China Cycling Travelogues

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Neil Bryan
"Three China Cycling Adventures"
Page 1
Copyright © Neil Bryan, 2004.

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Each day I would drop in on interesting villages, nomad tent, or road repair crews and get my shot of butter tea. It just proves that even though you may cycle alone, you make these big trips with the help of a lot of kind people.

After about 27 days of riding I arrived in Lhasa, where I stayed in a Tibetan style guesthouse called the Snowlands. I went to another guesthouse for a shower-what a feeling- that glorious, steaming, hot water hitting my face and relieving my aching joints.

In Lhasa, on my birthday, I was able to visit monks inside the Jokang Temple. The Jokang is the one of the main destinations (along with Mount Kailash) of devout Tibetans. All day pilgrims can be seen prostrating on well-worn front stones and circumambulating around the temple. After ten days of eating and sightseeing I started the final leg to Nepal.

Dried out, brown mountains and the dusty road on which I would meet the occasional horse – drawn cart reminded me of scenes from old Westerns. There were no gunslingers, but at some towns the bored kids would ambush me with pebbles or clumps of dried yak dung and mud. I passed the ruins of many monasteries which were demolished during the Cultural Revolution.

Anyone who has cycled from Lhasa to Nepal will remember Lak Pa La. What makes it brutal is not the altitude, though at 5200 m it is certainly in the "Superpass" category. No, it is the blasting headwind. The wind was so strong I could just barely push my bike up the road, though I did hop on to ride out the last hundred meters to the top.

Days later I made it to the top of the Tong La, the gateway through the Himalayas. When I saw the prayer flags marking the 5200 m pass, I stood on pedals and sprinted. Finally I had made it! That left just one last thing, the greatest downhill in the world, the 4000-meter descent off the plateau into subtropical Nepal.

My last evening in Tibet, surrounded by the Himalayas, a Tibetan man walked about four kilometers from his village to give me some tsampa. The next day I came upon an old man dressed in rags and thrust the bag of tsampa into his hands. I had ridden 2000 km to pick up and then deliver that bag of tsampa to the old guy. That’s karma.

After Tibet, I lived in Taiwan and Japan for several years, and now I am back in Canada where I study urban sustainability and applications of modeling software and video to urban design issues. But sometimes I still think of going back to that intense life where one day Out There is more memorable than a month here.

Hmmm, there is a road that goes up to Mount Kailash…

I am interested to hear from anyone who has cycled in west China / Tibet or has questions. You can contact me through Bike China.

Regards, and happy cycling.

Neil Bryan

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