[QUOTE=tokyokid;14912]Right before Gerze (改则) we had one of this moments on the trip you dont forget so fast.

Until this point of the trip we had 3 times problems with the police and could make our way out on all of them.
As we don’t had any permissions to be in Tibet at all, I usually just drove trough checkpoints at high speed and without stopping. At checkpoints in Tibet the barriers are half open, so pedestrians, bicycle and motorbikes can pass, but car, busses and trucks need to stop. When I saw the barrier was down I found usually a way to drive around it.
But this time it would be different :)

We made it already 2800km into Tibet and where right before Gerze in the Ngari area.
I know a checkpoint would come soon. As it was evening and we drove westwards the sun was low and shining right into my face. I saw the checkpoint coming and saw the barrier was high open so I speed up, just in the last moment when the sun was covered by the checkpoint building I saw, there was another barrier right behind the first, and it was CLOSED! Fuck! Full crash, bike me and the wife where down. When I saw up a machine gun was pointed at us.
As it was 17th September everything was on high alert because of the 60th Anniversary of China on 1st October.
Some minutes later the situation got easy and we where sitting inside explaining what we are doing here. They didn’t believe our story that were on the way to Germany over Pakistan and Iran, but after we showed them the trip reports in Chinese magazines from 2008 they got relaxed. After they called the headquarter they told us we don’t need any permissions as we are individual travelers and not a group, only groups need permissions. What a bullshit, but hey we are lucky.
After we got tea and cookies from them I thought hey it’s a lucky day, try a bit more. So I asked the soldier if I could have is machinegun for a picture, he sure, and handed it to me. Just before my wife can make the picture the main police officer comes in and start shouting on the soldier why a laowei has a gun in his hand…so no photo :(

Anyway from that day on at every checkpoint I just stopped, pulled my driver license, registration and my wifes ID out and showed them to the soldiers, they usually just registered us and off we could go.



This bike and another just like it where bought in Ti bet.Two Europeans where traveling through ti bet with out the appropriate paper work and got caught and where deported having to leave there bikes behind the now owner of the bike bought it(for a dam good price I might add) in Ti bet and took it back to Gansu.


That's what I was told anyway. I have no reason to not believe them.