Now, after over ten months of munching away the dry bottom layers, we have finally arrived at the icing on the cake of our adventure: Qinghai. This, the fourth largest territorial unit in the empire and birthplace of the current Dalai Lama, embodies nearly every reason we undertook this colossal ride: pristine natural beauty, life highly unadulterated by the worst parts of modernity, and for once, healthy resistance to mainstream ideology. The green, spacious province was also the intended target for my China ride in 2007. Thankfully, however, a grocery store clerk and hobby cyclist outside of Chengdu managed to convince me that my friend and I were unfit and underprepared for biking of that order.

Truly in 2007 I was in no way ready for this territory on my folding Dahon without camping supplies, warm clothes, or bike tools (I didn’t even carry any chain oil!), and so I probably owe my life to that grocery store clerk I found riding outside of Chengdu. This time around, however, we’ve built the entire trip — endurance, equipment, etc. — around our eventual arrival here in the northeastern corner of the Tibetan plateau, the challenges of which we have met in stride. This, of course, flies in the face of nearly every Han we told of our eventual arrival here. The vast majority was convinced we’d meet with something between certain doom and probable vexation in the territory of the rowdy, lawless Tibetans. In the end, they were right about the trouble, but completely off base on where it would come from.

Biking across the roof of the world, by far the wildest stretch of our trip, affords stunning vistas of the genre that inspire epic poetry (I’d go on, but the photos page says it all) and for the first time since I was in California last summer, wildlife! But crossing this awesome terrain entirely exposed to the elements also makes one subject to a number of natural hardships. The most obvious are climatic: increased proximity to the glowing sun for 16 hours a day, sparse oxygen, and sudden, violent rain storms that soak you to the bone kilometers from shelter in any direction. For a while, the thousands upon thousands of huge yaks lumbering across the roads from every which direction caused some trepidation, but then we quickly realized that these hairy, horned beasts — which could end us handily if they had a mind to — are more terrified of us than CCP Central is of the Dalai Clique. There are also the throngs of biting horseflies (yakflies?) that have us instinctively doing the Harlem Shimmy on slow uphills — before we stop to purge them by the dozen when we’ve become focused on jiving than pedaling. The difficulty of travel is further multiplied by the gravel roads, utter lack of signage, and the fact that Chinese is frequently about as useful as Esperanto. Those, however, are all minor annoyances compared to the most terrifying aspect of Tibetan travel.

I was first warned about the danger of Tibetan Mastiffs in 2007 by the grocery clerk, who told me the huge aggressive dogs tend to assess anything moving slowly past their territory as a direct threat to their families. After that, internet searches and countless recounted experiences confirmed that the people best known for tranquility and peace have indeed over the centuries bred to perfection the most sinister dogs known to man. I then forgot about them until we noticed that our comrades-in-bike on the Pan-Eurasian tour had included in their equipment a sonic “Doggie Dazer” to ward off wild Siberian hounds. We thought briefly about the $70 investment, but in our true idiotic form chose to save the money instead (that’s seven pints of Guinness in Shanghai!).

Then about two weeks ago, the mother of our new Tibetan friend Dhargey was alarmed to hear we’d be traveling northward with no counter-canine contingencies. She pulled out from her woodpile for us two heavy sticks and told us our probability of being mauled was in direct ratio with how well we hit any charging curs. Since then our route has been lined by hundreds and hundreds of aggressive dogs, for nearly every campsite, herd of yaks, or house with smoke in the chimney — in other words, every place you’ll find a family — keeps at least one horrible hound. Blissfully, however, over 95% of them have the good sense to chain down their wooly barking masses of insanity during the day. Until two days ago, we’d only come across four “loosies,” and each of those times we had the good fortune to be rolling fast downhill as they picked up on our presence. Then three days ago, on the 30 km of uphill gravel from Gansu into Qinghai, our luck finally ran out. Two dogs well bigger than any pit-bull rushed howling through the wire fence adjacent to an earthen house, and would have been on us in seconds if we hadn’t jumped off the bikes and grabbed the sticks in one movement. Thankfully they must have been acquainted with the pleasure of a stick beating as they did not come closer than six feet (two meters) in front of us. However, they continuously circled, snarling menacingly, and tested our limits, coming as close as possible before the stick was again pointed at them. We tried several times to get on the bikes and ride off, assuming this would neutralize the threat in their minds. But that would be way too easy considering our luck, for the second we were even slightly in profile to them, they raced back in, fangs out. When all hope of a retreat at more than ten paces an hour seemed lost, Andy finally remembered what we’d been told by an American a few days prior about their being afraid of rocks, of which there was an unlimited amount the road. So we devised a new strategy: holding them in place with the stick and pushing them back with hurled projectiles. Truly only the sticks and stones were enough to save our sorry bones, because the words of their masters, who came mostly just to gaze disconnectedly at the fifteen minute spectacle, did little. We faced three more individual loosies that day, and now have the technique more or less down — we think. What’s worse than actually having to beat back huge beasts that do want to do us substantial harm, is having to be constantly on the alert, which rapidly accelerates my fatigue. I am ever on the lookout for PDAs (potential dog areas), mistake a hundred baby yaks and big rocks for dogs a day, and nearly fall off the bike at every sudden roar of a chained mastiff in the distance.

So in short, those have been the downsides of riding out here, not the people! Quite contrary to what most of the paranoid Han had told us, Tibetans have been — for the most part — the warmest, most generous people we’ve met so far, even if sometimes a bit much. One nice young guy said we’d never make our distance before dark (he well underestimated our pace) and offered to pull us by a rope behind his motorcycle. After our first pleasant experience with the yak herders detailed in the last post, we’ve been invited in, fed, and taken care of dozens of times. One day back in northern Sichuan, a hair after noon, a barefoot young man flagged us down off the highway to eat lunch with him. He led us past his mother, busily milking yaks outside, into the smoky black yak-hair tent that is their home. He placed before us bowls and the wooden box with drawers of barley flour, butter, and cheese, and poured out freshly heated milk tea. He exhorted us over and over with one of the only sentences he knew in Chinese: “eat zamba, eat zamba! (吃糌粑！吃糌粑!)” He and his family had already eaten, but he and his mother, who could speak some elementary Mandarin, explained that they just wanted to feed us, nothing desired in return. Since then, we’ve had to turn down many more similar offers than we could accept. I doubt anybody but an errant Han tourist or PLA soldier could starve to death while traveling near Tibetan nomads.

That said, Tibetans do exhibit a number of — shall I say — rustic habits that are highly off-putting to even our rough sensibilities. Anybody who has spent time in China knows that the Han have very little sense of shame about staring and violating personal space. It is safe to say that the Tibetans have zero such shame, congregating in groups of any size to stare at us and mumble to each other for as long as they please. If we could get a thirty minute television show called “Two White Boys Eating Noodles” on Tibetan television, we’d run it longer than Seinfeld! At least ten times a day a motorcycle will hover next to me for between five and ten minutes, eyes fixed on me and not the road.

They likewise seem to have little understanding of the concept of private property. They will pick up and play with anything that catches their fancy, seeming perplexed when we grab it back so defensively. I imagine, but am not sure, that this stems from a deep-seated community attitude toward possessions, a great way to live as long as everybody is in on the idea. Two days ago as we set up camp under a bluff next to a monastery, a group of five kids between 15 and 17 years old followed us off the road. Much to my displeasure, they picked up and inspected all of our belongings as I was trying to get my tent up before a sudden storm. Then, boom, the rain was coming down in rivulets before the poles were even set. Right as I was thinking this had to be the worst it could get, Andy shouted, “…and the bikes are gone!” It was a moment of complete defeat, myself, the inside of my tent, and and my scattered bags all soaked, the bike gone, pirated by some punk kids, and the dream of cycling triumphantly back to Beijing dashed — and right when I was really starting to build an affinity for Tibetan youth. But a few minutes later they were riding them back down the muddy hill toward us, absolutely no idea the intense panic their little joy ride had put me through. For reference, they then gawked idly at us for the following two hours as Andy and I just managed to get the tents dry before sunset.

Something else funny happened twenty-four hours after our free zamba lunch in the yak hair tent. Hungry and seeing no sign of a settlement for a good distance, we stopped on the side of the road to take down some snacks. A young, plump woman about thirty, smelling strongly of yak butter, walked out of her house with her son, set up an umbrella next to us under which to sit, and put out her hand for some of our food without saying a word. She’d share the handfuls with the boy, between Andy and me, and tossing into the grass the M&M’s from Andy’s trail mix. Get a little, give a little — that’s how it goes out here.

The only truly bad experience we’ve had came a few days ago. For background, I should mention that we’ve camped numerous times on the open grassland with no problems, and in fact twice passing Tibetans have even gotten off their motorcycles to help us set up our tents! On this particular occasion, we picked an innocuous site on a huge grassy plain a few hundred meters from the highway, far — on that side of the road at least — from any tents or houses with smoke in the chimneys (most houses are empty during the summer, the families living in tents with their yaks or sheep on far away patches of grass until the cold weather forces them home). Then right at dusk a woman in her twenties showed up in front of Andy’s tent demanding in firm, simple Chinese: “Give money, or go! Give money, or go! (給錢！或者走！給錢！或者走!)” I thought to myself, ugh, she had to wait until it was dark to come pull this stunt, or we could have just pulled up and moved a few km down the road.

Unfortunately we had only 4.6 yuan spare change between us. I gathered myself out of my sleeping bag and offered her the 2.6 from my pocket, which elicited from her a sharp scream of, “A hundred! A hundred! (一百！一百!)” For whatever inexplicable reason, the inanity of a woman unconfirmed as any kind of owner demanding extortion prices for camping after dark exploded the mercury out of my temper gage. I threw the money at her feet and started cursing at her in English, clearly an insane move in completely alien territory and one that I regretted immediately. She then made an “Oh ho! Now you’re in trouble!” gesture at me and stormed off, presumably to find some sort of enforcer. We decided without hesitation to decamp and ride back 5 km to the village where we had eaten dinner.

But before we could even get the bags out of the tents, a motorcycle carrying two men pulled within a meter of Andy’s tent, shining their high beams in his eyes. I clutched my dog stick and crept toward them slowly, hoping they wouldn’t turn on Andy before I could get there (and hoping that I’d be of any use if they did). He calmly wished them zhashidele (blessings and fortune to you), and after mumbling between themselves for a few seconds, they returned the greeting and rode back down to the road. They proceeded to ride back and forth on the road in front of us, only their headlights visible. Hearts racing, we got camp broken in record time and managed to roll off the grass through the pitch dark with no further incident, other than being grossly overcharged for a grungy little room without electricity or toilet back in the village.

That one mishap aside, it has been pure bliss to be among these Tibetans, and for more than just their generosity or the fact that many — very sadly — love us from a misguided belief that Americans will be their saviors. In a country singlemindedly obsessed with “development” and eradication of “backwardness,” the Tibetans for the most part are just living their lives the way they want to, the way they have for a long long time. More than that, they have bold personalities, grow long hair, wear bright colors, and walk with an easy swagger, as compared to their Han counterparts who by and large betray a downtrodden nature in their tight gait. In a word, they’ve got gusto. Life out here, if laborious and bitter, appears to be happily free from modern incarnations of stress — probably why I have yet to see a single Tibetan without a thick head of hair! The extent of technology most have incorporated into their lives is limited to motorcycles — the new horses — and cell phones. More than all of that, the biggest reason we love these Tibetans is their defiance, their willingness to hold up the middle finger to the establishment while their inland compatriots fall into line.

In fact, that defiance and fierce devotion to their way of life — and several amazing stories we’ve heard along the way — should be the subject of the next post… unless something truly crazy happens before our next rest stop. Until then, wish us luck as we push further into the wildest portion of our trip!

I said we’d go looking for Tibetan shenanigans in that last post, and boy, did we find them! We’ve seen and done so much in the last few days, I’ll do my best to redact and break up details. By the way, all the Tibetan names below have been changed and no pictures are included… just in case.

So out of Shuajingsi (刷經寺), we climbed and climbed all morning until we hit 4345 m (14,255 feet) and descended miraculously into the wide open grassland. Immediately we came across herds of yaks, nomadic tent clusters, and huge mastiffs — sure signs that we had entered the Tibetan regions. If the yaks weren’t enough to confirm this, the massive military presence sealed the deal. Behind the tourist trap tent city where we had our first real Tibetan meal was an encampment of hundreds of military tents, dozens of howitzers stationed on the road, and all other manner of malevolent machinery.

Thankfully though we were too lost in the scenery to care much about politics for awhile. These landscapes up in northern Sichuan are like something from another world, endless rolling hills of green sprinkled with yellow and purple flowers like the world’s biggest king cake, skies bluer than the deep ocean, and more clouds in every direction than I could even see in a dream. The place makes Yellowstone look like the Jersey Turnpike! It has also been refreshing, to say the least, to take in deep cycling breaths in some of the world’s cleanest (if thin) air, all the more striking due its proximity to some of the world’s dirtiest air.

So after a day of riding through heaven and dinner being stared at by five Tibetan men (they are quite curious), Andy suggested we try to camp out next to a nomad tent for kicks. Just down the road, and right as a storm filling half the sky was moving in, we pulled into a pasture on the side of the road. I asked the men sitting between the two army-sized tents (one was a blue earthquake rescue tent) if we could camp, and they said, sure! As we set up, we were joined by the youngest one, named Tenzin. Tenzin, 22, had an earing in his left ear, curly hair down to his ears, high rubber boots, and dirt on his face. He was fascinated watching us pull the gear from the bikes and set it all up into two tidy tents that held our bags and sleeping gear. Shortly thereafter, we were joined by Norbu, a 62 year old man wearing a traditional overly long sleeved coat and clutching prayer beads, Palden, 48 years old with a gaunt, dark face, and Palden’s 3 year old grandson.

As we sat in the grass, Norbu inquired our nationality. “We love Americans,” he said, “because you support our Dalai Lama.” We hadn’t expected the conversation to get serious so quickly, but they had nothing to hide from us. It turned out that they were all devoutly religious. In fact, I haven’t talked to a single Tibetan not serious about his religion or culture in the last 5 days. Through his shaky Chinese, Norbu let us know how important the Dalai is to the Tibetans and how “the heart is filled with pain” at the long separation from him. Norbu remembered vividly the “liberation” of Tibet when he was 13 and how the Dalai, 23, had been forced to flee. All three of them told of how difficult their situation is, how they hide pictures of the Dalai Lama in their houses despite the danger of doing so. All three of them even wore double-sided pendants bearing the image of the DL and the head monk of their local monastery.

They were as willing to talk about their resentment at Chinese occupation as they were about devotion to their spiritual leader. Both Norbu and Tenzin had participated in the protests of March, 2008, screaming “Long live the Dalai Lama” in the streets of their town with hundreds of compatriots. For their show of passion, they were both plucked from their homes by paramilitary police in the middle of the night and sentenced to prison terms for their outbursts. Norbu got a light 20 days, probably due to his advanced age, but Tenzin had to spend the entire 20th year of his life in prison. For stretches of four and five days at a time he was denied food. When he was finally released, he was told that next time he’d be facing not jail time but a bullet — like four others from his town and dozens in the surrounding area had faced this time. The year was particularly hard on the young man, who was the only man left to support his family after his father had been mauled to death by yaks when he was 13. Palden, who had been interpreting parts of the story for his junior and senior compatriots with weak Chinese, said that the Tibetans in the area had even pulled for the US against China in the Olympics. That’s how you know it’s serious.

After lots of really deep talk, two other men in their twenties, Lobsang and Choden showed up, and everybody headed over to the pen behind the tents where two yaks were tied down. Then Tenzin, a trained yak vet, got on a long pink glove and, after shooting me a smile that said, “I can’t believe my new American friends are going to see me do this” jammed his hand way up there to fidget something around before popping in a long artificial insemination needle and depressing the plunger. Thankfully, in case I had missed a detail, the spectacle was repeated on the second yak before both were released into the pen. About this time it started doomsday raining. Andy and I were rushed into the blue tent with Tenzin, and the other four spent 30 minutes in the rain pulling the herd of 200+ yaks into the pen.

Here I should explain something it took me a while to figure out. None of the men was related by blood. Instead, they were all part of a farming cooperative in which each family owned a certain number of yaks, which are taken care of in shifts. Tenzin was paid 1000 yuan a month for three consecutive months of living out of a tent and servicing the herd, which is all females of calving age. The other four were serving a short service term, for which each family in the cooperative has to turn out one man for fifteen days every year. They are paid 300 yuan for their time, or 20 yuan a day. Norbu, over the legal age to work, was risking a fine for his presence, but had come to take the place of his son who had some other business to attend to.

Back to the tent, Tenzin busily started a fire in the stove from dried yak dung and a little lighter fluid. Once it was going well, he threw a big pot of tea and a small pot of water on to boil. Incidentally, this mess tent was cluttered and dirty in a distinctly Tibetan way. There were two huge sacks of yak turds in the corners, dirty bowls flung around the sides, a solar battery powering a lightbulb, cloth sacks full of barley powder here and there, and a big slab of yak meat hanging from the ceiling. Soon the others returned soaking wet and joined us huddled around the dung stove. A few minutes later, three other men walked in from another herd several kilometers down the road to join us for dinner. Then it was like a yak herders’ bachelor den in the tent, with each of the men pitching in to help make the dinner: one setting rice to boil in a pressure cooker, one slicing the hanging yak meat, one slicing up some peppers, and everybody else passing bowls around to get washed out with boiling water. We weren’t allowed to help with anything. Instead, Lobsang, the 27 year old with long hair and two kids, handed us bowls, a his tin of yak butter, and his sack of barley powder to make zanba. We fingered out some butter into the bowl, over which he poured tea with the tea ladle. Once the butter was melted, we topped the bowl off with handfuls of barley powder, and then sank our fingers in to mix it all up until it was a brown doughy-y ball tasting like a combination of cheerios and butter. It’s filling as hell too, as it needs to be, since these guys eat it 3 meals a day! Eventually the rice and yak meat/peppers were done, and sticks were pulled from the yak dung sack to serve as chopsticks… yes, super gross. Since there were limited bowls, Tenzin and Lobsang had to wait until we were done.

After dinner, the men cut up with each other and laughed deeply at what I’m sure were lots of yak and women-related jokes. It kills us not to understand Tibetan and makes us embarrassed that we are forced to communicate with them in the language of their oppressors — which most of them can hardly speak anyway. Several of them pulled out their prayer beads and were reciting prayers between discourse. Every one had a cell phone and pulled it out to make prank calls or play music. Around 9, completely exhausted, we excused ourselves to our tents. They insisted that we come back to their tent in the morning for more zanba.

When we woke up, the guys, who had stayed up until 2 am playing cards neither gambling nor drinking in the process (I never thought it possible) were already up and in the pen with the yaks. To my horror, I saw that they were holding up the tea ladle from the previous night full of salt to lapping yak tongues… again, gross. Palden, the grandpa who had been our interpreter for most of the night, was also quite the yak-boy. He lassoed three heifers for the insemination pen, hitting their horns spot-on with every throw and reeling each one in within three throws. They then filed them out one at a time, counting as they went, and led the herd a few kilometers down the road to a pasture with high grasses. We sat with Tenzin in front of the yak crap stove and had more zanba, of which he couldn’t force enough onto us. Forty five minutes later, the others returned, we talked some more, and then it was time for us to break camp. This time they all pitched in, rolling up the tents, carrying bags, or just whatever they could see needed to be done. After some group pictures, we bid everyone “demu” (goodbye in Tibetan) and rolled down the gorgeous plain.

I can’t emphasize enough how well Tibetans work as a team — absolutely every task they undertake is everybody’s responsibility, regardless of age or status. They’re also the downright friendliest and most generous people we’ve met on our trip so far. It fills my heart with pain to know that they’re so tormented and bullied by their colonizers, the Chinese. Yes, peoples have been dominated by others since the beginning of time, and sure, some of the Chinese up here are ok people, but for the most part, it’s an ugly picture. I can’t help but imagine how I would feel if my dad were arrested and beaten for being caught with a rosary or publicly declaring his belief in Jesus. Heathen though I am, the experience with our yak herding friends has, more than anything, made me feel lucky that I was born in the USA.

More to come soon!