Friday, June 19, 2009

Early to China

We got up early since it would be a long day riding to the border, then crossing the Chinese border before 4 pm Nepal time which is 6 pm China time. And we managed to get a truck for Ali's Bike while he rode with the tour agent in a car.


Once we got to the boarder is was very tight getting through the trucks, once we reached the friendship bridge where a line across the bridge signifies the Nepal and China part we were asked to push our bikes since there were not allowed to be driven until they finished the first customs check point.

The immigration process was quit quick, however the customs took a bit longer since we had to push the bikes to a place where they spray some kind of insecticide on the bike. And managed to get Ali's bike off the truck since he was well enough to ride now.

We then went up to the Chinese border town for the second customs point, and had dinner, since the road to Nyalam, where we were to stay the first night, was closed during the day for construction and we were told that it opened at 9:00 pm.

After dinner we went as far as we could waiting in queue to use the only road into Tibet from the boarder and waited. I started to get a little dizzy and tired even though we were only about 2500 m above sea level so I rested in the tour guide's car.

Finally at 11:45 pm we were told that the road will open soon. Although we were told that the road condition was bad for parts of the 25 km to Nyalam we didn't expect it to be this bad. The road then got much better but I started feeling the effects of the altitude and was riding really slowly.