7/11/2006

Twilight zone Tibet

Woke up in An Duo, Tibet at 8:00 a.m. to the sound of a very chipper Chinese man's voice playing over a loud speaker.  It was broadcast to the whole town.  Yuan translated:  "It's 8:00.  Wake up.  Be happy and exercise.  Then he started counting repetitions "one and two and three".  Andrew:  "Can anyone say 1984?"  Rodger was still feeling the effects of the low oxygen and got a head-start down the mountain.  The rest of us packed up our stuff and headed out on the rainy roads a couple hours later.  We rode until noon and then came upon Rodger's bike parked on the side of the road.  Rodger was in the middle of a field in his sleeping bag with Yaks grazing nearby.  He said that every few minutes he would wake up and look around and the yaks would be a little bit closer.  From here we continued on together...

...Later that day.  It was dark out.  As if on queue, it started to rain when we just crossed over the peak of the last mountain pass.  We followed the road for another hour.  When we woke up this morning we were under the impression that it was a 3 hour ride to Jiang Zi.  It was now 12 hours later and people still kept telling us that it was just up the road.  "not far."  You'll be there soon."  Not a single person would give us a hard distance.  Another rainy night on Tibetan mountain roads.  The only other vehicles on the road this late were large transport trucks.  These guys refuse to turn their bright lights off for a motorcycle no mater how many times you flash them or how long you hold down your horn.  You almost have to slow down to a stop just to keep from running off the road.  It's so frustrating for us.  Another favorite thing for the trucks to do is to pass each other on blind corners.  See, the only rule for driving in China is that the bigger vehicles always have the right of way.  On a motorcycle you are the bottom of the food chain.  They lay on their horn and pass each other expecting everything else to get out of the way.  I guess this could work, but in Tibet pulling off the road often means driving off the edge of a cliff.  After dealing with this for another hour we stopped for gas.  It was still pouring rain and it was getting colder.  The gas station attendant made us park our bikes in the rain away from the pumps and carried out a tin can full of gas.  They don't allow motorcycles to fill up directly from the pumps in Tibet because they think they will explode.  When you ask why they think this, no one knows.  The government has told them so, and the government owns PetroChina.  Enough said.  So, instead they use these little tin cans, which ironically are all full of holes.  If you are lucky gas will only spill on your gas tank and not all over your seat.   Its hard to bite your tongue about matters like these, especially when everything else is not going your way.  The guy tells us 100 km and we will get to the Jiang Zi.  Shortly after the pavement ended. 

The road was still hard packed dirt and we could still safely hold a decent speed.  We passed a young Tibetan man walking the opposite way.  He would take 3 steps then drop to his knees, lay face down with his arms stretched completely out in front of his head.  Then he would make a push up motion, get back to his feet and clap twice.  He would take another 3 steps and repeat the whole process.  He was making his once in a life time trek to his holy city of Lhasa carrying out the same ritual every three steps.  Depending on where the person lives it can take them up to several years for them to finish the journey. 

Our road turned to loosely packed dirt and mud.  When we came to a fork, we all stopped.  I turned my headlight to the left which revealed a deep river crossing.  Rodger turned his to the right where there was still more road.  We took the right fork for a while.  I couldn't decide if the road was getting more narrow or if my eyes were playing tricks on me.  The little headlight from the Chinese motorcycle only provided visability for about 50 feet ahead of you and what was just off to your side.  The rest of your forward facing 180 degrees was all dark shapes and shadows.  To our right was a huge wall of dirt and to our left a drop off, down to the river.  The road became so narrow that it was only wide enough for one car to pass.  We began to wonder if this was the right way at all.  Then the road just stopped.  There was construction equipment but no people and no more road, it ended into the mountain.  We turned off our engines and talked about what to do.  We went back to the last fork and looked for signs that we might have missed.  There was a clearly labeled sign for Jiang Zi pointing down the road we had chosen.  There was also a small discrete sign off the side of the road.  I had to drive straight up to it and point my lights directly at it just to read it.  In Chinese it read "warning explosions ahead."  They where blowing up the mountain to make the road.  "Well, we are lost in the middle of nowhere, but at least we didn't get blown up."  "True."  We called it a day.

 -J.