ohmygod

Well strike me pink and call me a Llama, we have internet access in Nangartse!

This is supposed to be one of the larger fishing villages that we are supposed to pass, but Chinese development in this whole area has apparently been happening at an unprecedented rate. Which is great for us, because the roads that are supposed to be dirt are all sealed, and there's internet here.

So, it's been 3 days of riding so far...

Day 1 (Thursday):
It was about time we left Lhasa after spending 4 days there stagnating. Luckily, we didn't get lost.

There were a few things that had changed since our guidebook had been published, which confused us to no end. Suffice to say we ended up riding 90km, about 20km more than we planned to. And the last 8-10km was the first 300m of ascent of the Khamba La pass! Oh well.

So we met these 3 Chinese bike tourers and camped with them together at a height of 3900m. They made a fire and it was good.

Day 2 (Friday):
We slogged like bastards up the remaining 800m vertical to the summit of the Khamba La (4800m). What a b#$%@. View from the top was incredibubble. Saw cool yaks and prayer flags, and tourists. Also, the Yamdrok Tso (Scorpion Lake) which was a beautiful turquoise and there were like mountains and stuff. Oh yeah, Jen had some complications which you will hear about later...

Halfway down from the pass (we descended to 4400m to the lake) we met some Chinese tourists who wanted to take photos of us (only like the 10th group of people to do so...), but the difference was, these guys offered us FOOD. And we were HUNGRY. So hungry, in fact, that when they offered us:

1. Sliced ham
2. Chinese sausage
3. Spam

Jen and I BOTH tucked into it like Sharyn's Tibetan Mastiff Baxter. Ha! Nothing like a bit of exhaustion and altitude-induced hazy-headedness to convert a hard-core vegetarian and a flexi-vegitarian into ravenous carnivores. They also gave us milk. I don't think we've ever ever ever had that much protein, fat, and salt in one sitting.

This protein feast enabled us to ride for another 20km or so along the lake, and we camped at a pleasant little spot right on the lake.

Day 3 (Saturday):
We were awoken by rain, and when that stopped, the sound of a person's footsteps and Tibetan singing around our tent. It seemed our plans to get cosy this morning were foiled! I poked my head out and it seemed a Tibetan boy, about 14-15 years old, was checking us out. So we blearily staggered out of our tent, and proceeded to munch on some home-made muesli (we made it ourselves... ohmygod), which we couldn't finish and gave the rest to to the Tibetan boy. He helped us pack up our stuff and generally hung around and made us laugh.

Halfway along, we stumbled across what I think was a group of Tibetan nomads. They were all sitting in a field in circles, doing cool stuff like sharpening scythes and spinning wool and eating cool looking Tibetan food. They offered me some of their local brew, which I sipped at politely (and yes, it tasted like diesel) and then handed back to them. They kept offering us food and stuff and laughed and carried on when we brought our cameras out. All in all, it was the coolest thing that has happened to us on this trip!

We only rode about 20km to Nangartse cos Jen was feeling like shite, but we have had great food and have a sweet room for less than 8 bucks each.

Well this is Jen's bit. Do read it, it's much more interesting than my bit.

PAIN...that would be the word i would use to describe the first half of thesecond day riding...don't listen to marcus "i actually feel surprisingly good" yong...it hurt....it started when we got up...marcus had flat tyre...i had diarrhoea...3 timeswithin 1 1/2 hours of getting up...so i then took some medicine... (goingover a 4800m pass...not that well acclimatised...was never going to be good going ot the toilet every 1/2 hour)...anyway after the gastrolyte (and loperamide) kicked in it was manageable...though still painful...we made it to the top...didn't stay that long (v touristy..men with dressed up dogs charging money for photos and stuff)..the descent was awesome...i think marcus has told you of our feast half way down...i think it's taken my body about 24 hours to work out what the hell to do with spam...i think it was about a week's worth of fat in one meal...i don't think my body had enough lipases in stock...anyway got down beside the lake which was beautiful (more speccy than thepass actually) and it was nice cos we knew we had plenty of time so could just cruise and take in the general specciness (i think i only pedalled 50%of the time)...
so we set up camp alongside this beautiful lake with snowcapped peaks in the distance...and then went and swam in the lake....i can't believe i was actually swimming in a lake at 4400 m and it wasn't that cold!
then today i felt like shit (i blame the spam...the ham and the sausage were manageable...plus a bit of altitude stuff....and maybe a big day the day before on top of diarrhoea)...so we didn't go far...but i am now well rested and ready to take on the next bit!!

We're planning a massive day tomorrow - going to ride from here to Gyantse, which is >100km away with two passes in the way... at least the second one is smaller. If we get there, there will be internet for sure, as it's a much bigger town than this. But if we don't, we'll be there in two days' time. And if that happens, we may not even stop there so don't worry mums and dads don't panic; we'll write you in Shigatse.

We'll add some photos soon... stay tuned.

Love,
j+m