The Tibetan High Plateau from Lhasa to Gyantse

Saturday 1^st July 2006

Lhasa to Gyantse (3,950m)

...looking down into valleys that sheltered small settlements of yak wool tents, home to the high country yak herders

An early rise this morning, a quick breakfast and we piled all our bags, cameras and ourselves into three Land Cruisers for the road journey back to Nepal. But, no more than 10 minutes down the road and one of our supposedly 'trusty' 4WDs conked out with gearbox trouble. Looked as though that group would have to go back before they'd begun! Now, this was on the main road out of town towards the airport, a hazardous bit of road at the best of times. No one in their right mind would attempt a U-turn. But where are we? Tibet! As the driver began his U-turn, everyone else just honked their horns and kept going. Trucks and half sized buses, horse carts, cars and those funny looking but extremely efficient Chinese rotary hoe things that are used on the road to haul grossly overloaded trailers were all going every which way around the tour vehicle. Thankfully, I wasn't in that car but watching the whole affair was akin to torture, it was so haphazard and fraught with danger. The manoeuvre completed, they drove into a workshop opposite us and then spent half an hour with the bonnet up. Lots of banging could be heard underneath. While we waited for them to get back on the road, onto our side of the road that is, we played a game of 'charades' with any local who passed by. It's an interesting form of communication to say the least and one that is usually accompanied by good humour.

At last, the car was fixed, but then they had to safely negotiate yet another U-turn across the busy road. Once would have been enough, but twice? All together again, our convoy set off once more with great expectations of an exciting journey heading west across the high Tibetan Plateau. But not far down the road, one of the other vehicles coughed to a standstill. You're quite right, this was not a very auspicious start. It appeared that there was a load of dirty fuel in town and we had a couple of tanks of the stuff in each vehicle. This meant the fuel lines, pumps and filters had to be cleaned a few times. Finally, we made a third start and things went pretty well in that department for the rest of the day.

Our journey took us south-west along the Kyi Chu (Lhasa) River and then south up a very steep, switch-back road to the summit of the pass Khamba La, 4,794m high. From there we had a wonderful view of Yamdrok Tso, a huge lake the Tibetans call the Scorpion Lake. It is one of their sacred lakes, a vast, dead, salty lake. From high up on the pass, the waters below us reflected the clear blue of the Tibetan sky. Except for a few patches of green by the water's edge, the surrounding dry, brown hills provided a wonderful foil for the blue of the lake. But they were not just brown. The whole scene was 'painted' in many shades of brown and ochre, some parts glowing golden in the light, others deep purple blue in the shadows cast by the white clouds that were scattered across the bright blue sky …and the air was crystal clear and clean. No pollution whatsoever. It must have been this way once right across Planet Earth, but not any more. I had only experienced such clarity in the Arctic and Antarctic regions before coming here to the very high mountainous regions of Tibet.

Whilst at the pass we watched a herd of sheep move effortlessly across the steep slope. A couple of yak lay resting nearby. Out of the wind, down amongst the rocks, I discovered several varieties of flowering plants and thought of the 'plant hunters' who traversed these plateaus in years gone by to bring such plant specimens back to places like Kew Gardens in London. From those 'findings', our garden varieties have been developed. It was good to see and film them in their original habitat.

The road dropped down to follow the lake edge and then followed a river valley up to another pass, Karo La, at 4,960m. The road to that pass was a little less tortuous but we still knew that we were in the high country, and we soon realised that we were in an area where road making was much needed. A lot of the time we were travelling at not more that 30km/h, and often a lot slower than that, as our drivers negotiated their way into and out of ruts and huge potholes and around road works. There were road works everywhere and there were plenty of delays. We had to cover 270+ kms that day on our way to the town of Gyantse and over 200 of those were on roads still under construction or reconstruction. The Chinese are making a huge effort to build a proper road for this, the Friendship Highway between Lhasa and Nepal. I wonder why they are so interested in this huge, open plateau?

With all the dust and the many delays it became very hot and stuffy in the car. The air-conditioning didn't work (why am I surprised?) but we still had to travel with the windows up because dust was literally everywhere. The drivers, although very good, seemed to 'need' to travel quite close to each other, certainly not far enough apart for the dust to blow away before the next vehicle came along behind. But enough of the grouches! The many stops and starts did have some advantages. We were able to look down into valleys that sheltered small settlements of yak wool tents, home to the high country yak herders. We came across some of their children, rough looking little urchins but you'd have to be tough to live in this area. Around more corners and we were looking down on another lake that was milky green against the brown hills, ice cold melt water from glaciers that covered the mountains above us like icing on a cake. Yes, the many stops gave us a chance to take in the spectacular scenery and that, after all, was why we were there doing this journey across the roof of the world.

Lunch was a 'picnic' by the roadside a kilometre or so out of a town at a spot where we could see snow on nearby mountain slopes. The skies by now were threatening rain, so we were left with two of the Land Cruisers for shelter while the drivers took the other one back into town for a lunch of momos, delicious Tibetan 'dumplings' filled with vegetables or a combination of vegetable and meat. We, on the other hand, ate our instant noodles (made with hot water brought along in a Thermos), biscuits, dried apricots etc. all of which we had been told to buy, way, way back in Kathmandu. I would have much preferred the momos.

A cold wind was blowing, cold enough for me to put on a parka but there were only a few spots of rain - not enough for us to need to sit in the vehicles. I explored, looking for wild flowers growing amongst the rocks and scree - another added bonus of frequent stops.

Gyantse, our destination, did not appear until very late in the day - at 1945. We had left Lhasa at 0800 so it had been a long hard first day in the saddle and we were all well and truly buggered by the time we arrived at our hotel. We had time just to dump our bags and sluice water over our face and hands to remove some of the in-ground dust before heading for a restaurant. The food was good. I had a really nice egg chow mien, and a lemon, ginger and honey tea. At home, it might be on the menu from now on, the tea that is.