner must have been looking out of the window because she came running out to greet us. We couldn't decide if we should stay there or go into the town, but agreed to go inside and have a look. Once upstairs on the main floor of the hotel we all agreed that we should stay there. All of the walls and celings were lavishly decorated with very ornate and detailed Tibetan painting and decorations. She quoted us a price of 25 yuan each per night. It was more than we wanted to pay even though it was the equivalent of three dollars, so we bargained with her and got her to throw in dinner and breakfast for that price. Once that was settled we pulled the bikes inside and brought the panniers and bags upstairs. The first floor of the house was nothing more than a dirt floor entry way/storage area with a steep staircase leading up to the main floor. There was another bike, a low-end Giant, with a backpack in a large plastic bag strapped to the top of the rear rack parked down there.

The next step was to clean up. We grabbed our toiletries and our dirty clothes and headed across the street to the stream that was running through the pasture. In the pasture we had to dodge yaks and yak dung to get to the stream. The sun was out in full force and even though we were still at a high altitude it was very warm. Jamie and I laid out our sarongs and stretched while Ursa and Bojana started on their washing. It was a wonderful time and place to be alive. Through the gab in the mountains we could see Gongga mountain starting to peak out from it's shroud of clouds.

By the time we walked back to the hotel all the clouds had blown away and we could see the snow capped mountain clearly jutting into the sky. We all rushed up to the third floor of the house, which was an open air balcony. At 7556 meters above sea level it was the highest mountain any of us had ever seen.

The next morning, after breakfast, We took apart Jamie's rear hub and relubed it. The freewheel was sticking and causing the chain to go slack whenever he coasted. The two owner's kids, a boy that was maybe seven or eight and a little girl around the age of three or four, hovered around us and continually wanted to touch the tools. It was Jamie's job to keep them at bay so they didn't walk away with anything. At times,however, the boy was actually helpful, he'd run off to get us toilet paper to clean the dirty grease out of the hubs and water for washing out hands. Working on Chris King hubs is so easy. Total works of art.

When I was finished we hopped on the bikes and headed into town for lunch and to use the Internet. Lunch wasn't so good. The restaurant that we chose to eat in only served nearly the same noodles that the grungy dude served us two nights before, and a type of semisweet fried bread. The bread was good. While we ate the whole entrance to the restaurant was blocked by a wall of people two to three deep all vying for a look at the aliens.

We went down the street to the internet place but were told that the electricity was out and that it wouldn't come on for another forty minutes. We decided to wait. Ursa and Bojana went to look for some fruit while Jamie and I called his mom to arrange to have her send us an emergency package of tires, tubes, brake pads, pumps, and other miscellaneous stuff that we needed, some of it furnished by the great people at Bicycle Outfitter in Palo Alto who had also been super helpful in pressing in our headsets, installing our bottom brackets, and helped to rectifly the problem we were having with the outer chainring hitting the frame of Jamie's bike - top notch mechanics and a super friendly staff.

We checked back by the Internet place but the power was still out so we went back to the hotel. Jamie and I did some typing in one room while Ursa and Bojana wrote in their journals in the other room while waiting for dinner. Again, we were continually pestered by the two kids. The young girl kept wanting to touch my keyboard. The boys saving grace was that he kept our glasses of tea continually full. I must have drank about ten glasses in that hour, which I regretted that night when I had to get up a couple of times to go to the toilet.

The next day we woke up at five o'clock and started to get ready. I was not pleased to find that my rear tire was nearly flat. Nearly flat is worse than totally flat. Nearly flat meant that there was a slow leak, which is much harder to find. The young boy helped me find the leak - he really was a helpful lad.
For breakfast we were served up a large plate of the same bokchoi, ginger and garlic dish we had the night before, and steamed bread that we put honey on - not a bad breakfast. We also had he put four pieces of the bread in a plastic bag that we could take with us for emergency bonk food.

We made it just outside the gate when the sidewall of the tire that I had fixed the slow leak in blew out in a loud bang. It was all I could do to take some deep breaths and try to keep my composure. I laid my bike over on its side alongside the road and put on my other 2.25 Sedona tire. Now I was going to have to use two super fat tires to tour on. Not what I wanted to do.

So much for an early start. Fixing the flat and then changing the tire set us back, and we didn't get on the road until a quarter before eight. At least the sun was out and the temperature was mild.

The road up to the next summit was nicely paved, and not very steep. A big, welcome, change from the roads we'd been on for the past week. The landscape also changed quite a bit. The alpine grasses and shrubs were replaced with conifer trees. It took on the appearance of western Oregon's mountains. With better roads and a days rest we made it up to the summit in no time. As we neared the summit, above the treeline, we could see two large hawks playing and floating on the thermals rising up the side of the mountain. They reminded me of the many hawks we'd seen along the western coastline of Japan. It fired me up to see them. The summit was a more beautiful and higher,4424 meters above sea level, than the previous one. On each side of the road were alpine grasses littered with tiny colorful flowers. The primary color was yellow, and from a distance it looked like giant large yellow patches on the green grasses, but after we put on more clothes and took some photos we grabbed the peanut butter, bread and some rice snacks that we had bought the day before and walked over into the flowers for a picnic. When we sat down we could see that there weren't just yellow flowers, but there were also blue, and purple, and white, and orange flowers as well. It was a terrific place for a picnic. We were joined by some Tibetan herdsmen who lived in a nearby village. They were wearing half the clothing we were, only their traditional clothing, and they weren't showing any signs of being cold. We gave them some of our rice snacks, and probably thier first ever taste of peanut butter. Before we left, one of the herdsmen let Jamie ride his horse. At first, the herdsmen led Jamie around on the horse, but then after a few minutes he let Jamie loose to control the horse himself for a little bit.

Unlike the previous peak, the road did not immediate begin to descend. Instead it rolled up and down for about six kilometers. The sun got brighter as we left the summit. It was fantastic, all was right in the world. On each side of the road there were large herds of yaks, and off in the distance we could see a few herdsmen's tents. We could hear children calling out to us from outside the tents. We gladly returned their waves. Huge smiles were spread across our faces. I
When it came time to descend, it was a fast one for a good ten to fifteen kilometers. We stopped a few times to let our rotors cool down. With two people and all their stuff piled on each bike it was very easy to quickly heat up the rotors, even with mindful braking. I didn't mind stopping anyway. It gave us more time to admire the surrounding mountains, mountain streams, and forest. The 2.25 tires made it a bit squirrelly in the sharp hairpin turns, with all of the weight on the back the big balloon-like tires bounced around and rolled on the rim much more than the thinner 1.6 high-pressure Revert tires. The road just kept descending. Usually descending is a good thing, but I knew that every meter we descended meant another meter we'd have to climb the following day, and I had a feeling by the road we were descending that the road we'd have to climb was going to be a steep one.

We were starting to get very hungry so we stopped in the first bunch of houses that we came across and asked them were we could get some food, and they pointed down the road and held up two fingers. We went two kilometers further and there was nothing. We kept on going until we came to the next bunch of houses and asked the same question. This time the guy used his hands to indicate that there was food just around the corner. Again there was nothing, so we kept on going. We stopped once more and were shown that it was four kilometers down the road, at which point I gave up on anybody having any clue as to where we could get some food. We went a few meters down the road and pulled over to eat the last of our rice snacks. We were stoked when we eventually rolled up on a large two-story building that looked like a hotel. It turned out that we were much further than we thought. We had planned to make it to one town and possible on to the next, but we actually missed the first town - must have been one of the groups of houses - and made it all the way to the second one. Bojana and Ursa went in to check out the food possibilities. They were serving food, so we went in.

After we ate we asked them if it was possible to stay there. I was, so Ursa and I sent our delegates, Jamie and Bojana, to go check out the rooms. They came back and said that they were descent so we asked about the price. They quoted us 70 yuan for all four of us, including the lunch we just ate and breakfast the next morning. We still couldn't get over the prices in the countryside of China. For two dollars each we were getting two meals and a place to stay with a hot shower. It was only four o'clock so we arranged to pay some extra to have dinner a few hours later.

With the help of the hotel workers we brought all of the bags up to our second-story room and parked and locked the bikes in two rooms on the first floor - thee rooms were small and there was only enough room for one tandem in each room. Next came the hot showers. There was only one so we took turns. Bojana was first, then Ursa, then me, and Jamie went last. While we waited Jamie took a short nap, Ursa rested, and I did some stretching on the bed.

After we took our showers Jamie tried to
get one of the hotel staff to help him call a hotel in Zhongdian, so that we could have them hold the package that Jamie's mom was sending in case we weren't there in time to receive it ourselves. He didn't have any luck.

By then it had started to rain. We were all already hungry, so we went downstairs to order some dinner. Dinner was equally as delicious as the lunch, and as filling. It's amazing how quickly our bodies process food when we are cycling. We had only eaten a few hours before and we were able to polish off three full plates of food.

We planned to wake up early that morning, but we were all tired and ignored Jamie's watch's alarm. We woke up at eight, had breakfast, and got on the road around eleven o'clock. The girls had toasted for sunshine the night before, and their wish was granted, the sun was out in full force. Good for the spirits but bad for cycling. Cycling in the midday heat is never a pleasant experience. So much energy is zapped by the pounding rays of the sun. Nonetheless, it was the price we had to pay for sleeping in.

My assumptions from the day before were correct; the road leaving the town was very steep. We were once again stuck in our granny gears.

A few hours after we started, we were invited to eat with some people sitting around a tree over near the river. Food sounded good to me. I was expecting a group of adults, but it ended up being a group of middle school students having a picnic. They were really nice and could speak a little English. What made it fun was that they were very willing to try to communicate with their broken English and, most importantly, with body language. We were actually able to get a lot across to each other. They offered us three different types of noodles that weren't half bad, and some bread. They also offered us some chicken feet that we all politely declined. One of the boys untied the necklace from around his neck and gave it to Ursa. It was a very generous gesture.

By five o'clock we were spent. It had been an all day granny gear climb in brutal heat. About that time we came across a small Tibetan farming village. On the right-hand side of the road was a small group of a few houses, and on the other side of the road was a fairly large farm, complete with greenhouses.

There was an old guy repairing his fence outside the first house, so we stopped to ask him if he had a place for us to stay. He kept pointing up the hill. We tried to convey to him that we were too tired to go further up the hill, and really needed a place to sleep. There were a bunch of kids who gathered and kept repeating, "bye-bye". We kept telling them, "No, no, we are staying with you." It didn't work, and no matter how much we pleaded he wouldn't cave in. We had no choice but to push on.

A few houses up there was another old guy sitting cross-legged next to the road. We stopped, pleaded with him, and this time we were successful. We could have camped, it was a bright sunny day, but it often rained at night, and we were almost at 4,000 meters, so that meant it'd get cold as well - much better to be inside when it's cold and rainy. We wheeled the bikes inside his gate, being very careful not to step on any landmines that were left by the giant pig that was roaming around the yard, later named "Fred". There was also a super unfriendly dog chained up to the side of the house that continually barked non-stop at us, and by the looks of him, would have loved to chew on our legs if given the chance. We brought all of our bags up to the first floor, and piled them around a center support beam. It was very beautifully decorated, but unlike the Great Tibetan Hotel, it was one giant room, with one small room off of it, the master bedroom. After we got the bags and panniers upstairs we parked the bikes inside on the first floor.

A very friendly kid, around the age of twelve or so, soon showed up. Using body language, we asked him where we could wash up. He took us on a short hike up the river because he said that everyone used the river out front of the houses as the bathroom. The water was freezing, but the sun was still hot. We washed up and did a bit of laundry. After we were done we hung out on the rocks for a bit and then began throwing rocks at stacks of rocks that we piled up on a nearby log. The kid really enjoyed hanging out with us.

After we were finished we went back to the house, and that's when things started to get weird. We all gathered around the large wood stove that the old man was sitting by. There was also a young woman there - his daughter I think - and a newborn baby. We all sat there in the dimly lit room in silence and stared at each other. It was a very awkward silence.

When we thought it couldn't get any more bizarre, a young girl and two young men dressed in their traditional clothing came in carrying a yak head that they dropped on the floor over by the door. The young girl went over and hid behind the legs of the woman. It was obvious that she was her daughter. When Jamie tired to peek around and give her a smile, the girl started screaming as if she had seen aliens. Her screaming started the baby crying as well. It created a very uncomfortable atmosphere. None of us knew what exactly to do. The little girl buried her face in her mom's dress so that she wouldn't have to look at us. I was very relieved when she stopped crying.

We were all amazed to watch the two dudes start to skin the yak head right there by the door, right on the floor without putting anything down first. It wasn't the most pleasant thing to watch, but it was kind of interesting, and at least it gave us something to do instead of just sit and stare at each other. I was most curious about what they were going to do with the yak head after they skinned it. After they got the skin off they got out a block of wood and a large axe. They first split the head in two, then removed the tongue and brain and put them in a large bowl, and then chopped up the two halves into smaller pieces and also placed them in the bowl. They then put it all in the large pot that was full of water on top of the stove. After that, they packed two woven backpacks with some bread and other things and left without cleaning up the blood and pieces of bones and brains still left on the floor, the same floor that we were going to be sleeping on that night.

We sat around wondering if they were going to offer us any food. We waited and waited. Later, another woman showed up. I think we determined it was her cousin or sister, I don't remember exactly. I was just about ready to give up on getting any dinner when Jamie asked if we could get some food. They said that they would cook us up some, we thought, but we weren't exactly sure. We continued to sit around and wait,and dinner that consisted of stewed cabbage and yak head parts, rice and yak butter tea was eventually served a ted past ten. Thank gawd that everything tastes good when you are hungry enough. The little girl spent most of the time nestled up in the other woman's lap doing her best not to look at us. Jamie made the mistake of trying to offer her a Tootsie Pop and that set her off crying again. The old man eventually put her in his lap and carved off some gristly meat off a piece of the jaw bone and gave it to her. It quieted her down. We sat around a bit longer and had a couple more cups of tea before going to bed.

Amazingly enough, we slept well for sleeping on a hard wood floor just a few feet from slaughtered yak head parts.

I was the first person to go downstairs that next morning. When I looked down from the top of the stairs I was caught off guard by two pair of big eyes staring up at me. There were two small cows milling around the bottom of the stairs. There were fresh mines all over the floor. I was very careful not to step in one or place my panniers in one. We brought the rest of the panniers and bags down and loaded them on the bikes.

Before we left we asked them if they had any sampa. They were shocked at our request, but hooked us up. It was a little different from what we'd eaten before, but it hit the spot and filled our stomachs.

It did rain during the night and it was still slightly sprinkling when we left. Jamie later told us that when he offered the man some money, 50 yuan, he refused, but then the mother of the little girl and baby told him to take it.

We stopped about halfway up the hill to eat some dumplings and bread that the girls had bought the day before. The dumplings had meat in them so I, being the sole carnivoir, ate them and let them get their fill of bread and honey.

We stopped within view of the summit for a short break. Jamie joked that the sign read four thousand eight hundred and something, and I looked up at it and told him he was wrong, and that it read four thousand six hundred and something. It was funny when we got to the summit because the sign did indeed read four thousand six hundred and something; the summit sign read 4657 meters above sea level. We were about equal, if not a bit above, the summit of Mt. Whitney, and we'd gotten there on fully, extra loaded tandems. It was a serious sense of accomplishment. We put on warm clothes, took pictures, and then headed off. We still had a long way to go before the next town.

Just like after we crossed over the first two peaks, the sun came out. As we rolled around the bend we stopped our bikes and marveled at the expansive view. We could see range after range of mountains. Even the ones way off in the distance were clear to see. It was really impressive as well because we were at eye level with many of the peaks. We all felt extremely lucky to be doing what we were doing. We were getting to see places that most people will never have the chance to see, and we were getting to see it all under our oun power, at our own pace, not out the window of a van or jeep like the majority of the people who do venture out that far.

At last we had reached the Tibetan Plateau. The road didn't descend rapidly like the two previous peaks. Instead, it rolled up and down. We stopped many times to take pictures and gaze out at the expanse. It was hard to believe that we were cycling at an average of 4,500 meters above sea level.

We were on the plateau, but there was still climbing to do. We crossed over one more peak rising 4,700 meters up into the sky.

We coasted down a bit and around a few bends until we found a great place for a picnic, a nice flower filled field nestled in the curve of the road out of the wind and under the direct warmth of the sun. We still had some bread left and rice snacks to munch on. While we were enjoying the warmth of the sun's rays and the peacefulness aquired by being entirely content, two guys pulled up in their car and came over and asked if they could take some pictures of us. One of the dudes had a very expensive digital Nikon SLR camera and was dressed like a reporter so we figured they were from a newspaper. We didn't have our phrasebook with us, and none of us felt like getting up and going over to the bikes to get it, so we never found out. Before they left they brought us some water and small boxes of milk from their car.

We got on the bikes and continued on up and down, past herds of yaks, waving people and more astounding scenery. It was starting to get late, we were all getting hungry, and dark clouds were looming in the distance. We found a small village that had a stand selling food on the side of the road so we stopped and bought some sampa, yak butter, more rice treats, and some peanut covered dessert balls. Rather than stopping to cook and eat the food there, we decided to press on and see if we could find a town.

Next came a very long grinding climb, followed by a long windy descent, and with only about an hour of sunlight left in the day we found a small town. We asked around and were told that we could sleep on the floor of a small restaurant/shop. The owner was a very kind dignified beautiful woman, and her daughter, who I'd guess was around thirteen, was very friendly and spunky - a drastic change from the girl the night before. After we brought all our panniers and bags inside the owner poured us some yak butter tea and then made us some noodles. The noodles were on the spicy side, but they were eagerly munched down. The girl had a younger friend over who was also very friendly, but a tad shyer.

It was very pleasing to see how communal the Tibetan culture was. Even though the girl's friend didn't live there, without hesitation, and I think without being asked, she helped the owner's daughter wash and dry our cups and bowls.

After dinner, Jamie and the two girls went for a walk and when they came back Jamie was wearing a woven ring of flowers on his head and the girls both had flowers in their hair.

We pulled the bikes inside before we went to bed, which didn't leave much room to sleep. Ursa and Bojana shared one bed - more like bed area, the owner and her daughter shared another bed, and Jamie and I crashed on the floor. Once the door and and window were shut the place became pitch black. It was impossible to even see your own hand in front of your face.

We were going to have sampa again for breakfast, but the lady cooked us up another batch of noodles, but a lot more spicy. Too spicy for Ursa, Bojana, and myself. Jamie was the only one who was able to finish his bowl of noodles. The three of us ate about half our bowls.

The road started of fairly gradually, but soon began climbing. The roads weren't as steep as most of the ones we'd been on before, but were more drawn out. It was a series of long ups and downs.

We passed by a lone Chinese military radar station with a solitary guarding standing post at it's gate. What a dreadful job, stuck out in the cold in the middle of nowhere. For us it was a beautiful exotic landscape. For him it must have seemed like a prison.

Later, further down the road, we came to a jeep parked on the shoulder of the road with some people standing around, and others relieving themselves. We were shocked to see that one of the people was the kid from the picnic two days before who had spoken the best English. He was also headed to Litang.

We came across one of the towns on the map after we had ridden somewhere between thirty-five and forty kilometers. It was past time for lunch so we pulled into a courtyard that had a few restaurants in it. We went into the one closest to where we parked out bikes. Like always, it was a good meal. After the meal we weren't sure if we should push on, or if we should see if we culd find a place to stay. It was already past two o'clock, we still had 38 kilometers left and by the map we new for sure that the last twelve kilometers were going to be a major grind. After some debate, we decided to push on.

The map was correct. It was a brutal climb. Total granny gear the whole way. We made about four short stops before reaching the top to catch our breaths. To make matters worse it started to rain heavily. By the time we got to the summit the rain had really picked up. We were at the summit only long enough to put on some extra clothes for ride down to the city.

I tried my best to keep it as slow as I could, but the rain was finding it's way in every opening, so my body was soon freezing and my mind was telling me to get down to the town as quickly as I could. The road seemed to go on forever. The rain blasted my face. I tired to shield my eyes with the bill of my visor, but it didn't help much, it was very difficult to see.

When we entered the town I saw what looked like a hotel on my left and slammed on the brakes. There was a guy standing out front so I pointed at the building with my hands and then used body language, two hands held flat together next to the head to simulate a pillow, to indicate sleep. The guy nodded in confirmation. That was good enough for Ursa and I. Jamie came rolling up about that time so we wheeled our bikes over. We asked them how much a room was and they wrote down ten yuan each, but there were no showers. We were really hoping to be able to jump into hot showers, but even the Lonely Planet said that none of the hotels in Litang had showers so we said we'd take it and began bringing the panniers and bags upstairs. They gave us two rooms, one for Jamie and I, and one for the girls. Next, we brought the bikes inside and locked them together and then very quickly rushed upstairs to strip off our wet clothes and put on some dry ones. About the time we were done changing, the owner's son came into our room and told us that it was 50 yuan for each person - the old bait and switch. They knew that there was no way in hell that we were going to go back out in the rain to look for another place. After the girls finished changing thier clothes we all went downstairs to see if we could bargain with them. The owner was very stubborn, and, at first, wouldn't budge at all on the price. We continued to push and he dropped the price to thirty yuan each, which was still more than we wanted to pay. We tried to get him to include dinner for that price, but when we suggested that, he again said that the price was going to be fifty yuan each if we had dinner. That made the price of dinner 80 yuan for all of us. That was more than I'd spent on any meal with a group of people since coming to China, including the fabulous Peking duck in Beijing. We could see that he was too proud to admit that 80 yuan was a ridiculous price, so we paid him his 120 so we could go back upstairs and get under some covers.

The girls pulled in in a big way and got out from under the covers and made each of us a bowl of sampa. After we finished eating our sampa they pulled in even further and went outside to see if they could bring back some hot food.

While they were away Jamie slept and I curled up in my sleeping bag and comforter and listened to music.

They brought back some bread and spicy ears of BBQ corn, which really hit the spot. The corn really hit the spot. We finished eating, and had sufficently warmed up, Jamie went for a walk to check out the town. I busted out my Salsa Psychedelic playing cards, and they tried to teach me one game, but it was just too complicated for me to grasp at that point, so we began playing the playing card version of UNO.

We slept in that next morning. We all deserved it. Though it had been some of the most magnificently beautiful and sectacular scenery the eye could see, it had also been a series of long hard climbs, cold nights, and never knowing when or where the next meal or next place to sleep was going to be. It felt good to sleep in.

After we got out of bed and got our things organized and packed up, we got on the bikes and went into town to find a different, cheaper, hotel. We were planning to be in Litang a few days so there was no way that we were going to continue to pay 30 yuan a night for a hotel with no amenities.

The first place we checked out had, just that day, filled all their rooms with monks that had came to town for the festival. It wasn't such a good location anyway. It was located just a few stores down from the main intersection, which meant that if we were to stay there, we would be bombared day and night by the continous deafening blaring of truck, car, and motorcycle horns.

When the girls had gone for food the previous night they had scoped out another hotel that had rooms going for 20 yuan a night. We went over there ready to bargain them down to 15 yuan a night, and were successful. The poor students traveling by bike through China routine worked like a charm. At least Bojana and Ursa, though not in school at the time, were planning to return to school, so they could technically be considered students, but it was funny that Jamie and I, having graduated eight years prior, could still pass as college student by flashing our USC ID cards. We were told to keep how much we were paying a night secret. We had no problem with that. It was nicely decorated in a Tibetan fashion, had a nice communal area with tabels and chairs for socializing, reading or writing, and we'd had our own room. It was obvious that the room had just been completed. There were still sheets of plywood resting against the sides of the walls, a bucket of paint - still wet - on the floor, and a large saw leaning in the corner. There were no mattresses on the beds, just a few blankets piled up, but it did have high ceilings, a table, and it was clean and dry. We found out that night it's one other negative aspects: it got damn cold in the room at night, and the beds only had a super thin piece of plywood over some two-by-fours under the blankets, so that if we weren't careful with where we put a knee or sat, we'd break through - Ursa was the queen bed breaker, with her bed looking like Swiss cheese under her blankets.

We were all hungry, but the sun was out and we all had gobs of laundry to do. Jamie and I checked to see if they had a laundry service, and they brought out a washing machine into the back courtyard in front of our room, but they couldn't get it working, so we were stuck doing our laundry the oldfashioned way, with our hands and a bucket of soap and water. Doing our laundry turned out to be a death defying experience. To get water out of the well we had to place two bare wires into a socket laying on the wet ground where we were doing our laundry. This turned on the pump and brought forced water out of the hoze. Profuse amounts of dirt came out of our clothes. Each article of clothing turned the water dark brown. It took a good deal of elbow grease, but we eventually got everything washed and hung out to dry.

After lunch we strolled around the town, checking out the different shops and mostly watching the eccentric group of people that were all around us. There were Chinese people, other tourist - but only a small handful, monks in their orange and red flowing clothes, and mostly Tibetan people in various fashions of their traditional dress. As we walked down the main street it reminded me of the Old West, only with cars. Most of the Tibetan men and some of the women wore cowboy hats, and a large percentage of the men had knives or swords of various lengths attached to, or tucked into their belts. There was a mutual amazement and cruiostity between the four of us and the people on the streets. We stared at them, and they stared at us. It was almost hard to believe that it was all real and not a movie set.

The rest of that day and the following two days were spent catching up on e-mails, sleep and our journals. Mixed in there were lots of good meals, a much needed hot shower at the public shower, and lots of rain. Three days after doing our laundry and it still wasn't dry. Every now and then we'd have a short break of sunshine and we'd hang it outside, but the breaks didn't last long and our clothes spent most of their time hanging on the clothesline that I'd strung up in our room.

On the second night the girls surprised us by making up a huge batch of fruit salad that they split into two and filled the two empty halves of water melon. We saved it for our late night desert.

The next day while Ursa, Bojana and I were in the hotel writing in our journals we got a very brief meeting of the Dali Lama's right hand man who was staying at the same hotel.

On the first of August, the annual Tibetan horse festivities kicked off. The festival was held a couple of kilometers outside of town in the open grassland where the participants set up tents in which they lived during the festival. The size and decorative detail of the tent determined the wealth of the family. We were hoping that since the Dali Lama's right hand man was there, we'd have some sunshine. The streets were a madhouse outside of the restaurant that we frequented for breakfast that morning. Mobs of people were everywhere and they were all trying to clamber up onto or squeeze into any vehicle that was heading towards the festival grounds.

By the time we got to the festival grounds there was already a large circle of people tightly packed together, five to seven rows deep, around the performance. It was tough to even get a glimpse of what was going on. We parked our bikes by locking them to one the outside support poles of a larger tent - of course we asked first. We were stading next to a bus trying to to get a view when one of the guys inside who was playing a guitar invited us in. Without asking if I knew how to play, he handed me the guitar. His interest was sparked when he realized that I was playing "Hotel California". We took turns playing while Ursa and I sang. He'd play till he couldn't remember which chord came next, and then I'd take over and he'd watch until he thought he got it. It was great fun.

Jamie and I were hanging around the outside edge tyring to find a way in when I saw a small gap between the people. I pulled out my USC student ID and confidently flashed it at the policeman that was standing there as I briskly walked past. The key to doing things of that nature is to be confident, act like you own the place. I passed without any incident and took my place with the the real photo. journalists. Jamie was quick to follow my lead. We had front row for the entire dance and music performance. We were very surprised to see that the people that were in the bus that we gone in were some of the main performers. The dancers and singers were all superb, and even the comedian was slightly humerous - I'm sure that had we been able to understand him we would have thought him to be more humerous because the crowd thought sure he was.

The weather during the performancess was good. There were a few very quick light showers, but mostly it was nice. When the sun was out it actually got very warm.

After the performance was over, Jamie wanted to stick around and give rides to the little kids, so Bojana sat on the rear rack of my bike and the thee of us went of to explore the far area of tents. We rode around through the tents, and took some pictures of the people, and then started heading back when we saw that all the people were bringing their horses over to the fair grounds. On our way back, we stopped on the other side of the ravine to take pictures and video of the men on their horses as they rode by. It was a spetacular site.

We were following the end of the precession of horses as it passed through the crowd. We had no idea that crowd had all lined up on each side to watch the horses pass by. We thought that they were just passing though a small gap and congregating on the other side. We decided to follow the horses and see where they were going. The cowd went ballistic, whooping and hollering as we rode by. Once we entered, we had to just keep going. The three of us were laughing and hollering at the top of our lungs. Bojana was standing on the rear rack with her hands on Ursa shoulders as we went though adding to the specticle - the Glactic Silver Horse from America. I so wanted to pull out my video camera, but with three people on and my exuberent laughter made it necessary to keep both hands on the handlebars. We scanned the faces of the crowd as we passed through, and later all agreed that the best looks we got were from the other tourists. Their looks of surprise and shock were priceless. When we emerged on the other side we pulled over and stopped so we could catch our breaths. Jamie came running over with a huge smile - he had been in the crowd and watched us roll by. The indicdent kept us laughing well into the night, even after the lights were turned off and we were laying in our beds, and into the following days. Those few momenets, the feeling of energy and enthusiasm coming from the crowd as we passed through them was magical.

A huge crowd of people gathered around my bike. I was trying to talk to a French lady and her daughter, while at the same time keep the kids from climbing on my bike. I wasn't completely successful at keeping the kids off, and found out on our way home that something was dreadfully wrong with my rear derailleur. I really wanted to stop and see shat the problem was, but it had started to rain very heavily and it was stinging my face and chilling our bodies very rapidly - we didn't have our full rain gear with us - so I didn't stop, I just wanted to get back to the hotel and warmth.

Back at the hotel the three of them stripped off our clothes and jumped into their beds. I was cold, but my stomach was telling me that it was time to eat. I figured that it was my time to pull in for the group and headed out into the rain on a mission to bring back food. I went to one of our two local favorites, an aptly named "Two Brother's Restaurnt" because it was opperated by two brothers, and through a bit of pantomime got them to understand that I wanted to get some food for takeout. They really went out of their way to hook me up. They emptied out some bags of spices into bowls so that I'd have something to take the food away in. I got an order of sweet and sour eggplant - not like the sweet and sour back home, some fried green vegetables, a semi-spicy potato dish, and a big bag of rice. Before I went back to the hotel I went two doors down to a small shop and got us a package of the peanut covered desert balls that we all really enjoyed. Back at the hotel we put all the food into bowls and used tea cups for our rice.

We were training the two brothers well . On our second day of ordering "pancakes" and fried eggs off the menu, we very pleasantly surprised when the pancakes, which were really a flat bread, came out with diced up green onions in them. The taste was actually very similar to an onion bagel. They were magnificent cut open with a fried egg inside.
That day we we parked our bikes inside the scaffolding next to the small grandstand that housed the speakers. We hoped that by parking them there it would keep the kids from messing with them. We didn't hesitate taking up our same spot from the day before. Again, the key was to look like we belonged there. The next few hours were spent watching guys ride by on their horses, sometimes alone, and sometimes in small groups of three or four. We thought that they were introducing the riders for a big race that day, but in the end, that was it, just a bunch of dudes riding by on their horses - not much to get excited about.

When Jamie and I got fed up with waiting for something exciting to happen we decided we'd go back, throw the bikes into single mode, and do some mountain biking. Both of our souls were crying our for it. Earlier, we had gotten slit up with the girls when the police came and made everybody move back for no apparent reason - the horses weren't coming close to where we were sitting and if they had they would have ran smack into the large remotely operated video camera unit that was a few meters down from us. We looked around for the girls, but when we couldn't find them we figured that they had gotten bored sooner than we had and gone back to the hotel, so we left. We later found out that they had gone to the bathroom and then walked around a bit.

After we put the bikes into single mode we grabbed some lunch. It was on the way to the restaurant that I realized that my rear derailleur was really tweaked. I had babied it on the way to and from the festival. I didn't want to take the time to fix it then. I knew it was going to be a lengthy operation, and of the 29 gears there were enough that would get me by.

Fueled and ready to go, we wound out way up through the streets toward the Lamasery. We didn't go in, rather we chose to make our way up the mountain on the trail that ran next to it. It was a gorgeous day, and it felt great not to be wet and cold, and it felt even better to be out away from the honking horns of the city, out on our bikes. The hills were blooming with wild flowers of every color, and there were a few yaks scattered about grazing. We hiked up to the top, gazed out at the distant mountain ranges and peaks, took some photos for our sponsors, and rejoiced at the fact that this was our lives. We were living free, riding the mountains of Tibet.

Without a trail to follow, the descent was a fast freeride down. It was like skiing in that we could choose to go wherever we, or, at times, where our bikes wanted to go. The ground was made up of thick alpine grasses with interspersed rocks. Our fat 2.25 GEAX Sedona tires and 120mm Manitou suspension allowed us to cruise right over it.

About three-quarters of the way down the hill the dark clouds that we had seen at the top of the hill caught up with us and began pelting us with pea sized pieces of hail. We stopped at the Lamasery wall to make a decision whether to right or left, and was asked by a group of five Chinese tourists there taking shelter under their umbrellas if they could take our photos. We paused long enough for them to get a couple of shots and then raced down the left path. We were right at the edge of the storm as we charged through the town back to our hotel. The girls had just gotten back to the hotel a few minutes before. While we were still hot from riding, and the adrenaline was pumping through our bodies, we changed into our swim trunks, grabbed our toiletries and a small pan of hot water and stood in the courtyard in front of our door and took a shower in the rain. The girls laughed and took pictures. After we were done we cajoled the girls into doing the same, but first they had to buy their bus tickets. Sure enough, they came back from buying their tickets and showered up. It was funny to watch them lather up as they laughed and giggled. Two totally stellar chicks. When they were done showering they raced back inside, quickly changed clothes and jumped in their beds to warm up.

We went to our usual dinner spot. We went there for a few reasons. First, it had an electric stove for heating tea that could be moved about the room, which we would move close to our table when we came in. Secondly, the congenial kid - we guessed his age to be around eighteen or so - doing the cooking was an epicurean genius. Each time we'd go in we'd go into the kitchen, point at some different vegetables, and each time he'd prepare a magnificent feast for us, and each time it'd cost us less than a dollar each.

After dinner we stopped in at the local dance hall. I wasn't much in the mood, so I went back to the hotel to do some writing. Not long after the girls came back and we started playing cards - more UNO. At first it was about even, each of us were winning about the same amount of games, but then after a few games I was just unbeatable. It seemed as though every hand I was dealt, or delt myself was a fabulous hand, and every time I'd have to draw form the deck it'd be a face card, an eight (wild), or a joker (makes the other player draw two). I just kept winning and winning. Jamie came back after about fifteen minutes and made a bead and thread bracelet while he watched us play cards. There was a streak there where I must have won ten or more games in a row. I started mentally screwing with them. When I'd shuffled - the winner shuffled - I'd come to a joker and I'd make sure to show it to them and say, "watch the joker." They were confident that I was some cardshark and had some trick to shuffling the cards. We kept playing until one o'clock - the girls were determined to beat me. My winning streak continued till the end. It was too bad that I wasn't in Vegas with that luck.

We woke up to another wonderful day, blue skies and scattered white fluffy clouds. I did some Taichi to loosen up my muscles while I waited for them to wake up.

We all decided to blow off the festival; Jamie and I were going to ride, and the girls were going to go to the Internet cafe and then go hiking. But, before we could go riding I had to do some major surgery on my rear derailleur. After I took both cage plates off it took me a good twenty minutes or longer to get them semi-straight, straight enough so that both pulleys would spin freely.

We went back up towards the Lamasery again, but this time we went inside the compound. We rode around for a bit, and up towards the main building. When some of the yonger monks saw us coming they came running down to carry our bikes up the steps for us. They then wanted to ride our bikes. We let the two that carried our bikes ride them for a short while, but when the rest of them started grabbing onto it, we took them back. Jamie tried to explain to them that they couldn't just touch other people's stuff, that Buhda hadn't ran around grabbing things, but sat and meditated, bu they didn't get it. We entertained the monks by launching off the side of the upper step leading into the lower building of the Lamasery. With speed, it was a decent size drop. After that they showed us the way through the Lamasery to the upper wall. They didn't quite understand that we were looking to get to the other side of the wall because there wasn't a back gate. We ended up having to go over the wall by climbing up a makeshift ladder that some workers had left behind and then Jamie lowered the bikes down to me on the other side.

It was impossible to ride up, so, like the day before, we pushed them. At somewhere aroudn 5,000 meters above sea level, the higher and higher we went, the heavier the bikes and our Camelbaks seemed to become. Again, I had the feeling I had when I first got to Litang, of someone sitting on my chest. We hiked up a lot further than we did the day before. We were looking for a long ride and there wasn't a trace of any dark clouds on the horizon. We stopped at the top where there was a large stack of rocks with poles coming out the top that were covered with multicolored prayer flags. We took a couple of photos and then sat back and took it all in. We could see a couple of snow covered peaks way off in the distance that had to be 7,000 meters or higher. They looked like towering giants with thier heads jutting up into the clouds. Because we were sitting nearly eye level with the clouds that were floating by, and because the sky was so blue and the definition of the clouds was so acute, it really appeared as if my arms were just a bit longer, I could reach out and touch them. The grass wasn't as wet as it had been the day before so we had more traction, which is always nice. We zig-zagged down, taking different lines, and then met up next to a herd of yaks. We stopped there to take some video footage of Jamie riding past the yaks. Jamie said that he thought he heard the girls so we scanned the hillsides around us for people. We spotted them at the top of one of the small peaks we passed on our way up doing cartwheels in the flowers. We called out to them and then exchanged waves. It put a huge smile on my face. They really knew how to live life and enjoy themselves. We continued to jam down the mountain, stopping every now and then to scope out the best lines and to catch our breath. Even though we were going down hill, it still took effort to keep the bike tracking in the right direction, and doing anything the least bit strenuous at that altitude took our breath away quickly. We rolled back into town with gigantic smiles on our faces. Before we went back to the hotel we pulled up at a street vendor's stand and ate a couple of skewers each of spicy barbecued potatoes.

Back at the hotel we got out our sunshowers and filled them with half hot water and half luke warm water out of the well. We hung them from the door of our room and took our showers in the still blazing hot late afternoon sun. The girls arrived not long afteward, and the sunshowers were still up so they refilled them and got clean again.

Being that it was their last night in Litang, and that we'd be seperating after two weeks traveling together, they said that they'd treat us to dinner. Unfortunately for Jamie, his stomach was giving him a hard time, so he said that he didn't feel like eating and so we went down to the Internet to send some e-mails. We went to our usual dinner spot and ordered one meat dish and one eggplant dish. About the time the food was being served Jamie can back and said that he'd rather hang out with us even if he couldn't eat, rather than sit in a smokey room with a bunch of strangers.

The next morning, at around 4:30, the girls woke us up and gave us big hugs before they had to catch their bus. When we woke up the later that morning and realized that they were gone, we were really bummed. We had gotten very close over the two weeks that we traveled together. We don't doubt, though, that sometime in the future we are going to get an e-mail from them asking if the seats are available.

Later that morning I got around to taking out the inner chain ring bolt that had broken and replacing it with a new one that I had gotten in Xi'an the day my bike was stolen. In doing so, I found out that my stoker bottom bracket was shot, which most likely meant that the other was as well. It still spun, but it sounded like there wasn't a tad of grease in the bearings.

We were late in getting to the festival and missed that day's events. We heard mixed reports, but overall it sounded like we didn't miss much, just a bunch of cowboys racing around in a circle.

Jamie wanted to hang out at the festival longer, but all I saw was a bunch of people milling around, so I decided to head on back. On my way back I saw two riders up ahead and because I could see that they each had one pannier attached to their rear racks, they for sure weren't Chinese. I caught up with them and it turned out that they were an older Australian couple. We rode alongside each other and talked about our future touring plans. Denis told me that his touring partner, Jo, was having some headset problems. They were super stoked to find out that I had been a professional mechanic.

We rode to the hotel I was staying at and I had a look at her headset. There wasn't anything wrong with it, they just weren't used to the looks of an A-headset style headset. I took it apart anyway and put in some fresh grease. After I finished we talked a bit longer, and then Jamie rolled up. He said that nothing else was going on at the festival.

After Denis and Jo left, I did some typing while Jamie took a nap. Denis and Jo came over at seven to go have some dinner, and on our way out we met up with Jane, another Aussie, and she said that she'd come to dinner with us. Of course we took them to our usual dinner spot. We ordered one meat and two veggie dishes. We talked throughout dinner and all the way until they asked us to leave so that they could close for the night. Denis was one hell of a story teller, loud, elaborate, and absolutely hilarious. Janes eyes continued to widen as she listen to the tales about bicycle touring that we were telling. You could see the wheels in her head torning. On our way home we asked her if she was up to coming with us, and she was gung ho. All she had to do was find some sort of sleeping pad because we were planning to do a bunch of camping, mostly because were were likely going to have to camp because the road that were are going to take is sparsely poplulated.
She was also going to have to sell her bus ticket - she had been planning to take the bus north in the morning. As we were going to sleep we gave her 70% odds that she was going to be there in the morning.

I woke up Jamie early so that we could get to the festival before everything finished. We went to get our onion bread with fried eggs at Two Brother's Restaurant, but they hadn't made the dough for the day yet - sometimes the early bird doesn't get the worm. Instead we got fried eggs on some of the Chinese steamed bread. It was good, but not as good as the fresh onion bread. As we were walking into the courtyard behind our hotel we were commenting that it looked like Jane took off, and then I look over and she was coming out of the bathroom. We told her that we thought she was going to come. She smiled at that.

She was going to spend the day searching for a sleeping pad. Jamie and I hopped on our bikes and headed down to the festival. Again we locked them to the scaffolding next to the grandstand. Almost as soon as we got them locked up a group of kids came running over and started climbing on them. Jamie chased them away. We had brought out Therm-a-rests and chair kits with us so we set up right in front of the grandstand, front row again. The festival organizers were busy tying cartons of cigarettes, packages of cookies, soap and other things to strips of white fabric that were going to be placed in the area between the two crowds so that the cowboys could come racing down on their horses, and then hang way off them and try to pick up the prizes. It was amazing to watch. Some of the cowboys would lean so far off that they'd fall off their horses. Other times their saddles would slip over or a stirrup would break and both the rider and house would come crashing to the ground. It looked painful for both of them, but each time both would get up and appear to be alright. A few times the rider would get separated from the horse and people from the crowd, mostly police, would rush out and try to get a hold of the horse's reins.

During a break in the action we made a dash across to the other side to get better light for fliming and taking pictures.

We were stoked to be able to so easily get front row, but felt guilty at the same time. The police and a few military officers kept the locals back. Many of them were lucky just to get a peak over the shoulder of the person in front of them. We felt guilty because it was thier festival.

After we saw enough, we went back ot the hotel and put the bikes into Tandem mode, and did a pre-ride check to make sure that they were ready to go in the morning. We had heard many horrific stories about the condition of the road we were planning to take.

The rest of the day was spent catching up on e-mails and letting everyone know that it might be a few days before we'd be able to e-mail again.