In 1995, Brice Minnigh and I arrived in Kashgar, the westernmost city in China, having cycled more than 6,000 kilometers from Beijing. Most of the trip was good but there were some difficult moments. At one point, in fact, a miscalculation nearly cost us our lives. Later, we swore we'd never again chance death or embark on such an arduous journey.
Time washes away unpleasant memories. Difficulties are re-cast as achievements. Normal life whets the appetite for raw physical challenge. Predictably, we forgot our pledges to never again do an ultra-long distance bicycle trek. In fact, with four years’ separation from our 1995 ride, a big and arduous journey is just what we craved.
So by 1999 our imagination turned once again to Kashgar, because we’d been aware during 1995 of a different route to the city, one from the Tibetan plateau. Lhasa, in Tibet, some 3000 kilometers to the southeast, could be reached from Kashgar, or vice-versa. It would be the ultimate cycling challenge. It also made sense. We'd done a tough route in the 1995 trip and succeeded. We were experienced with handling Chinese police, a concern for all travelers in Tibet. And we wanted to go after this task while we were still young.
In the West, "Tibet" conjures a high-altitude plateau, bordered on the south and west by the Himalayas and populated by a distinct ethnic group. In China the picture is somewhat more complicated. The Tibetan Plateau is carved into several provinces, one of which is the "Tibet Autonomous Region", or TAR. The northeastern edge of the Plateau is called Qinghai Province (pronounced "ching-high"). The northwestern edge falls within the boundaries of a province called the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ("shin-jiang wee-guhr") and the southeastern edge is divided between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. But most of the plateau falls within Qinghai Province and the TAR, and Chinese refer to it as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, or Qing-Zang Gaoyuan.
The road to Kashgar is the world’s highest mountain highway of any significance, with some passes exceeding 18,000 feet in elevation. It is impassable for several months of the year. It reaches some of the most remote areas in all of China, and surfs Tibetan ripples up and down the Eastern side of the Himalayas.
By spring of 2000, Brice had altered work plans on more than one occasion to accommodate our tentative Tibet trip, only to see it postponed because of vagaries in my own trajectory. Since 1995, he has followed his instincts, which has served him well. He left China shortly after our 1995 ride, in November, to take up a one-year Fulbright scholarship in Lithuania, writing a thesis on post-Soviet media in the Baltic republic. That accomplished, he went to Hong Kong to witness the coming turnover to Chinese sovereignty. Many said he wouldn’t last long in the city, with its expatriate/local divide and its vast difference from Beijing. In retrospect, it was naive to use the average experience as a template for Brice.
I myself had left Beijing in 1997. After an unsatisfactory computer consulting experience, I enrolled in a master’s program in ‘economic policy management’. Everything started to go right. I made great and truly diverse friends. The program led to a US Government internship and a very good job offer in March of 2000. But it was the eve of the five-year anniversary of our 1995 Beijing-Kashgar ride. We had solemnly pledged to stage similar rides every five years hence. Brice was totally understanding about the job offer. “You should do what you need to do," he said. “Don’t even worry about it.”
I took a lunchtime jog past the Vietnam war memorial, over the 14th Street bridge toward the Pentagon, back up Rock Creek Parkway, and over the Memorial Bridge. Coming across the bridge I looked out over the waters and the sunshine splashing on the city. Damn the torpedoes, I thought: We will cycle Tibet. McKinsey can wait.
Brice accepted a position as Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Loan Market Association (APLMA), the bankers’ association in Asia, and negotiated a start date in late 2000. He submitted his resignation from IFR-Asia effective July 22. I fixed my end date with Treasury for July 12.
We began finalizing the route. We didn’t want to begin the trip in Lhasa: Flying into the city with bicycles would alert the authorities to our intentions. Second, it would be better to cycle up to the Tibetan Plateau and gradually adjust to high altitude. And it would be a thrill to reach Lhasa by bicycle, as it is to reach any big city on one's own power.
Yunnan and Sichuan provinces to the southeast would make good starting points. But these routes were known to be carefully monitored by police. We've heard many accounts of bicyclists or individual travelers being turned around on the way into Tibet.
Qinghai Province on the northern border offers another entryway and will be perhaps less carefully monitored by police. But Qinghai itself is on the Tibetan Plateau; it will not offer the benefit of gradual acclimation. That leaves Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province to the east of Qinghai and clearly off the Tibetan Plateau. To save time, we can start in the Qinghai capital Xining, on the edge of the plateau. Either way, we'll proceed on to Golmud, 10,000 feet in altitude. From Golmud we will travel 1200 kilometers south to Lhasa. Only then will the real adventure begin: West to Lhatse along the 'Friendship Highway' linking Lhasa with Katmandu in Nepal. In Lhatse we would leave the Friendship Highway and follow a route through the south-west and west of Tibet, leading to a town variously known as Ali, Gar and Shiquanhe. Lhasa to Ali would be about 1800 kilometers.
Ali would be the starting point for the climax of the route, the very-high-altitude passage into Xinjiang. The highest road in the world. From Ali, 960 kilometers separate one from the comparative comforts of normal altitude and civilization, reached in the desert town of Yecheng in the south of Xinjiang. A mere 260 kilometers of desert tarmac link Yecheng and Kashgar, and we’d done that on our final stretch into Kashgar in 1995.
Timing would be tricky. We have read or heard from people who knew people who tried to hitchhike that the road from Kashgar into Tibet is closed in the summer months due to mud slides and washouts. These are not repaired until September or October. That means we cannot start the journey in Kashgar, because we'll reach the high road too early. So we agree on Lanzhou or Xining, launching around July 18. That would put us on the high road in early October.
I immersed myself in Tibetan information -- particularly topography and weather conditions. I made frequent lunch-hour trips to the Library of Congress to photocopy maps. As many as six and seven different maps of the same place. We learned in 1995 that one relies on a single map at one’s peril. The stakes in Tibet would be much higher this time. We outfitted ourselves with key equipment: minus-20 sleeping bags; Everest-quality tent; new thermals and fleeces; new ultralight sleeping pads.
Brice and I collected addresses and sent a letter about the trip to family and friends.
I sent a hard copy to Brice and wrote the following in the margins:
I rented a car and moved all my stuff out of Washington.
I arrived in Florida and left my stuff with my friends Erik and Katherine. Erik spent copious amounts of time and gasoline driving me around Florida getting kitted out for the trip. One of the final purchases was a Trek mountain bike: aluminum tubing, Manitou front shock, Deore LX derailleur. I upgraded to Mavic rims and a Rock Shox seat post.
On July 17 Erik took me to Tampa International Airport. I checked in all this stuff, payed the surcharges for excess baggage, and looked toward Asia.