Date: Thursday 29th July 2010

Cold this morning with 6 degrees measuring on our gauge. A few of us also have slight altitude sickness – headache and sometimes dizzy. At this height of 4,500 meters walk 50 meters and you feel as though you have done a 250meter sprint.

Our group of pilgrims left their camp at 6.30am and had walked dragging their carts some 16 kms before we caught them up 3 hours later.

During lunch stop we had more guests who were happy just to inspect the campers

and then sit and make tea for themselves.

Hillside Villages.

At Zar Gama-la Hill at 4,685 meters we began to descend again.

On top of the hill, actually mountain, this loan pilgrim makes his personal commitment, even though he drives between the stops.

This descent to the Salween Valley and is one of the steepest descents in Tibet. In 36kms the altitude drops over 1,500 meters yet the straight line distance is only 10kms.

There are 72 switchbacks!

Solar Kettle.

We then follow the Mu River through some very colourful landscape.

Mu means angry and this river is full of sediment and churning its way through the rocks.

In many places it had taken half the road away in anger.

A more modern Tibetan House.

Camp was in the town of Baxui after our obligatory security check. We found a nice central park however the public toilets were just up the road and kept reminding us of their presence all night.

Check the unusual head dress.

We refuelled this afternoon and have been constantly calculating our fuel average. To date it is 15.4 Lt/100Kms or 19MPG. The best was on the flat Thailand highways 13.7lt/100km or 22MPG. Keep in mind we travel at around 35KPH on the dirt and 60-70KPH on the black top, at those speeds we can watch the road and the countryside.

Camp 55: Baxoi Toilet Smell Camp. Altitude 3,200 meters

N30* 03.215  E96* 55.016

Max Altitude Today:   4,685 meters

Distance Today: 225 Kms     Total Distance: 9947 Kms

Date: Friday 30th July 2010

Markets this morning for our lunch supplies however bread is proving increasingly difficult to find. When we can find it is much sweeter than Australian bread. Today no bread at all, but purchased a good slab of pork for dinner tonight.

The weather is warm and a light dusting of snow on the pointed mountain tops that surround us.

On the narrow roads we must always be prepared for these trucks and larger on the blind corners. Our air horns earn their keep constantly.

Here the whole pilgrim family prays its way to Lhasa.

Brightly coloured tents of some nomadic Tibetans.

Another pass at 4475 meters

Driving wide and ancient glacial valleys.

On a narrow section of a gorge the road follows the raging river, the concrete structure to help prevent falling rocks from crushing the passing vehicles.

This part did not work!

The town of Rawok.

For the young children until they are toilet trained this is how the situation is handled.

It must get old on the personal bits!

Well everything is in a state of flux now!

We knew that there was a large landslide on the road ahead and that was taking 6 days to clear and could delay us by 2 days.

HOWEVER now we have learnt that a large rock dislodged itself from a glacier and crashed down onto a 73 meter bridge completely destroying it last night. It will take more than a week or two to rebuild the bridge that is 40kms to the West of us at Bomi.

Even if we thought we would wait the week for the bridge to be rebuilt the news today is yet another rock slide completely took away the road for some distance.

We did see this picture of some of the damage on the Chinese version of the Google search engine, and this video was sent to me by one of the bicycle riders that managed to back pack his bike around the fall. Thanks!

Plan ‘B’, Abby from our guide’s office is already applying for permits to re-route us some 1,200 kms around the closure on road No 214 & 317 onto Lhasa. Currently Lhasa is ‘only’ 700kms ahead.

It is now Saturday and they need 2 working days for Beijing to do the paperwork then 2 days for the Tibet people, so we are stuck for at least a week.

Lunch in the local eatery.

Passing Beijing tourists doing the ‘look at me thing’.

On the good side our camp site is perfect. Beside lake Rawok-tso we have snow capped mountains surrounding us and the weather is warm.

This afternoon we went over the vehicles tightening bolts and a general check over. I also managed to rebuild that spring pack.

We are on and off visited, by passing tourists and locals, all are very friendly.

Camp 56: Rawok-tso Lake Camp. Altitude 3,900 meters

N29* 29.544 E96* 41.208

Max Altitude Today:   4,475 meters

Distance Today: 119 Kms     

Total Distance: 10,066 Kms

Date: Saturday 31th July-Sunday 1st August 2010

Two waiting days for the new permits. The down side is that we keep hearing that it will be days for them to come through.

Our lake camp is nice though.

We all did a complete service on the vehicles, oil and filter change, fuel and air filter, grease everything and generally anything we could think of.

These three boys visited us for most of the days only returning home for lunch and around 6pm in the evening.

Otherwise they played amongst themselves, watched what we did with inquisitive eyes, threw stones into the lake and generally did young boy things.

Despite it being cold at times they were dressed lightly but never a complaint or even an argument between them.

We gave them colouring pencils and it kept them amused for hours.

Across the lake came this raft delivering 3 cows to new pasture on this side.

Another way to pray to Lhasa. This time using a motorised farm tractor.

Still waiting for news if we can travel.........