25 June β China (Tibet) β ~253 miles
Left Lhasa this morning, to start the long road out of Tibet, over the famous Sichuan-Tibet Highway. Took a wrong turn fairly early on, and ended up on the motorway/expressway – which is forbidden to motorcycles. Stayed on that for about 25 miles (no options to exit) – without anybody stopping me.
Over a 5,000m altitude pass, rather ho-hum nowadays.
Stopped for a cup of tea at a little Tibetan teahouse, which also had posters of the Cordyceps ‘mushroom’, the “super mushroom” we discovered some years ago – apparently this area is a source for it. The guy showed me a plastic shopping bag half-full of the dried stuff, and then I bought a single fresh cordyceps for 50 yuan. Not cheap stuff.
BTW – I had a “yak meatball and caterpillar” soup last night, which had three smaller ones in it… and considering one of the benefits is supposed to be increasing oxygen intake, last night was the first time I’ve struggled to get to sleep with the altitude/low-oxygen-levels.
Overall, the day’s ride was rather pleasant – the aforementioned 5,000m pass, lots of miles following a river, etc. But I was super tired – falling asleep at times – so probably didn’t enjoy it as much as I could/should have. Eventually I pulled over, lay in the shade of a tree, and had a bit of an afternoon nap. Waking up twice as the free-roaming cows came dangerously close to trampling me. But eventually reached our destination of Linzhi safe and sound, and hoping for an early night.
