We awake to a dark climate. Cold and cloud have consigned the sun to temporary oblivion. Snow falls as if this were not July but January.
We go back to the Hui place for breakfast. It is soon time to move from the comfort of the restaurant to the grey cold and snow outside. I for one am raring to go. We will be fine and warm so long as we are powering these rigs up the pass.
We pose for a photo before setting off for the big pass -- the first of the trip, and just five days into our journey.
Trucks lumber up this road from Xidatan toward the pass. In fact, some are slower than we are. There's enough loaded on one to outfit a new school.
At the top of the gentle climb out of Xidatan the road turned for the Kunlun Mountains; here we hunkered down in a ditch and waited yet again for Gong Jianping. After that, it was much too cold to do anything but cycle. Snow falling.
The road gently found its way through the mountains, of course at the easiest point possible, which indeed was easy. The altitude was 15,910 feet and I kept it in low, but not lowest, gear to the top.
There, we put on loads of clothes, basically everything we have, and assembled for several photos. It was quite a feeling to know that we cycled from Golmud at 10,000 feet up here to Kunlun pass.
Gong Jianping was far behind, walking his bike.
Brice and Gao Ceng, and Fangkun and I pose for a photo at the top. Motorists are stopped up here and many of them want to take pictures with us as well. For them it's a simple request, but for us it's a slight annoyance. We are freezing cold. We need to get going. Trying to keep a smile on, we humor as many as we can.
We descended (it is too cold to stand still) and for some reason the snow was more like sleet, quite wet. We peeled off the next dozen or so clicks to arrive at Budongquan, cold and wet.
There we found a relic of a house and several men building a compound.
The relic is a horse stable and they said we could sleep in it. We rolled the bikes in and set the tents up inside. Then we warmed up in an adjacent room the workers use to keep warm and cook in. There was a kang (coal-fired bed platform; up here the fuel is yak dung) which my arse stuck to like a magnet. Plenty of hot water. This was a lifesaver for us, since we were so thoroughly cold and wet and still at a high altitude -- this place is at 15,108 feet.
But this wasn't enough to save Gong Jianping from his troubles. He curled up on the kang with a terrible headache. He had no appetite. His lips didn't say one way or the other what his condition was vis-à-vis acute mountain sickness.
We had noodle with the crew and enjoyed jokes and laughs. Brice and I sang a ridiculous rock song.
It was cold but I went outside for fresh air. Gao Ceng and Yu Fang Kun came out and suggested we take a brief walk despite the cold. Our spirits were so high that I suggested we run up the hill across the road. We started running and within a minute the lack of oxygen tore us down to a heaving walk.