Why cycle when you can take the bus

 

We recc'ed the bus station two days before and found out that buses to Shigatse ran every hour on the hour from the scores of men wanting to sell us a ticket. Upon returning nice and early for the 10 o'clock bus the lady at the ticket office point blank refused to sell us a ticket despite Jane's best attempts in Chinese. Fortunately there was a bus driver keen to get us on his bus who snuck us through and then sent a mate to get our tickets. The bikes and Chris were pointed to the top of the bus so he clamboured up to strap them on - presumably the driver had come across cyclists before!

The ticket said we'd leave at 10.30 so, at 10.30 the bus reversed from it's bay and drove to the gates where it stopped for last minute passengers. Ten minutes later we went through the inner gates to the outer gates where we stopped again for really last minute passengers. Unfortunately, the bus wouldn't start. Carpets were pulled aside to reveal the engine, the hatch completely blocking Jane in her seat while Chris learnt how to fix one end of the fuel injection system and then the other  (mostly with a spanner and some brute force). Finally it restarted and we exited the main gates, drove 1km down the road before pulling into a petrol station to fill up. Half the men got off the bus at this point and headed to the toilet - well it had been over an hour since we first got on the bus! back on the road for 3km and then some more passengers were crammed in.

After the city limits we felt we were finally on our way, that was until we reached the first checkpoint at 40km. Nobody seemed to know what was wrong but we spent an hour waiting for permission or something to allow us to continue. Our driver disappeared followed by most of the bus including the girl who had been sick after the first time 17 minutes of the journey (mostly parked). Some people took bags off and some returned to the bus to have a big discussion as to why we were delayed - to the best of our knowledge no one was any the wiser. A different man then got into the driving seat but then realised he had no keys. More waiting and eventually the original driver returned brandishing a piece of paper and we set off again. Both the driver and his assistant seemed confused by the piece of paper and didn't appear to know what the point of it was. They therefore stopped everywhere along the way where there were bus or minibus drivers parked up. Each stop involved lengthy discussions and equally lengthy scrutiny of the piece of paper. Something must have been resolved as the subsequent checkpoints were relatively hassle free.

5 hours after leaving our hotel we reached the place we'd camped on the way into Lhasa a journey which only took us 5 and a half hours by bicycle. Thankfully the remainder of the journey was quicker as we rocketed through the last bit of gorge listening to an alto tenor with a chinese backing group on the bus radio.

Visit border cycling for more information on guided cycle trips.