Lucky made it to 16,000 feet. I decided we also can take credit for 16,000 ft., since we’re on the same team.

We’ve been in high meadows of the Tibetan Plateau, most days over 15,000 feet. We’ve found the back garden gate of Shangri-la. Look for a longer post soon with lots of pictures.

Claire:
Poor Bob had to pedal by himself halfway to Sangdui because I was too busy kicking myself up the mountain. Can anyone tell me why one remembers something left behind only after you’re well beyond going back to retrieve it? My security blanket is gone, and it’s all my fault.

At the breakfast table, in the roadhouse where we spent the night, I left my packet of maps, phrases and our chopsticks. It was an envelope I clutched tightly anytime we were off the bike. Now, it was 30 kilometers back and 1000 feet down. We weren’t going back for it. So we’re without a good map until at least Shangri-la (Note: Bob was smart enough to photograph the road atlas pages, so we do have a backup). The phrases? I’ve mostly got down the basics enough to get us a room or a meal without my cheat sheets. And the chopsticks? Well, this is China.

Bob:
There will be more mountains to come, and some will probably seem harder than this one. Zippy is making strange noises from the drive-train, and we fear we have put him under too much strain this time.

We are sometimes tired, but feeling stronger every day. We’ve reached that magical three-week point in a long challenging bicycle tour, when we are in the zone, when we feel pretty much ready for anything.

The next post is one you won’t want to miss: we now know we have entered the high back garden gate of Shangri-la. The success was hard won, but all the more rewarding for the suffering.

It will be posted soon with lots of photos.

Tibetan woman spinning prayer wheel in Litang

This is a re-post of our Shangri-la adventure of one year ago. If you would like to read the whole four months, in reading order, click on the In Search of Shangri-la link at the left under Adventures.

Bob:
We have been traveling for two weeks. somehow it seems much longer. Chengdu and the Tibetan Plateau are very different places, in landscape and people. Chengdu is a very large city of Han Chinese, and the Himalayan west of Sichuan is sparsely populated with Tibetans. Many people think of the Tibetan people and the Tibetan Plateau as being only within the lines drawn by the Chinese government, the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Both the Plateau and the Tibetan people are spread over several other provinces. The government  encourages Hans to move into Tibetan lands with various incentives, and by building new cities deep in formerly exclusive Tibetan lands. But the fingers of Himalayas we crossed to climb the Plateau, and the difficulty in building and maintaining roads, have kept this part of Tibetan land Tibetan.

We will now turn south, remaining on ridges of the Plateau for a few hundred kilometers, with at least one pass higher than any we have yet crossed, nearing 16,000 feet. Not far from here, the great rivers of SE Asia are given birth; the Yangtze and the Mekong are the two we will meet. We will cross the Yangtze as it turns north, and follow the Mekong south into Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Here, these already powerful streams, are separated by just a few high ridges before becoming the two greatest rivers in this part of the world. Along their courses live one of the largest concentrations and most diverse collections of peoples on Earth. We will encounter many cultures and the landscapes that helped form them, and we will share what we learn with you.

These postings are a small part of the material we are gathering, and they will be expanded into a larger picture of the region, after we return home.

And now a brief look at Litang:

Litang is one of the few cities in China with a majority Tibetan population. We were told in Chengdu, by a resident experienced China traveler, that we would see a more genuine view of the Tibetan people on the route we were taking than the throngs of tourists going to Lhasa. It does seem that we see few laowai (foreigners) here and we haven’t seen any touts (“Hello friend! Let me take you to a wonderful hotel!”)

They are a rambunctious people, and demonstrative toward strangers. Their culture and religion seem more important to them than to most, and they seem eager to share it. We visited a chorten (stupa square) Baita Gongyuan, where a smiling man invited us to take a lap and spin the prayer wheels. There seems almost an element of play to the practice; Claire noticed the Tibetans were so fast that they lapped us.

The public market is lively and filled with interesting fungus, vegetables, fruits and sides of yak, with men arguing over the value of various cuts. There are various fried breads and all manner of hand-made and manufactured things unknown in the West.

We have enjoyed walking the streets and interacting with the people, more than most Chinese cities, and I will miss it when we turn south toward Shangri-la, still many kilometers and mountains away.

Claire:
While we wait out the rain that has not yet materialized, we’ve spent some time getting to know Litang. I feel more comfortable now than when we first arrived; it’s like arriving in a new country. The people look different, act different and it takes some time to acclimate to the change in culture as well as in elevation.

I’ve been learning to speak a little more Mandarin and was even able to say: “We have friends who (do) Mahjongg, but we can’t.” But now, my limited Mandarin is useless here and I had a very funny exchange today with a friendly Tibetan woman who guessed, through graphic gestures, that I was looking for a toilet. She led me, arm in arm; she was going to the same place.

Today, we walked up the hill to the monastery through traditional Tibetan neighborhoods. The monastery reminded me of San Xavier del Bac because of all the intricate detail being put into the renovations. Huge murals filled the walls, yet looking at them up close, we could see how fine the painting was. That level of detail went all the way up, so high that no one could possibly appreciate it up close, yet there it was. I’m sure the artists who painted it appreciated it. The entry to the main hall was in the process of being carved and was not yet painted, yet it was just as beautiful as all the painted woodwork. While we were looking at the large Buddha, some Tibetans came in with young children and began the prostration ritual.

Claire:
We slept fitfully. We were grateful for a warm, dry place but I fretted about the rain. I was relieved to hear it stop, only to discover it had turned to snow.  Next morning, the snow stopped long enough for us to get started and we knew we had another 15,000 foot pass to get over, but it was hard to tell our elevation (we don’t have an altimeter on either bike computer).

With the sky socked in and lots more climbing, we were convinced we’d reached the pass even though neither the Tibetans acknowledged it with prayer flags nor the Chinese marked it with a sign. To us it was a pass, so we took photos, made a video and descended. The snow turned wet and the road muddy and we discovered we had more climbing. This time the pass was marked, with flags in one spot and with an official sign a half kilometer away.

For cyclists who know the great 30 to 50 mph descents we have in the western U.S., these are nothing like those. The asphalt is not up to the weight of the heavy trucks and the road is full of ruts and moguls so we have to keep our speed down to 20 kilometers per hour. At one point we were bouncing so much our sleeping bag and Thermarests bounced off into the muck (they were in plastic bags). We reached the end of one long downhill and could see a long climb ahead. My knees were stiff and Bob’s neck and shoulders were worn out from controlling Zippy. Neither one of us wanted to face that climb.

Yesterday, we’d passed what looked like a roadhouse with a big Chinese flag and here at the base of the climb was another one. I walked into what I thought was a restaurant and asked about a room. Yes, they had one, it was a storeroom with two cots: $6. There was no heat, water or electricity, and the short-drop was outside. Zippy’s secure parking spot was the meat locker that was the entryway to our room. Through gestures, the proprietor made it very clear we were to keep the meat locker door closed at all times, I guess to keep the cats and any loose dogs out.

We tried to regain some heat by curling up in bed for a while, then ventured out for dinner. That’s when we finally figured out all the people coming in were road workers; we were staying at a road maintenance camp. We ate what everyone else ate, a big comforting bowl of noodles and sat around the kitchen stove to warm up. I don’t know that it was really so cold, but we were still so chilled that we went to bed huddled together with Lucky in one twin cot with four fluffy comforters on top of us. We slept well in the very cold room; there’s a reason they store the meat there.

Bob:
When we awoke it was still raining, spattering the mud puddles of the courtyard with discouraging  regularity. We couldn’t imagine another day of near hypothermia, and more hills and bad roads. But, we didn’t want to stay another day with the road workers, nice as they were, so we packed up our filthy gear and steeled ourselves for the day. By the time we were ready to go, the rain had stopped, and there was even a hint of blue over the first hill. The road workers were spot on with their description of the road ahead, a first on this trip. They told us exactly how many kilometers and how many hills. After a round of photos, we are an oddity wherever we go, particularly in these remote places, and we rolled off to face the first hill.

The three hills were more like small passes than hills, taking from 45 min. to 1.5 hours. The weather went back and forth from threatening to clear, but we stayed dry.

We’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story of our day into the Tibetan city of Litang, on the road to Shangri-la.

Bob:

We made quick work of a 7,000 ft climb to a 15,252 ft. plus pass, and were feeling pretty chipper considering the troubles other cyclists had encountered with the steep grades and high elevations. (See the last post) Our regular climbs of Mt. Lemmon (close to 9,000 feet elevation) in Tucson, had prepared our legs well, and we took enough off days for good acclimatization. After a nearly two weeks of our legs getting accustomed to the 80 pounds our so we carry, the climb was not as difficult as expected.

However, rather than the long descent to lower elevation for rest and a decent camp spot, we found the road stayed high, rolling up and down 1,000 feet or so as the weather deteriorated to rain, wind and sleet, and then climbing again, finally snow. We knew that a night of rest at lower elevation would be essential for the next pass of 15,475 feet, but there was no down to be had.

We stayed high as the clouds lowered and the sky darkened. We were shivering from the wet and cold and the effort of the pass. We knew we had to find shelter, high altitude or not, and hope our light sleeping bag would be enough. We failed to find a flat spot; this is called the Tibetan plateau, but it is riddled with 1,000 to 2,000 foot mountains with steep gorges and very few spots flat enough for a tent. Just as we were about to give up and camp beside the road (not something we do unless in dire circumstances) we saw a Tibetan settlement, and decided to see if we could at least get water. We were low and there was only some snow to eat, and maybe find a place behind a house out of sight. We would have to sleep at well over 14,000 feet, but we needed shelter.

As we rolled up to a small stone house/barn, an older looking woman smiled at us and made the international sleeping sign: prayer hands laid next to her head bent sideways. Nothing ever looked so good to us. A young woman, whom we took to be her daughter, and her child were in their small barnyard with their small herd of yaks preparing for milking.

She motioned for us to bring Zippy into the house, which was on the bottom level, the barn. We leaned him up against the stone wall, unloaded our bags and followed grandma (we’ll never know her name) upstairs. Their living quarters was one large room with a small hearth and a cozy fire. There was not a chimney, but a stovepipe reached just as far as a roof hatch, and the space was filled with a blue haze of smoke that softened all shapes and colors.

The floor was rough cut slabs and the roof was supported by large log beams, but in the stone walls were set modern aluminum windows with latches. Various food items were drying on feed sack material and the beds were rolled up in one corner along with corn husk pillows. The hearth held all the pans they owned, and all the cooking was done on top of the fire. The daughter hurried up from her milking to prepare our meal and grandma sat and smiled at us and attempted to communicate.  She knew no Chinese, only Tibetan, and our communication was by pantomime.

First, we were served a liquid from a pot that seemed to have a permanent spot on the hearth. It was yak butter tea. It’s pretty much as its name describes: water, yak butter (lots), and a few tiny leaves of tea. Now this sounds awful, but we found it quite good, and warming after a trying day.

Our first course was a white crumbly substance that Claire likened to the curds we had in Wisconsin, only they didn’t squeak in your teeth as much and had a very fermented flavor. I looked over and I could see a large pile of what we were eating drying/fermenting on the floor near where we would probably sleep. We ate from a communal bowl, grandma first, showing us how with the fingers of her right hand (this is important to remember). We are not prone to insulting the hostess, so we imitated her. We both liked the unusual texture and fermented flavor. I could see uses for it in other genres of cooking.

Grandma prepared the next course while the daughter finished milking. She sliced potatoes French Fry style and fried them in a huge amount of an unidentified oil poured from a large plastic container stuffed with a rag. Then she added some water for a steamed finish. This was served with rice, and more yak butter tea. It was quite satisfying, and enjoyed with the company of a Buddhist monk who’d dropped in for a meal. Apparently you feed a monk when he shows up at your door, anytime.

After dinner, and another couple of rounds of yak tea, we both needed to relieve ourselves of some liquid, and asked (don’t ask how we asked) for the toilet, which we expected to be a short-drop, i.e. a shallow pit with weather shelter over it. Not here. We were pointed to the guardrail and over the hill to the village toilet. It wasn’t as bad as you might think. Such places in America are littered with toilet paper, the white of which announces each deposit. Here they do not use toilet paper. Remember how all the eating and touching of food is done with the right hand? Yep.

The next morning, just at first light Claire and I both felt a need and headed past the sleepy yaks, over the guardrail where we each found – recently at least – an unused bush. It had snowed overnight and we had two inches of something much better than toilet paper to use. Chilly, but refreshing.

During the night we slept like the family, fully clothed on the floor on light pads with husk filled pillows. We went to sleep to the sound of grandma reciting her prayers on her prayer beads. Breakfast was – guess what – yak butter tea, leftover potatoes and rice, and an addition – yak butter rolled in a mixture of rough meal and some sugar. Again, strange sounding, but good and filling. The little girl of three or so got her breakfast from mom, two teats worth.

Claire:

It sounds romantic: going to sleep to the sounds of chanting and waking to the sounds of milking. But these women’s lives are a gritty existence that our culture hasn’t known for generations. Hauling wood, water, and food up the ladder to the living space, making butter and curds, grinding grain, hand washing clothes, keeping the fire going, cooking… Mundane, routine, weather-dependent, smoke-filled and layered with years of grime. At first, we were both a little uncomfortable with their aboriginal way of life (we even took some Pepto-Bismol as a prophylaxis against any reaction to the yak butter). It’s kind of like going feral in Australia, at first, you try to avoid the bull dust, then you live with it, until finally it becomes your outer layer.

The five tiny calves at the bottom of the ladder were the future for these women. Their house was smaller than most in the village. I wondered where the men were? What would the little girl’s life be like? Would she get an education? Would she look at that post card of the horse those people on the bicycle gave her and realize someday what a big world this is? We used Bob’s jacket printed with a map of the world on it to try to convey where we were from, where we’d been and where we planned to go. I have no idea if they’d ever seen a map before. It doesn’t really matter to them, their world is an isolated village along a road between two passes and 50 kilometers from the nearest town. An occasional bicyclist may pass by their house or ask for shelter. To us, these women will always be a part of our world, and I don’t ever want to forget them.

Bob:

And it’s not over yet. We left the family as the snow began to melt, expecting the second 15,000 foot pass to be a few kilometers further since we had slept so high, and also expecting the weather to turn.

The Road To Shangri-la is not always what is expected.

We get interesting reactions from Chinese. These were at yet another pass, this one about 14,339, and a summit several hundred feet higher a few kilometers on. The road was good to the top, and looked like a beautiful 40 kilometer downhill, but, it was not to be. The road was severely frost heaved. It was fun at first to ride the moguls, but got old after a few kilometers. Here are some pictures from the day:

Claire: We’re getting to the stage where we think about food a lot, and we tried to make a decent dent in the big bucket of rice, but we failed to come close to finishing it. Yes, we’re eating pork now, or any kind of protein for that matter, and we eat whatever vegetables they bring us. At the grocery stores, we study and poke the packages and hope they’ll sustain us through a night of camping. Yogurt and cookies (a whole roll) is a before bed tradition of carbohydrate loading and we even bought Tang for our water bottles tomorrow. Wish I had some Cheerios, they always charge me up. If you’re out pedaling today or tomorrow, push a pedal stroke for us, we’ll need it; tomorrow; (tonight for you) we climb 7,000 feet to well over 15,000 feet and hope to get down in elevation to find a camping spot low enough to allow for sleep, before dark.

A woman sat at a nearby table smoking. She had that rode-hard-put-away-wet look off women of a certain age who have experienced an interesting life. Shari introduced herself to us, and in the same sentence told us a long story about how she was in the original cast of Up With People in 1968. I vaguely remembered such a quasi-religious hippy vocal group and their brief fame. Her participation seems to have defined her life for the last 42 years. She measures the value of a year by whether or not there will be an Up With People reunion. There is one in Tucson later this summer and she is very excited. Note the new tie died t-shirt, made special for the occasion. She’s wearing it early to get in the mood, or more likely to stimulate conversation.

Seeing us on bicycles made here vociferously apologize for her smoking. She went to great lengths to tell us of past failures, and her next attempt – just as soon as she gets back from the reunion – Up With People, don’t forget – and she gets a few other things in order. She gave no timeline.

Lighting another cigarette, she rambled on for a long while, telling us very personal things about her life, just happy to be hearing the sound of her own voice, and having us listen. This happens to us often. I guess we look like we need to be entertained. She was entertaining. Maybe that’s why she was an Up With People cast member so long ago.

Just then John arrived, smoking and semi-controlling a large but young and hyper black lab mix, jerking repeatedly on the short leash. Shari told us John lives in a tent, by choice she added — no doubt. She began to tell us his life story in great detail while he tried to shut her up so he could tell us the story of him being sick the previous night. He paused, stalking and cursing, to his dog tussling with a less enthusiastic dog and owner nearby.

John awoke sick to his gut at 2am, ran for the toilets, nearest bush, whatever and, “I swear to god I shit my pants.” He threw up repeatedly and then began to cough violently. This went on for hours. Could have been alcohol involved, or worse, who knows? He told this story with great relish, taking particular pleasure in the most savage details.

Shari broke in and suggested, “Maybe these folks don’t want to hear all this while they’re eating.” Did I mention the ice cream was delicious? “We don’t mind. We’ve heard and seen worse.” We didn’t mention that our experiences were always in overcrowded poor countries where privacy is not a priority or even an option.

He finished with a good-natured curse, slapped the picnic table, jerked on the dog’s leash and walked away, apparently satisfied that his adventure had been adequately shared with the wider world. It doesn’t take much to make some people happy.

There was a third visitor. He was also of middle years, forty something, and had obviously had a stroke of some sort, signaled by his cane, halting walk and slurred speech. Shari said he was probably, “on something,” since his speech was worse than usual. He wasn’t in a sharing mood, just wanted to borrow Shari’s phone to call for a pick-up.

Young stroke victims are not all that uncommon, among populations of substance abusers. The substances abused include cheap fat sugary food. Of course we were eating ice cream at the time, lots of ice cream.

Shari hated to see us go, but we had a few hours of sunshine left, and wanted to spend it on Homer Spit with the kittiwakes, sea otters, the lone bald eagle and a few tourist campers. Sunset is before 11pm now, so we have to make use of a rapidly diminishing resource, and it looks like rain again for the next few days.

We were shopping later that evening and I overheard this conversation from one woman to another, “Ha! I can’t buy anything for the freezer, there’s room for nothing in there but fish”

I should have such a problem. Salmon is $11/lb here, more expensive than the lower 48. Can’t figure that one out.

The roaring Frazier descends from the jagged peaks and glaciers of the Canadian Rockies, first in a north-westerly direction. It makes a hard turn south near Prince George for a long run to Vancouver and the sea. We followed the Frazier to Prince George, located on the Yellowhead Highway in the middle of BC. In 1997 we rode Zippy through Prince George as part of a 5000 kilometer tour of BC and Alberta from our home in Dungeness, Washington. It was nice to be able to return, and remember. Beyond Prince George, the land becomes almost like a gentle sea, huge long waves of white spruce and aspen, rolling off to a far horizon. Here the sky becomes the thing, billowing white and blue-gray clouds against a cobalt northern sky, turning color with a later and later sunset.

It becomes almost difficult to sleep as we near the Yukon, the days are so long, the nights so short. We close all the blinds in Turtle, and it still is late before we can sleep. Light usually wakes me at 3:30am, but I’m a good sleeper, and Claire’s warmth makes it easy to wait for full sun to warm us through the windshield sometime around 6:30. At that 3:30 awakening, I open the blinds and curtain between our living area and the cab to welcome the sun. A warm house makes it easier to get out of bed at a reasonable hour.

Here in the cool north, when we chose a boondock spot, we look first for level (the refrigerator is fussy if we aren’t) and secondly, a north-east exposure for morning warmth. Two of our most important camping tools are, a short carpenters level, and a compass. For trickier leveling situations, we can now use our Android to give us the exact number of degrees we are off –level; very cool.

It is quiet beside a lazy boreal stream. Earlier, we watched a beaver patrol the near shore, five meters away, as we enjoyed dinner and a glass of fine Oregon wine, courtesy of John and Sharon Hoyle. The beaver found nothing to her liking and returned downstream. Maybe she didn’t like the neighbors, or that we didn’t offer our wine?

The next morning, it was Claire’s turn to open the blinds, put the pot to boil for my morning coffee, and climbed back in bed for a wake up snuggle.

Later, I sit with the warm sun on my shoulder, watching a shorebird forage the far shore, head bobbing, its legs a-blur, mind on food, preparing for the breeding to come. My coffee steams in the sun’s rays, and slowly begins to bring my brain into a semi-active mode. Our passenger chair rotates to take full advantage of the sun, and the view. It is another million dollar view, free. I love that sentence. I wonder if the people tied to the RV Resort umbilical are enjoying their morning, packed together as they are, with a claustrophobic view of the toilets and other motorhomes. These mornings and evenings, all alone with our river, lake or mountain view, make us feel rich, even if we do have to make our own coffee.

This ride, begun at Emerson Winery, was cloudy, but the rain held off until past the middle of our 35 mile ride, and caught us just as we arrived at this bridge. What luck! We enjoyed a snack, listened to the rain on the roof, the burbling of the creek below and some very happy sounding birds (breeding season). Several cyclists on their regular Saturday outing passed us without stopping to share our shelter. Their rain slickers and fenders spoke of the grim determination needed to be a dedicated cyclist here.

The sun never showed, but the rain stopped and we finished, cold but dry. We are hoping summer comes to the Northwest soon, or we are going to get seriously out of condition, or get fenders.

Claire shot this from her Big Wheel during the Urban Assault Ride in Tucson. This was my VERY FIRST ride on a Big Wheel! I was born too early. I loved it! We rode it as a team and didn’t win. Ha!