Dashing across the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan plateau is huge. Its is approximately four times the size of France, or about the size of Western Australia. We left Nam Tso with the aim of crossing the Tibetan plateau heading north towards our next milestone, Goldmud. It took us two long riding days to cross the elevated plateau with its average elevation is over 4,500m. Despite the altitude and the cold weather the ride was very enjoyable. At times we travelled through fantastic vast grassland plains which were met by high snowcapped mountains. At other times the landscape looked desert like with rocks displaying stunning yellow to purple colors.

We were absolutely fascinated by the Chinese engineering work. When it comes to building of infrastructure the Chinese are absolute experts, it’s really amazing.  The entire two days of travelling over the plateau we followed the Qingzang railway which was built in 2006 and connect Lhasa with Xining in Qinghai Province. It is the world’s highest railway track and there are countless tunnels and bridges. The tracks rarely deviate from a straight line regardless of what hills or mountains surround.

Our road was also in near perfect conditions and it felt like we were flying over the roof of the world. As if Chinese engineering was not impressive enough, a new power line was under constructions as we dashed over the plateau. It was fun to watchthe lines being constructed. We were amazed by the small amount of heavy machinery that was used for building the power line. Instead there were countless workers who were sitting on the half-finished poles attaching the cables or screwing missing elements onto the existing steal structures.

We were tempted to label any of these technical achievements, the railway, the road, or the power line as “the New Great Wall of China”. What fascinated us most about all of these constructions was the fact that everything had to be laid on permafrost, which caused technical difficulties of building the railroad tracks as well as the road and the power line. The Chinese overcame this challenge by building the road and railway on elevated tracks of around 2m of height consisting of thick gravel. For the railway they apparently also inserted cooling pipes in various places to help keep the boggy ground frozen in summer.  Dashing past old sections of roads we could see what happens if such techniques to withstand the permafrost and the frozen rivers were not applied. We saw massive cracks of up to 10cm running across the road and bumps which could well throw you off the bike alongside of collapsed bridges.

Despite the high-tech infrastructure development we realized soon that were travelling through some very remote parts of Tibet. In every town we stopped for fuel a big crowd of people surrounding us and the bikes would quickly form. The Tibetans were often dressed in their traditional cloths, the men wearing their traditional long hair with red strings braided into the hair. The women were wearing their typical long skirts or they were dressed in modern (in our eyes absolutely ugly, bitchy looking) Chinese fashion.  Getting the opportunity to see foreigners was very special for them, so while having lunch in a local Tibetan restaurant we had a crowd of at least 10 people pressing their faces against the window from outside.  The absolute highlight of three little grubs was Boris going to the local public toilet. They followed him all along and did not leave even when we wanted to have some privacy and waved them to go outside. Instead they stood there and watched him do his business all the way.