Blue green paint covers about half of all Chinese trucks, light blue covers the other half. China is a Communist country, and in that country all trucks are equal. A German couple passed me in a blue green Chinese truck. They smiled and waved from the cab as they went by. I rode on at a good pace and caught up to them at the next river crossing. Their truck driver had to remove part of the exhaust system for them to make it through the deepest water of the river. The Germans worked in China doing medical research in Shanghai. They traveled to Tibet on a vacation and to scout out possible research opportunities for the future. Their Tibetan guide, from Lhasa, jumped down from the truck. A mixture of excitement and disbelief filled him when he greeted me. I asked him who he worked for in Lhasa, much later I learned that the People's Liberation Army owned his tour company. Recently the PLA has run low on money because of budget cutbacks from Beijing, so they started a few different companies to bring more money in for the army. It seemed ironic that one of the ways that they would make money was by running a tour company in Tibet, the very place that the PLA was instrumental in destroying. The young guide offered me a ride across the river in the back of his truck. When I did not take him up on the offer, he climbed back up into the cab and fetched a can of soda for me. I welcomed the gift. I took my shoes off and crossed the slow-moving thigh-deep water on my own. So far, the ferry full of sheep across the Tsangpo marked the only part of this trip that I had not traveled under my own power.
By the end of the day I made five more river crossings, in the middle of the last one I almost lost my bike. I had committed the mistake of putting my bike upriver from my body. The swift current of the river pounded up against the packs on the bike, the bike pushed against my legs. I could barely keep my footing, but I had to keep moving so my feet would not become too numb from the ice cold water. It took every ounce of energy I had to make it to the far shore. I collapsed in the sunshine on the grassy bank, and tried to thaw out my toes.
Rivers and streams crisscrossed this section of the road, that is why the truck drivers did not want to risk traveling on the “south” road. When I was not struggling through the white water, 20-30 mph [33 to 50 kph] head winds hit me. Head winds on a bike are always worse than the toughest uphills. Passes always have a top, and best of all a downhill, but head winds can go on for days and weeks, they have no defined end, it is just at the whim of the planet that any relief can be had.
While I beat my way into the wind, I lifted my head up to see two pilgrims carrying heavy packs walking toward me. I passed the last small village almost 100 miles back. These two must have come from Mt. Kailash, for there was no other reason to be out here. When I finally reached them, I stopped to exchange a few words. Unfortunately they immediately asked me for a Dalai Lama picture. In my exhausted state I did not want to deal with people that just saw me as an opportunity to get a Dalai Lama picture. After I started riding again, I realized that I had been looking for some kind of respect from these pilgrims, some kind of acknowledgment that we all had a tough trip. It took me a long time to ever fully realize that no one will ever be able to totally understand and appreciate what my trip was all about.
By late afternoon I started the climb up the 16,600-foot [5060 meter] Marium La, the last pass before Mt. Kailash. In the distance up ahead I saw a truck off to the side of the road. As I got closer, I realized that it was the German couple whom I had seen the day before. The Tibetan pilgrims who had ridden in the back of their truck built a fire on the side of the road. They spent their time having a Tibetan “tea party,” while the truck driver and guide fiddled with the broken truck. When I stopped, the guide ran over and greeted me, his smile showed that he was happy to see me again. He begged me to rest for a while and have something to eat. He took me over to the fire and made sure that they fed me well with all the hot tea I could drink and tsampa I could eat. When I talked to the older pilgrims around the fire, one man asked me for medicine. He described problems with his left leg. Unfortunately I could not do anything for him, and it required at least a week's trip, in the back of a truck, to arrive at the most basic medical clinic. I often wondered what I would do if an injury befell me in this desolate land so far from modern Western medical care.
Later another truck rolled around the corner. I could see the bright-colored clothes of Westerners inside. I had learned to the tell the difference between Tibetans and foreigners from a long ways off, just by the way they walked and the color of their clothes. With the aid of another truck there was a good chance that the Germans would be able to get their vehicle on the road again. The second truck also carried a few folks who were doing research in China and on a bit of a vacation. I walked down to meet the newly arrived visitors. They said they knew something strange was going on, because back at the last river crossing they saw what appeared to be bicycle tire tracks in the sand at the river's bank. As it turned out, we all decided to camp where we sat and enjoy a dinner together. This was a delight for me, to have a conversation in English with interesting people.
For the first evening in a long time, I sat out and enjoyed intriguing conversations about setting up national parks in Tibet and Nepal, about Chinese politics, and the politics at the United Nations. When I first started talking to the gentleman who just arrived in the second truck, I thought for sure it could only be George Schaller, the famous Himalayan biologist. It seemed that this man worked on all the same projects as Mr. Schaller. He talked about working as one of the original people who helped set up Chomolangma National Park, the new park on the Tibet side of Everest, and the new Chang Tang National Park. I had just seen an article by George Schaller about the Chang Tang Park, in National Geographic a few months earlier. Only much later did I learn that his name was Daniel Taylor-Ide. Daniel had spent a good part of his life doing ecological research in various parts of the Himalaya. Later on in the evening we all shared some excellent chocolate that one of Daniel’s friends had just brought from the USA.
By the time I was ten days out from Saga, the last place I bought any food, tiredness sapped most all my remaining energy. I had never had enough to eat since I left Saga. I needed a couple days to rest but I did not have the extra food to just spend even one day in the same place. I had to move forward every day. While I rode I would often find myself singing the same line of a song over and over to myself as sort of a mantra. I would never consciously pick what songs to sing. At some kind of subconscious level, the words would just come out. During this part of the ride my mantra became “I'm so tired, so tired of waiting for you…” as weariness filled my body, speech and mind. Much later in the trip, while riding at 17,000 feet [5182 meters] in the Askin Chin, the words changed to “Knocking at Heaven's door, 'cause I don't think that I'll be coming 'round here anymore”, a verbal distillation of thoughts regarding the thin line that separated me from death both on this ride and during all of life.
Some of the only times that I got to talk to any Westerners out in the Chang Tang occurred when their vehicles broke down. The drivers and the passengers do not like to stop out in the middle of nowhere. They would drive all day and sometimes into the night to get to some place where they could stay inside away from the freezing temperatures and howling winds. While I descended from the Marium La Pass, I encountered an American woman and a French woman whom I had met back in Shigatse. These women had originally told me the story of Jay, the American who had so many problems on his way to Mt. Kailash. A clogged fuel filter, in their Land Cruiser, left them stranded on the side of the road. Both of these women showed extreme kindness and compassion toward me. They gave me some extra supplies that they had, and told me where I could expect to buy more food. My life had started to become focused on food, more and more, and staying alive for that matter. They had just left Lake Manasarovar early that morning, I ran into them during mid-afternoon. The distances involved in traveling in Western Tibet are often difficult to understand. They told me, “Oh, you'll be at Mt. Kailash tomorrow.” I did a quick mental calculation, I was only cycling about 30 miles a day at that point. “It is four more days of riding for me to get to Kailash,” I replied. They had no real understanding of exactly how far they had traveled. “Do you know how many kilometers it is back to Shigatse? We had heard that it was only 300 KM.” I pulled out my Chinese maps that had all the distances marked, it looked like it would require about 900 KM or 540 miles. My answer surprised and disappointed both of them. The French woman had felt sick. The high altitude aggravated a heart ailment that she suffered from. They had hoped that they could return to Shigatse in just two or three more days. For the last five minutes the driver tried to start the engine. He had removed the fuel filter and tried to blow the gasoline through it with his mouth. After a few attempts and a spoonful of swallowed gasoline he got the filter unclogged. Once he finally started the truck, no one wanted to sit around and exchange stories if the engine ran fine. Besides, they could not take the chance of it not starting next time and being stuck for another couple of hours, or possibly days until it got fixed again.