Camping has started

Well here I am four days into the ride after three nights camping in an hotel in Gyantse (look it up on Google maps). Real one yak town, but fgamous as the place Younghusband based his army when the British invaded Tibet in 1904. I've just cycled over the Karo la pass (4960m) where Younghusband engaged 5000 Tibetans which still counts as the highest battle ever fought by teh British army. The poor Tibetans had bows ands arrows and a few old riffles as well as a personal amulet from the Dalai Lama guranteed to fend off Brittish bullets. It didn't and teh British light artillery and maxim machine guns slaughtered 700 Tibetans in 4 minutes.

Anyway, hotel has no wi-fi so no pictures as I am in the only internet cafe in town surrounded by adolescents playing computer games.

So, what's happened so far... well, first we all cycled to the Potala for a group photo before teh start. Then teh cycle out of Lhasa was fairly tedious as it was on the main road and far too much traffic to cope with. The fact that th last 10 miles was traffic free and through beautiful scenery did not stop me having a crises of confidence the following morning when I woke up in my tent and thought why on earth am I doing this?

Luckly though, the sun was out and we started immediatelyon a 15 mile 1,200m climb with a steady 5% gradient up to the top of teh Gampa La (4794m). Absolutely stunning scenery, flet good over teh first 5 miles in just under an hour and teh second was pretty good too. However, things got harder with the final 5 miles and in the last three I was stopping every 500 yds or so. On one of these occassions a bus load of Chnese stopped right in front of me adn got out and so0tensibly started taking photos of the scenery. Given it was a completely deserted road I realised they really wanted to photo me! Taking pity on them I gestured for them to take my photo, which 15 of them promptly proceeded to do.

Anyway, made the top in just over three hours, which I was very pleased with givn the lack of oxygen at nearly 5000m and the fact that I had not aclatimised yet.

Fantastic views from the top of Yamdrok-Tso, a huge lake at 4000m which is famous for being a fabulous shade of deep turquoise (pictures to follow!)

Following a beautiful ride around the lake we ended up at teh campsite set in a lovely location on the lake shore. On the way saw a number of Hoopoe - last time I saw one of those was no Alresford watercress beds in about 1985.

The next morning I felt like a bit of sloitary riding and set off 10 mins before teh rest of the group, First 10 miles although through beautiful scenery was demoralising as it is a series of very long flat straight roads. THe next 10 in contrast are fantastic, rising fairly gently up to the Karo La pass mentioned above. A fast descent brings us to another lovely campsite next to a river.

The next day work up feeling really well, despite it being -6 degrees. WHen hte sun came out it warmed up a bit but not much. THere followed an easy and beautiful ride of about 40 miles with one little 200m climb to Simi La pass. Got some great photos at the top then a fantastic hairpin descent with almost no cars don to Gyantse (which I had the R3 here).