Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Issue 3 | Page 19
Cycling from Lhasa
to Kathmandu
by Piet van der Poel
Ready for the off: posing in front of the Potala, palace of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa. Photo: Piet van der Poel.
Lhasa to Kathmandu is an epic 1,100 kilometer journey, but
more so if you power your own way across the high plateau
and across even higher passes. It may be a bit easier nowadays
with more black-topped roads. We had the advantage of an
organized trip with a truck to carry our luggage and a guide to
save us from getting lost. However, it still remains a tough ride,
and five of the seven members of our group had to get a ride in
our truck on one or two of the longer days.
Tibet is ideal for cyclists as mountain ranges are separated by
very wide flat valleys which would be very boring if one were
walking. I bought a bicycle in Bangkok, flew to Kathmandu, got
two days of acclimatization in Helambu National Park and flew
with the group to Lhasa at 3,600 meters, where we had four
more days to acclimatize before starting to cycle.
Lhasa felt like a Chinese city to me. Only the area behind Jokhang
Monastery and the outskirts of the city remained Tibetan. I loved
Jokhang Monastery, where the Tibetan culture and Buddhism
were still fully alive, notwithstanding a few Chinese guards. The
Potala Palace was an impressive building but unlike Jokhang it
felt dead, an empty shell with no function and no life.
Our first cycling day was easy and before midday we had
completed the 70 kilometer flat, paved road. If it gave some the
impression that it was going to be an easy trip, the next day was
the opposite. We soon found ourselves on a dirt road climbing
forever to Kerela pass at 4,900 meters. Soon, James fell behind,
then Dale got altitude sickness and even the young guys
were struggling. After lunch Peter, the oldest participant and I
reached the pass first. On the next stretch to Yamdruk Tsho, the
others one by one got into the truck. Peter, I and the guide Tilak,
plodded on at times through deep mud, which was especially
hard for Peter who was more of a road biker. We reached our
guesthouse well before the truck which got stuck in mud. Our
tired friends had to push it on several occasions. Luckily we had
a decent hotel that day, without rats running around the room
and across some of us at night as happened the night before.
A hundred and twenty kilometers and a high pass proved too
hard for most of us, so we decided to skip our rest day to avoid
having another very long day. We rode every day staying the
nights in small guesthouses serving local dishes including
momo’s, which after the Dalai Lama is the best known export
product of Tibet. One night we stayed in the isolated Rolong
monastery, where ruins on the surrounding hills indicated where
before the Chinese invasions other monasteries stood. Other
nights we had nice rooms in guesthouses in villages and towns
such as Shigatshe, which felt more Tibetan than most of Lhasa.
One of the highlights came on day 5 after we struggled across
one of the worst corrugated dirt roads to Rumbuk with its neat
monastery and views of Mount Everest. The next morning
we cycled out to the Everest Base Camp at 5,200 meters, an
amazing ride with the north face of Everest towering far above
us. We met a couple climbers who had given up their attempt
to climb the mountain: one was not feeling well and was on his
second course of anti-biotics, and the other decided that he
wanted to live rather than die trying to climb Everest.
ROYAL
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