I was going crazy. Didn't sleep. Rats made too much noise in the room. When I wanted to step outside to relieve myself, I couldn't open the door. It was locked from the outside! I banged until a worker came and opened it. We five were padlocked in that back room like chickens ready for slaughter. I was furious. "What the hell are you locking this door for??!! Absolutely do not lock this door!"
Brice and I leave Yanshipin at 12:30 pm, two hours after the blokes. We take time for a shave and a slight scrubbing down. The plan is to have them reach Wen Quan, today's destination, first so they can call in at the army base, where they hope the five of us can stay.
Leaving Yanshipin I stop five kilometres up the valley for a meeting with nature. Across the river in the bright sun is a pastoral scene. Yak are dispersed on the green mountain. A sheep dog trots among them. A few Tibetans on horseback head out for the day.
Back on the bikes the ride is wonderful. Sunshine despite clouds. It seems the plateau is so vast that three weather systems can occur at once, all within sight. And we have a tail wind.
We see a figure walking onto the road up ahead. As we get closer we are struck to see the tall Tibetan man from the excellent dao ban a couple of days ago. It's the boys' father. He has been expecting us. "Come on in for a rest." He explains that he'd seen Gong Jianping, who told him that we should be tailing along at some time. He's visiting this dao ban to collect some money owed to him.
We go inside and eat delicious watermelon. In the room are portraits of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. We comment on them; I say I admire Deng Xiaoping. "Oh you like his reform and opening to the outside!" he jokes, knowing that without it, I wouldn't be here. That's not actually the main reason I admire him.
We speak of the railroad being planned from Golmud to Lhasa. "It has to be done or Tibet won't prosper," he says. And yet our Tibet book says that Swiss engineers hired by the Chinese government determined the project impossible -- for one reason because of the Tanggula Mountains we have yet to pass: they present an insurmountable obstacle of frozen rock. And yet, way back in Nachitai, at the natural spring and grassy tent site, one of the groups of arms-folded onlookers were Chinese civil engineers in residence surveying for the railroad. I had pressed those guys for details -- won't it be a difficult project? One of them said the biggest obstacle is money, the Three Gorges Dam project is absorbing too much of it.
We take photos with our tall Tibetan friend and set off, back on the road with a mad tail wind.
This pushes us up onto another basin, set among snow-capped mountains. These must be the Tanggula Mountains (pronounced "tawn-goo-law").
A truck overtakes us and a group of guys in work uniforms jump from the back. Brice cycles on but I stop to chat. What are you guys doing here? "Preparing the railroad." Sure enough, the project seems to be on. But it's too difficult, isn't it? I ask. "No choice," one of them says. "It has to be done, or else Tibet will never develop."
I catch up to Brice and we take time to enjoy and photograph this beautiful, expansive valley. As often happens, cars stop ahead of us and people emerge, cameras in hand and thumbs up. Great! they shout. Can we take a picture with you? And when it emerges that the tourists are Beijing people, we warm up a few degrees more, such is our affection for that city. On one occasion the people identify themselves as Hebei Province people.
"Hebei? Well what city?" I ask with anticipation.
"Xingtai." Hot damn! Xingtai is one of my favorite places in China. There's nothing superficially special about it. It's just a small- to medium-sized Chinese city, but these are often the best places to visit. The people in Xingtai are cool and I've had excellent times there.
At one point we see a small group of yak and men on horseback in the grassland, a dog trotting along 200 metres in front of them. We pull over and put the bikes down. They are probably 500 metres away. The dog notices our presence and starts trotting toward us. At the same time the horsemen break off and head for us. Okay -- we stand around, and these people reach out. They're just as curious as we are. It's exactly what happened the other day with the yurt.
The remaining horseman and the yak continue the previous course across the grassland. Meanwhile the dog is loping at us at about the same speed as the horsemen, only from 11 o'clock; the horsemen are at 1 o'clock. This is all playing out on a vast grassland before us. Brice is worried about the dog. It was not sprinting toward us, so I was a little less worried. I did have mace in hand with finger on the trigger.
And what of the horsemen? Brice wondered if they are Kampas, the cowboys of Tibet. This was also cause for some worry, but probably exaggerated. We had read an account of two English cyclists (the Cranes) who cycled this route many years ago. Their run-ins with "Kampas" were not pleasant and occasionally resulted in forfeiture of some of their items. So we're a little tense.
As he nears, one horseman waves and we wave back. They dismount and approach. One asks to see Brice's camera. "I'm gonna get this back," Brice says. The guy looks through it the wrong way and Brice turns it around for him. He likes it and hands it back to Brice. Everything is fine. The dog by now is about to us. What to do about it? Brice asks. "Don't worry," I say. "He's cool." He is. He sees that there is peace with his friends and he just cruises along the road back away from us. What a relief. It is hard to talk to these guys -- barely any Mandarin. They are on their way home. We say adios and part ways.
We roll into Wen Quan around 4 or 5 pm. Like all of these towns, it is small. Just a few buildings.
A young Tibetan girl calls us to her. "Uncle!" she says in good Mandarin. "Your friends are just down the road waiting for you."
We call in at the army station as planned; the Chinese have arrived first and hopefully they've smoothed the way. The junior officer in charge has no objections. But the senior officer arrives back on base and says Nothing Doing -- no foreigners will stay here on my watch. Fair enough, we certainly understand. The PLA soldiers are very polite and even apologetic. No worries, there's a Sichuanese restaurant across the way with beds in the back. We'll be comfortable there and we'll eat well too.
Much of the conversation is occupied with the Tanggula Mountains: how far is the pass from here? Is it gradual uphill all the way, or will it be a hell-raiser, a last-minute climb for the top? Whatever the case, it's on tap for tomorrow.
The girl who’d welcomed us into town is back again, offering to lead us to the hot springs. The four of us grab something to pass for bathing suits and towels, and follow her to the hot springs. They aren’t pretty, but sure enough, they are hot. It is wonderful.
There’s no guilt about having an afternoon off. We're making good time, even with the delays. The original schedule I'd put together had us calling in at Wen Quan on the 16th of August; today is the 7th.
The Sichuanese blow-torch us a few dishes and then leave to go have dinner elsewhere.
"Will you look after the shop for us?" they ask.
I feel quite good, though still with chest cold. Brice went to sleep early complaining of pain, or rather being able "to feel" one lung. So if he still feels that way in the morn, we'll go across the way to the army base and have a stethoscope up against his chest.
As usual, this town is strewn with litter just casually dumped all about. So I ask the chef, who sits here with me listening to a karaoke VCD, Do you have mice? (No.) Okay, do you have rats? (Yes.) Do they enter this place? (Yes.) Okay, well, do they get on the beds? (No.)