Thursday June 4, 2009 - Lhasa to Golmud - The Tibetan Plateau

On Thursday (June 4) morning we were up at 6 am to leave our camp site around 7 am. There had obviously been frost over night and it was still very cold in the morning. We just got on to the road from our camp site when Ian and Tamar told us we had a flat tyre. So, we drove to a sunny spot on the road and they changed the tyre in about 27 minutes. Our drive continued through the Tibetan plateau over high passes, again over 5,200 meters, and across the top of the plateau. We arrived at one point on the road only to find out that the road was closed, til 7 pm, so we had a nice Truck journey through the fields at the side of the road. At one point due to the angle the Truck would be lying at on the side of the hill, we all got out and walked. We passed a little three wheeler bike-cart with a high unstable load of grain bags. The passenger was on the upper side of the hill holding on to the load over for dear life so that it didn't tip . They looked really funny, but they actually made it safely! We stopped for lunch in Naghu and as I was on cook group we went off to do the shopping. Once again I was quite surprised at the lack of variety, but we did end up getting some good pork and great vegetables - carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, red peppers and a courgette type of vegetable from which they remove the seeds before cooking - I think they all it pumpkin. The other staple seems to be potatoes, so although I haven't been eating much meat - yak is quite tasty but tough - there are usually plenty of veg, rice, noodles, and potatoes to choose from. After lunch we got on our way again, not passing many communities on the high, cold plateau. We came to another road block which was going to be about an hour's wait, so we decided to cook dinner. It was cold, snowing on and off, and we cooked dinner watched by a growing crowd of Tibetans. It can't have been very appealing to them because one guy went away and came back with a packet of biscuits for us Finally, we set off once again on easily the worst road we have encountered so far. We made the decision to drive through the night and stop at 6 am and pitch our tents aiming to leave about mid-day. Next stop was the police check which was good for 1/2 hr. This was going into a new prefecture in Tibet. Just as we were starting to climb over another high pass at Tanggla (5220m) on the muddy, bumpy road, we had a problem with the gear box and Ian and Tamar cheerfully hopped out in the below freezing weather to fix it. Then we were off again. We crossed out of Tibet into Qinghai Province as we crossed the high pass of Tanggula Shanku at 5220. The road was absolutely awful and I think we covered about 200 km in 10 hours or so. We continued bumping and rocking through the night, but at 6 am decided it was too cold, too foggy, and too much effort to pitch the tents so just kept going till breakfast at 9:09 am. The drive was truly beautiful passing snow capped mountains and snow all around us....but it was some of the coldest pee stops we have had!!