Time Trial to Shigatse

Today we left the lovely town of Gyantse and booted it almost 100km to Shigatse, the second biggest city in Tibet behind Lhasa.

Fortunately the road was sealed (except for the first 10km of rocky shite to start with... I think we got some crap directions; then Jen's whole pannier rack fell off again but this time a different screw was loose - managed to fix it luckily) and dead flat, which meant that we could boot along at a healthy 25-30km/h!


Let's brag about how good we are. 97km in 4 hours, that's an average speed of 24.25km/h. Let's take away the slow rocky bit at the start; 10km in 1 hour, which makes 87km in 3 hours, thus averaging 29km/h!! Holy crap I'd be happy with that at home on a road bike, let alone on mountain bikes with thick knobbly tyres with full panniers at 3900m. And into a headwind. Excuse me while I clean up the mess in the room caused by my big head exploding.

Now I'm as tired as all hell, esp after yak steak for lunch.

At least we have a rest day tomorrow.

As for the ride itself, well, there wasn't all that much to see really. Not as cool as the other days over the passes. Shigatse itself will be cool to explore tomorrow.

Will try and put up some photos now.

m.