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Shenzhen to Mount Everest
Riding into Tibet has been spoken about in my circle of friends since the first ever China bike trip we did in 2007 when we were very close to the border.
http://www.mychinamoto.com/forums/sh...Gorge-and-more
At that time we decided against doing it illegally because we had to get back to work and then after 2008 everything became much more difficult and it was put on the back burner. It was only after completing every other province on the mainland that I really refocused my attention on Tibet with a vengeance. I wanted to keep it as close to a normal China bike trip as possible and my mate Joe suggested calling an old student of his 'Godzilla' who used to be a high altitude guide, has summited Everest 4 times and now runs a travel agency in Lhasa. This proved to be the key piece of information as Godzilla said he could arrange the permits and that our basic outline of a plan sounded feasible.
To begin with there were about a dozen people interested in coming along and the idea was for the Godzilla to sit in @Tombaxer's sidecar (JH600-B), and being a brave, adventurous sort of chap Godzilla readily agreed. Unfortunately people dropped out one by one for various reasons, I particularly felt for John who had his bike nicked, and we were left with just 3 - Tommy, George and myself. Tommy and his sidecar were obviously the most important members of the team and with a couple of weeks to go disaster struck, he had to back out for work reasons. I tentatively asked Godzilla if he'd be happy to ride on the back of my bike and he said no problem....Phew! Tommy planned to fly out to Lhasa, hire a JH600-A and join us for the base camp leg but in the end he couldn't escape the office even for that. A real shame as he was part of the plans right form the beginning.
This is roughly the route we took
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Shenzhen - Guilin - up through Guizhou
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Through Chongqing and up the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan, then across Gansu and into Qinghai
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Qinghai lake and then to Golmud
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From Golmud south into Tibet proper and Namtso Lake
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Namtso Lake to base camp via Lhasa
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Base camp back to Lhasa via the excellent S307
George hadn't done any riding in China before and bought a brand new JH600 for the trip. The plan was for me to ride to Chongqing, meet him, pick up his bike and head straight off.
Oh and by the way the only way foreigners can enter Tibet at the moment is through Golmud in Qinghai province, it's currently impossible to get a permit to enter at any other point.
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Here I am at about 10 pm ready to leave Shenzhen on August 10. I generally leave at around that time, ride 70 kms to Huiyang and start the trip proper from there the following morning.
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August 11
Left Huiyang at 7 am and cracked the hell on! Managed to cover 814 kms in about 13 hours. Went trhough some nice Yangshuo-esque mountains in Guangdong Province but apart from that I didn't stop much.
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Stayed on the outskirts of Guilin, on the road to Long Sheng, 70 quai room and they let me park the bike in the lobby.
884 kms total
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Left 7 am and got rained on all morning. Snuck onto the gaosu once inside Guizhou Province and just boshed along. Saw plenty of police at the tolls but they don't seem to mind in Guizhou, I did get shouted at by a few toll booth dudes though but there ya go. Even if you can get away with riding on the gaosu in Guizhou you can't fill up with petrol as they don't have any anqian di yi teapots. I actually ran out of petrol in a gas station and the attendant took pity on me which was very good of him.
Again I just had my head down all day trying to rack up the kilometres but did see a guy changing a tyre in the centre of the gaosu and took some pics of some dudes watering their pigs.
Covered 790 kms, 1674 total.
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Sheltering from the rain in a motorway service station
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Riding the Guizhou gaosu is actually not as boring as you might think, you ride through the mountaintops seeing these tiny isolated hamlets and farmhouses that have this huge motorway running passed their doormats! I wonder what the occupants make of it all...
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This is what happens if you don't water your pigs...
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13
Left at 7 am and quickly covered the 140 ish kms to Chongqing. Met George at the jialing shop where we fitted his top box and tank bag which took a couple of hours. We then covered 330 kms to get to Mian Yang where we found a very nice bike shop with imported oil and a few Jap bikes knocking about. We had to change the oil on George's bike every evening for the first few days and he kept the revs low ish during the run in period.
472 kms, 2146 total.
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George looking all gooey eyed at his brand new baby
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This was the only drill they had, total overkill but it got the job done!
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George sells whiskey for a living and brought 2 fine examples with him
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All ready to go
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The nice bike shop in Mian Yang. We also stayed in our best value hotel of the trip - 80 quai for an absolute palace....unfortunately this would not continue for the rest of the trip
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We often found random old jap bikes in the weirdest places, none of them looked anywhere near running. The posh fully synthetic oil I bought here quickly got burnt off so was a complete waste of money.
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14
Left at 7.15 and wearing the gopikey extreme cam for the first time this trip. We stumbled across the site of the Beichuan earthquake which has been left as it was as a kind of shrine to those who lost their lives. We ended up going right through the centre of town because baidu maps has not been updated since the quake and showed a completely destroyed bridge to still be intact. After back tracking a ways we found a huge and newly built tunnel that went around the whole town. It was actually a very interesting detour although the whole place was extremely spooky.
We then hit about 100 kms of nasty beat up road which slowed us down to a crawl, before we got on the G213 to Jiuzaigou. This stretch was absolutely swimming with tourist buses and we risked life and limb with some rather dubious overtaking all captured on the gopikey. After the turn off to GZG things chilled out a lot and we climbed up to about 4000m and felt like we were finally in a Tibetan area, there was even an arty Yak shaped toilet! There was lots of great 'plains' scenery and we did a pretty badass dirt hillclimb which the fully loaded jialings handled with ease.
Arrived at dusk (8PM) in Luqu and found another cool bike shop with a few Jap bikes knocking around. After a quick oil change we found a very overpriced hotel full of loud yuppies who were touring in 4 wheel drives.
615 kms, 2760 total.
The hotel was 180 per room and was probably worth about 50.
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I have developed the zhu scale of assholeness regarding 4wd's. Taking into account tailgating , horn honking, road hogging and blind corner passing.
Top of the list is the worst;
Any black Audi
Bmw
Jeep
Toyota
Bread Van
Blue truck
Santana
Hello Kitty Smart Car
Granny leading Donkey
Kid leading Goats
Dogs
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Every little bike shop seemed to have an old rice rocket hanging out in the back
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This one was well guarded
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Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
15
Left at 7.25, George's bike was a little reluctant to start due to the cold but he got it going. We had some nice fast roads for 100 Ks then hit 40 kms of absolute road under construction hell. We then hit some great twisties and descended a few thousand kms very very fast, George said he considered his bike totally run in now because there wasn't a chance he was taking it easy on twisties of that quality. We then went through some fairly grim, dusty, predominantly muslim towns (in Gansu) before starting to head up in altitude once more. We got on this amazing bypass around Xining which doesn't appear on google but does on baidu maps. I can't say enough about this road, easily the best of the trip. We took a little detour up to an isolated farmhouse for me to take some pics and George managed to drop his bike on a nasty uphill hairpin. He was unable to lift it upright by himself and I couldn't hear his shouts for help 'cos I was so busy snapping away...sorry George. The road eventually comes out on Qinghai Lake and the traffic went from pretty much zero to complete carnage. Bicycles, cars, trucks, buses, yak....nobody looking at the road, people wandering about posing for photos, not my cup of tea at all. We went a ways up a mountain to get a nice pic of the lake then got the hell out of there.
We arrived in Quaidam at 8.15 and found all the hotels had fixed their prices at 480 quai per room, I was less than impressed and said no way I'm paying that, let's try and find a pikey room somewhere. Then, whilst riding along in first gear lookinng for possible guest houses and blinded by anger and frustration, I managed to ride straight in to an open manhole. Incredibly the bike stayed upright and at first I thought I'd just gone over a massive pothole but it soon becme clear how lucky I was not to have damaged the bike in any way. If that's not an adevrtisement for the JH600 I don't know what is! George was an oasis of calm during this whole episode and after we had a good laugh about the pothole we decided that 480 wasn't actually going to break the bank so we went back to the hotel with our tails between our legs. We ended up sharing a crappy room with a voiyeuristic glass bathroom which just capped off a funny evening. We hit the whiskey fairly hard that night and had some very spicy mutton in the only restaurant in town.
610 kms
3370 total.
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The whole hillside was covered in what looked like drilling rigs, no idea what was going on
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honey
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These were taken at the bottom of an awesome descent into Gansu
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The manhole missing a cover! The jialing just ploughed straight over it without any damage, the locals were amazed, as were we
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16
Left at 10.40 with me suffering from the previous night's excesses, one of George's whiskeys was 55% and he drank it like water, without a trace of a hangover. The road to Golmud was very straight, boring and fast. We arrived at 5.40 and met our Guide Nyima. We had dinner and a few beers then had an early night.
465 kms
3833 total
Hotel – 280 each. At this point I'd resigned myself to this trip being the most expensive ever hotel wise, this didn't stop me from bitching and whining about the sorry state of affairs however! The thing that really got me was that the hotels were shite! It wasn't as if there was only one really posh hotel that'd accept foreigners, they were 50-100 quai hotels charging the bloody earth!
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Left Golmud at 7.15 and now we were really on the next real Tibetan part of the trip. This meant we had Nyima riding pillion and all our daily destinations were set, if we'd had a break down we'd have had to have contacted the authorities and it would've been a nightmare, especially for the Nyima and the travel agency as their guiding licenses could have been in jeopardy.
We set off with Nyima on the back with me for 130 kms before swapping over all the luggage so George did 140 with Nyima as pillion, then me again for 70, then George for 70. After messing around unbungeeing and bungeeing bags on bike we decided that George's bike would carry Nyima and my bike, because it had panniers and all the tools/spares, would take all the luggage. From now on we'd just swap bikes a few times everyday, much easier.
We went through some very nasty, muddy roadworks and then a straight, fast but very bouncy road. It was actually quite dangerous because iof you hit the undulations too fast the back wheel often lifted off. I once had both wheels off the road, which was quite unnerving on a very heavily laden jialing. To make matters worse we were surrounded by absolute douchebags who took it as a personal affront to be overtaken by a motorcycle, these idiots would then reovertake us but they'd then be exceeding the driving skill and vehicles capabilities. Once guy cut back in front of George (bike with Nyima was always the lead bike) and both rear wheels left the ground on one of the aforementioned undulations, the land cruiser skidded sideways and the driver just managed to regain control before slowing down considerably. We past him again shaking our heads in disbelief. I has an altercation with some tosspot in a honda SUV who having been overtaken by George and Nyima, didn't want to let another bike go passed him. I ended up on the hard shoulder, managed to get passed and flipped him the bird. This was too much of a loss of face and he screamed past me, inches from the bike giving me the finger and then taking off over a large bump! I imagine his Mrs gave him a right earfull because he then slowed right down and I passed him again...and gave him the rods for good measure haha.
There were two high passes, the first 4768, the second, 5010, the jialings didn't seem to phased by the altitude. We arrived at Tuotuoheyan at 3.15 to find more hotel price fixing! None of the hotels had showers due to water shortages which I understand but these were really crappy rooms for 280. In the end we shared a triple for 380 and with George complaining bitterly about Nyima's snoring!
From then on the hotels all had guide's rooms for free which was great and halted my rage somewhat. I suppose these hotels only get business for a few months a year and need to make hay while the sun shines, but I was shocked at the prices and anyone planning a similar trip should budget accordingly. We had discussed camping but in most of Tibet it's not allowed so we didn't bother bringing any gear in the end, the bikes were loaded to the max in any case so god knows where we'd have stowed it.
4239 total
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George and Nyima ready to go
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George smoking a fag at 5000 metres
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Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
Great ride report. Looking for for future installments.
:popcorn:
Cheers,
Dan K.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
futianshenzhen
16
Left at 10.40 with me suffering from the previous night's excesses, one of George's whiskeys was 55% and he drank it like water, without a trace of a hangover. The road to Golmud was very straight, boring and fast. We arrived at 5.40 and met our Guide Nyima. We had dinner and a few beers then had an early night.
465 kms
3833 total
Hotel – 280 each. At this point I'd resigned myself to this trip being the most expensive ever hotel wise, this didn't stop me from bitching and whining about the sorry state of affairs however! The thing that really got me was that the hotels were shite! It wasn't as if there was only one really posh hotel that'd accept foreigners, they were 50-100 quai hotels charging the bloody earth!
Did you guys consider camping at all?
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really interesting RR.:thumbsup:
hotel/motel/inn price gouging isn't restricted to those locales either. Seemingly and frequently occurs in other places - outback Australia being one such place. I was often astounded at the prices commanded at nearly all the establishments I stopped at when circumnavigating outback OZ twice, which is why I most often camped as I absolutely refused to pay for 4 or 5 star equivalent prices for rooms no better than a no - one star dive...
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Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
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Originally Posted by
CalmCarl
Did you guys consider camping at all?
Yeah but it isn't possible in most places
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
zhu
I have developed the zhu scale of assholeness regarding 4wd's. Taking into account tailgating , horn honking, road hogging and blind corner passing.
Top of the list is the worst;
Any black Audi
Bmw
Jeep
Toyota
Bread Van
Blue truck
Santana
Hello Kitty Smart Car
Granny leading Donkey
Kid leading Goats
Dogs
For us there's only one real candidate and I'm even gonna be colour specific! 99% of people who drive these white land cruisers with side flashes are complete f$#*tards
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18
Left Tuotuoheyan at 9.15 and rode straight into a pea souper, couldn't see more than 10 metres in front of the bike at times. We went over a pass of 5231 metres which would be the highest we'd get all trip. The rode was very bouncy again but quite fast and we soon made it into Tibet proper and our first checkpoint. It took around half an hour to get through and was a fairly simple process really as we had all the correct paperwork. There was on Han and one Tibetan policeman and they were both young and thought the bikes were really cool. The Tibetan guy was hilarious and was showing off his powers to us, he'd ostentatiously flag down a truck then turn to us laughing in a look at me isn't this funny kind of way. George and I didn't really know what to do or say but we were soon on our way.
The checkpoints were many but not that bad really, Nyima would have photocopies of all the documents handy and often they'd only take 5 minutes. Of much more annoyance to me was filling up with petrol, not only do they have the stupid an qian di yi teapots but you need your driving license, passport and registration documents at each station! Once you'd lined up and received your registration receipt you then had to join a Tibetan “queue” for a teapot. This called for a no nonsense approach and you really had to hold your ground if you wanted to be filled up in less than 40 minutes. Mostly we'd follow a guy with a teapot and get in after him but there was always someone who thought they could push in front of the foreigners, we'd be firm but try and make a joke out of it and we usually held our place in the queue and more importantly didn't get shanked!
George had his mirror smashed off by a white land cruiser on the wrong side of the road which was very disconcerting so we stopped for 10 minutes. Those land cruisers had absolutely no respect or consideration for any other road users. We continued on and went over a 5170 metre pass where we met some Chinese bikers on 125s. They were cool and we stopped for a chat but they were hardly covering any ground due to the altitude. We then went on another of my dirt excursions, on which George dropped my bike, but the photos were well worth it. Just heading off the road for a couple of kilometres offered incredible rewards.
There was a checkpoint just before Nakchu which took a while, we played dumb and let Nyima deal with the paperwork and we headed into town to register at the local cop shop. That thankfully was much faster but amusingly enough we were told that we could only go to the hotel, a restaurant and a massage place, everything else was off limits for some reason! We didn't care and had an early night after dinner in a restaurant near the hotel. The hotel only had 2 rooms so George and I shared a suite for 580 and we paid 280 for Nyima's single room. It was the only hotel that could accommodate foreigners however the hotel staff had seemingly never seen one before so registration took at least 3 hours and was only completed by a consultant! We finally got our passports back in the morning.
Arrived at Nakchu 4.45.
425 kms
4642 mks total
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Taking 5 after having a mirror smashed off
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Statue at one of the 5k plus passes
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This little excursion was a lot more challenging than it looks. One bike was dropped but no damage
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