Day 14 - Tingri - Menkab

Distance – 65kms
Max altitude – 4540m
Riding time – 5 hours

A shit day. As if someone wanted to show me that this touring thing’s not all peaches and cream, I was served up a long, cold, windy and emotionally draining day. The road was intermittently huge corrugations and deep sand. The wind was incessant, and front on, and the dust thrown up by passing trucks and Land Cruisers was suffocating. The people along the way were particularly depressing.

The only decent moment of the day was waking up in the magnificent shadow of Everest (pictured right). From 8am, when I left the campsite, it just got worse and worse.

I stopped for breakfast an hour in and realised I’d lost my guidebook – Tibet Overland – which had been a constant companion and had more sentimental than practical value at this end of the trip. Breakfast was bizarre. I asked someone where I could something to eat and they pointed at a small house, which I promptly walked into to find all the occupants asleep. They jumped to their feet reasonably quickly, except for the guy who barely glanced up. The women of the house offered to get me food, which I was relieved about. At this stage I wasn’t sure what was on the menu but was pleasantly surprised by a serve of momos (Tibetan dumplings).

While eating there was a steady stream of locals coming into the house handing over money to the guy who was still laying on the couch. Usually they gave him 30 to 50 yuan ($5-8), but he was slowly accumulating a wad of cash which he counted while laying on his side. I don’t know what he was being paid for, but he was obviously Mr Big in town. Towards the end of breakfast an elderly woman came in and started crying. It was obvious that she didn’t have the money she owed, and Mr Big wasn’t going to let her off the hook easily. He yelled at her for a while, tears streaming down her face, and then after he’d made his point he relented. At this point I contemplated asking how much it would take to cover her debt but it was a difficult situation to get involved in. Once the shouting stopped her tears dried up and she was on her way.

About an hour after breakfast I stopped for water and walked into a shop straight out of Deliverance. Everyone hovered around me inside and then followed me outside to my bike. Everyone – young and old, male and female – were begging for money and mothers pushed their children forward to reinforce their need. During the commotion a truck pulled up outside. As the passenger got out of the cab I noticed a live sheep on the floor of the truck. I would see the sheep later…

I got out of Deliverance as quickly as I could and back into the wind, averaging about 10kph pedalling as hard as I could. I wasn’t sure whether it was the body or the bike was going to give up first on these roads. Turns out it was the body. I pulled into a truckstop for a drink at about 2pm and was shattered. The stares were constant and it was pretty obvious that the local yak herdsmen held me in reasonably high contempt. They all asked me for money, but soon realised I wasn’t providing any and wasn’t worth the trouble. I asked for a Sprite and the girl serving me decided the most practical vessel was a shot glass, which she refilled about 20 times for me to drink the Sprite. When I indicated I’d like to drink out of the can she would have none of it.

By this stage I had given up any hope of making it over the big pass today, or taking the detour, and decided I would try to grovel to the base of the Himalaya about 10kms away. On the way I passed the truck driver I’d seen earlier who slit the throat of the sheep I had seen while I was passing, and were obviously going to share the meal with some other truck drivers they were camping with.

My campsite is very exposed, visible from the road and rocky. There were no better alternatives, and all seemed OK until a man and woman on a horse and cart came past shortly before dark. The guy got off and walked over speaking unintelligible Tibetan. He cased the campsite, looked inside the tent and at my bike, and then stared at me for what must have been 5 minutes. He had a large machete slung off his jacket and looked pretty menacing. His wife was still sitting on the cart and had her hand out for money, to which I shook my head. It was a very unnerving confrontation and eventually I simply said goodbye and got inside my tent. I half expected the machete to come through.

I heard the cart move away and watched it disappear into the distance, where it stopped for a time about 500 metres away. I then saw a young boy coming towards me, who had obviously been instructed to do so by the couple. I was not keen for another confrontation and stood in front of the tent and stared him down. He got to within 50 metres and stopped (pictured below), staring intently back at me. He eventually turned around when it got dark and shuffled back towards the village a few kilometres away.

It’s days like this that make you feel mortal. I admit to being a bit envious of the people passing in Land Cruisers. I also feel real loneliness for the first time in the trip, and wish Sarah was here with me so I could talk to her about the most forgettable day of the trip. People ask me how cycle touring’s different to backpacking, and I usually focus on the positives. But actually one of the big differences is that when you travel by most other means you don’t have days like this. Days where you cannot believe that this is a holiday and that you actually chose to be here. They are rare, but they are part of cycle touring.