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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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Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
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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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12
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.
Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest
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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Re: Shenzhen to Mount Everest