May 2nd - Day 5 - Xi'an (Rest Day)

We woke to pouring rain and went in two coaches to see the terracotta warriors. As we went into the first vast covered pit we saw the incredible sight of row upon row of soldiers, all facing east.. Each warrior had a different facial expression and the horses also all looked different.

Around the edge of each pit were three rows of  warriors facing outwards.

We spent a lot of time in the first pit before moving on to the second and third pit where we saw the huge task of further excavations taking place. The warriors were all broken and have to be reassembled. In the partially excavated pits we saw fragments of broken warriors and horses.

Some of the recently reassembled warriors and horses standing on their own outside the pits.

In the museum area there were glass cases with full sized warriors and artefacts including two bronze horse drawn carriages. The four horses pulling one of the bronze carriages.

A standing and a kneeling archer, similar to the the three quarter-sized replica we bought to be shipped back to London.

There were large crowds of locals as well as many Japanese tourists. We found the cinema and watched a fascinating portrayal of the making of the warriors and the tomb for Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the First Dynasty (Qin) circa 200 BC.

We returned to the hotel in the rain and in the afternoon we bought more provisions for the journey. In the evening we decided to eat in the hotel, as the food was so good, while the rest of the group went out to a local dumpling restaurant. We learned later on that the trip to the restaurant was not a success.

May 3rd - Day 6 - Xi'an to Lanzhou

Today was the start of the rise up to the Tibetan Plateau and we needed to start taking the altitude sickness drug, Diamox. We left the hotel at 6.30am for the drive to Lanzhou some 700km further west.

It was a beautiful sunny day as we we drove on mountain passes up to 7,500ft, with snow on the mountain peaks. The roads were quite good but we saw the aftermath of two bad truck accidents. One had a lorry lying on its side at the bottom of a steep mountain road and the other down a big drop. We had an early lunch halt at a hotel in Pingliang but decided not to eat there but to sit in the car eating bacon sandwiches we had made at breakfast in Xi'an.

We were now driving on expressways, the equivalent of UK motorways. The road was elevated for many miles, a feat of engineering that was very impressive. It seems to me that most major cities are linked by these roads with the main difference to the UK motorways being that these are empty. Mile after mile can be covered without meeting another car and when you do it is often going at only 20mph. Very few Chinese vehicles travel at western speeds.

The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful with some lovely terraced hills. It was very rural but the last part of the journey into Lanzhou was on another magnificent Chinese expressway. As we approached Lanzhou, sited on the Yellow River, we saw how polluted it was. Our visibility was severely limited by the smog hanging over the city.

We checked into the five star Sunshine Plaza Hotel, our last good hotel for sometime. We made the most of it, showering, re-packing and even getting the sleeves on Wendy's Great Tour of China coat shortened by the hotel housekeeping, all for 10 Yuan!
 

We had dinner in the hotel but once again they wanted the table to be full before they served us. We made a fuss and managed to get served even though the table wasn't full. After the meal we had a drink with Maria and Antoine de Hullu. Wendy asked for a cup of tea and got hot water with fresh leaves floating in it.

May 4th - Day 7 - Lanzhou to Qinghai

The road rose quickly after we left Lanzhou, with many sections of road subject to repairs. Here is a typical scene, men and women working with shovels to 'repair' the muddy road.

We went from 5,000 feet to over 10,000 feet at the beginning of the Tibetan plateau. There were magnificent mountains, covered with snow, all around us. All the roads were very good, which was quite a surprise to me as we were now so far away from the main centres of Chinese industry.

We stopped at the Ta'Er monastery, the birthplace of Tsong Khapa founder of the Yellow Hat Buddhist sect. The monastery was quite crowded with Chinese visitors.

Our cars parked at the Monastery with a monk wearing his yellow hat on the right.

Not far from our destination on the shore of Qinghai Lake, we saw an amazing modern city with a large building, which looked like an American governor's mansion. It reminded me of a Hollywood set!  We could not think what it could be out there in the middle of nowhere. We learned later it was the Chinese centre for nuclear research and testing in the sixties and seventies.It was apparently called Atomic City.

Shortly after, we turned off the main route on to a beautiful road specially built for an international cycle race around the lake. Just before we came to the lake we saw our first yaks by the side of the road and then large sand dunes. The dunes seemed so out of place thousands of miles from the nearest sea, especially with the mountains covered in snow as a backdrop!

The lake is the largest salt water lake in China. It was a wonderful sight in such a bleak but beautiful place.

We arrived at the Qinghai Tent Hotel on the shore of the lake. It was a beautiful spot with the lake in front of the hotel and the snow covered mountains behind. You can see two of the Tent Hotel buildings on the right of the photo.

It was bitterly cold and there was no heating or hot water in our yurt. There were men painting decorations on the outside of the building.

Qinghai Lake in the background.

Our yurt and Wendy with the men painting the decorations on our yurt.

We went for a walk down to the lake where there was a pier and a shop. There was a strange building in the lake about 800 yards from the shore. It had large Chinese characters on the side facing us, but what they meant, I had no idea.

Prayer flags by the lake.

We needed fuel and found a gas station close by.
 

It was freezing as the attendant filled the car, while we stayed inside with the engine running and the heater on full blast! Filling nearly 150 litres took quite a time and I felt sorry for the poor man outside as the wind howled. I went into the tiny kiosk, which turned out to be his house, to pay. When I attempted to give him a tip he refused it, so I pushed the few yuan down his son's t-shirt, to much laughter from the boy, his father and mother!

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant which was better than expected. Wendy wouldn't eat the meat because it looked like yak, We sat with Don, Linda and Bernard and the French group. We drank tea but the French had red wine and cognac which they had brought in their car.

We returned to our yurt, got out our sleeping bags in the hope they would keep us warm in the night. By now it was well below freezing and getting colder.

May 5th - Day 8 - Qinghai to Golmud

From Qinghai we had a 450 mile drive, mainly due west, across mountains and then the Tsai Dam desert to Golmud.

We went through some fantastic scenery with mountains on all four sides of us and rising to maybe more than 15,000 feet. It was wonderful driving. The road was more or less deserted with only a few trucks and very few private cars. We passed Lake Caka, another salt lake and not long after we saw several of the group's cars parked by the side of the road. They had stopped to take photos of a number of wild camels. We pulled up and attempted to take some pictures although the camels were quite a long way off.

We reached the scheduled lunch stop in a town called Dulun at 10am and met up with Joanna and Lifeng.

We had tea with them rather than an early lunch. The road continued with some unbelievably long straight sections that went on for over 20 miles before a bend.

We were now in the Tsai Dam desert and I stopped to collect some desert dust to add to my collection of sand and dust from the deserts we have driven through all over the world.

Wendy took over the driving and we arrived in Golmud around 2pm. Golmud had been built up on oil and is quite a prosperous place. We were surprised by the modern shops and they were even building an amusement park. This is one of the truly remote towns in the world, with Lanzhou nearly a thousand miles away to the east.

Out hotel, the Tian Long was not bad though at first we didn't have hot water but it heated up later on!The toilet didn't flush and we had to get two maids to come and flush it with a plunger!! We decided to drive to a supermarket to stock up for tomorrow's drive which is the longest of the tour, at over 860 kms. There was quite a high Muslim population and many people wore masks. We weren't sure if this was because of SARS or simply to protect themselves from the harsh conditions. Many people appeared to have burnt and very weathered faces.

We returned to the hotel and had a reasonable meal with several of the group, including Clay and Claude and Nathalie and the rest of the French. For dinner we had caramelised potatoes which were like toffee apples. It's an early start tomorrow, up at 5.15am!

May 6th - Day 9 - Golmud to Nagqu (Tibet)

Once leaving Golmud the road soon joined the new Golmud to Lhasa railway line the Chinese are building. It is one of the great engineering achievements of the our time. The route of nearly 1,500 kms passes over several mountain ranges exceeding 5.000 metres, requiring hundreds of bridges and elevated sections to take the line over permafrost and unstable ground. As the road rises higher and higher the railway snakes alongside with numerous worker camps in the most inhospitable conditions imaginable.

Our first view of one of the hundreds of bridges for the railway.

When we crossed the plateau it was minus 8 degrees Celsius and this was May. You see the workers high up on the line exposed to the biting wind and you cannot fail to be impressed with what has been achieved, but at what cost?

One of the unbelievably long sections of elevated track crossing the permafrost.

We started to meet convoys of military trucks, a sign of things to come? It was obvious the Chinese are making a statement about their presence in Tibet. The lead truck always displayed a banner in Chinese. I presumed it said something along the lines, ' The Glorious Chinese People's Army. As we got closer to the Tibetan border we saw more convoys coming towards us. Here is the last truck of one convoy with its Chinese flag passing us and Bernard Legrand's Hummer.

Following the Hummer under the railway line.

After about 500kms from Golmud the line is incomplete and they are still constructing bridges.

Further south the line is in the very first stages of construction. The Chinese say the line will be finished by the time the Olympics are staged in 2008. After seeing what has been built since 2001, this target looks likely to be met.

We crossed the Yangtze River to reach the lunch halt in Tuotuohe, a pretty dire place. The food looked inedible, so we only had tea. We needed to use the toilets, which we were told were outside at the back of the restaurant. We walked to them past a big dog that was tied up and barked at us. The toilet, if you could call it that, was behind a flapping piece of old cloth and consisted of a hole in the ground. I waited for Wendy and noticed this mobile phone mast behind the toilet. What a contrast. Here in one photo is the old and the new China, just a few yards apart!

The back yard of the restaurant which was much like the restaurant itself.

We left Tuotuohe and drove on towards the border with Tibet. At one point we came to a halt in a huge traffic jam of trucks. At first we thought it was due to an accident. We waited for ages trying to see what was going on and then one of our cars pushed past the stationary trucks and everyone followed. It became clear that most of the trucks had simply broken down trying to get over the pass which was nearly 17,000 feet high.We all felt pretty rough from the fumes being belched out by the trucks as they struggled to get over the pass.

We crossed into Tibet ,which was only identifiable by a banner and prayer flags across the road but no check point or any security. The remainder of the drive to Nagqu was relatively easy and we arrived in this small Tibetan town at around 6pm. Our hotel, the Nagqu, was two star but reasonable and had central heating!

Wendy was very tired and went to bed and then had an attack of vertigo. Greg Williams and Mike Johnson came to see her and gave her an injection and some pills.

May 5th - Golmud - Impressions of China

Here are some of the impressions of China I have gained since we started our tour in Beijing nearly a week ago.

I will start with the Chinese people. I have never been in a country where the people have been so overtly friendly. They come up to you in the street and say the only word in English they know, 'hello'. HERO have provided us with a handout in Chinese which describes the tour and who we all are. This helps in communicating with the Chinese and 'breaking the ice'.It makes no difference if they are well-off or poor, which the majority seem to be, in the way they greet us as friends. It has been a wonderful experience.

Next, the driving in China. There appear to be few rules. Cars come at you from all directions, even down the wrong side of dual carriageways. Roundabouts and traffic lights are often ignored. It sounds like chaos but once you have got used to the lack of any order, it becomes great fun. I think it must be like it was when cars first appeared in the UK a hundred years ago.

Finally, the impression of construction taking place everywhere is hard to take in. There must be more cranes in China than the rest of the world put together. Every town has huge developments, with skyscrapers, shopping centres, factories and huge housing projects under construction. Even towns in rural China, far from the major cities, have modern centres that would not be out of place in Europe.

May 7th - Day 10 - Nagqu to Shigatse

Greg came and examined Wendy in the morning and said that we should go in convoy with him and Jingers and he would then check Wendy again at lunchtime. If he felt she was not fit enough to go on to Everest we would have to divert to Lhasa and wait for the tour there.

We left Nagqu at 9am, two hours after the rest of the group, with Greg and Jingers following us. We met up with them again at the lunch stop and Greg checked Wendy over and agreed we could continue to Shigatse, which was very good news for us all.

Parked up at the lunch halt in the small town of Yangbajain.

Two small Tibetan children outside the restaurant.

It was quite a good meal consisting of rice, pork and beans with ginger. After the meal we were told the toilets were on the other side of the road. Wendy was taken there by a waitress and when she went into the ladies part, to her horror, she discovered no private cubicles but two Tibetan ladies squatting in the room!

Being led to the toilets.

We left Yangbajain and soon turned right off the Lhasa road and on to the road to Shigatse. We went past a large geo-thermal power generating station with warm water pools. The road then wound up the most incredible mountain pass, Mount Xuegula, taking us to the highest point of the tour at 5,430 metres (17,819 feet). John Brown was at the top of the pass and asked Wendy how she was.

The summit of Mount Xuegula pass.

I regret not getting out of the car at the summit of the pass and climbing the extra 182 feet to go over 18,000 feet. Will I ever get that chance again?

At the next mountain pass we encountered a broken down pig lorry right in the middle of the road. There was very little room to get through and the big drop to the right was quite worrying. I hit my nearside wing mirror on the lorry as I squeezed through. We lived to tell the tale!

It was a breath taking drive to the north-west of Lhasa, all along rough gravel roads with huge mountains and beautiful valleys where the Tibetans cultivate their crops using yaks to plough the stony ground.Their houses are distinctive for the wonderful colours painted on the arches over the doors and the prayer flags fluttering in the wind. As we descended towards the central valley in Tibet we saw our first trees in many days.

We reached a river where we had to take a ferry. The ferry could only take four cars at a time. We waited for some time before we crossed and, on the other side, we met our new Tibetan guide, Joe.

Crossing the river on the ferry.

Driving off the ferry.

The roads had been very rough with washboard and several dry river crossings so the final section to Shigatse on smooth tarmac, was very welcome.

Approaching Shigatse with the Tashilunpo Monastery on the right.

We arrived at the Shandong Hotel and surprisingly, even though we were the last to leave in the morning, there were still others who had not yet checked in.

It was beautifully warm and sunny. The temperature had gone from minus 8 to plus 21 degrees Celsius. The hotel was better than its 3 star rating, though there was no heating and it was cold at night. We and the car were covered in dust, so we got the car washed and then had showers which we appreciated as we had not had hot water for quite a while.

We had a reasonable dinner in the hotel, but then discovered that Joe had lost the permits for our stay in Tibet, including the visit to Everest. Wendy thought she was destined never to get to Everest. We all hoped it would be resolved, especially for Joe as his job was on the line.

Tomorrow is a rest day, giving us time to sort out the cars and visit the Tashilunpo Monastery that is the traditional home of the Panchen Lama.

May 8th - Day 11 - Shigatse (Rest Day)

We had a decent breakfast at 8am, quite a luxury after the last few days. We met Mike Preston and Anthony from the advance car for the first time on the event.

Being a rest day it was an opportunity for many of the participants to get their cars worked on after days of very hard driving on Chinese and Tibetan roads. Here Jingers works on one of the Land Rovers. Not sure who is under the Jeep Cherokee.

I, on the other hand took the car with Chris to a local garage to sort out one of the front shock absorbers that was leaking badly. The garage was pretty basic and we all laughed when we saw one of the mechanics peeing into the inspection pit. Chris wasn't too keen to go down into it to look at the car from the underneath!

While we were at the garage the lost documents that we needed to travel in Tibet were found in one of the cars. Wendy went with the de Hullus into town. Wendy visited the market and bought prayer flags and a bell used by monks for praying. They went into the old town residential area which was quite picturesque with painted lintels above the front doors. At the top of a hill was a fortress that had been wrecked by Mao supporters in the Cultural Revolution.It was very hot and because Victor wasn't feeling well they all made their way back to the hotel.

We all met up and took our car to the Tashilunpo Monastery because it was so hot. We took John and Joanna with us. The Monastery is a great complex of buildings, many housing enormous Buddhas. We visited one temple with a 27 metres high Buddha but we were most impressed by the temple containing the tomb of the 4th Panchen Lama with 85 kilos of gold and masses of jewels. We bought silk scarves from the monks for one yuan.

The Tashilunpo Monastery

Whilst we were walking round the Monastery we saw John Brown showing the monks the scars from his heart by-pass operation. They seemed most impressed.

The Monastery has 600 monks and was built in 1447. It used to have 4,000 monks.As we were leaving one of the group, Paul Fockens from the Netherlands,asked for a lift back to the hotel as he had just been bitten by a three legged dog. We rang Greg to warn him as we were all concerned about rabies.

We left the Monastery after about three hours and returned to the hotel where we had a good dinner with the Browns, Lifeng, Mike Preston, Greg, Mike Johnson and Ma. Mike Preston told us about the next few days driving and Joe stood up and spoke to us all and was given a Great Tour of China t-shirt.

We learned that Paul is OK but Victor is on a drip. We hope he is well enough to travel to New Tingri tomorrow.

May 9th - Day 12 - Shigatse to New Tingri (Qomolangma)

Wendy had a very bad night and couldn't sleep, possibly due to the altitude, but she felt OK in the morning. Victor de Hullu was better and well enough to travel.

We left Shigatse at 9.15 driving through barren mountainous landscapes. The road was very rough with clouds of dust being thrown up by all the cars.

We went over more high mountain passes and now we saw sheep and goats rather than yaks. One section of road was not dissimilar to Glencoe in Scotland.

We climbed to the the top of yet another 5,000 metres pass, this time the Gyatsola-la Pass at 5,220 metres. At the top is a sign showing the entry to Qomolangma National Nature Preserve. We snapped this photo after we had driven under the sign.

We continued on the rough gravel road until we saw in the distance snow capped mountains, our first views of the Himalayas. We stopped to take photos and then realised that the highest mountain in the distance was Everest, about 100 miles away.

We were filthy from all the dust being thrown up and now the car had a cracked windscreen, which was getting longer as we drove. We stopped to photograph some yaks but the farmer didn't seem very pleased so we quickly drove on. Also, there were children by the side of the road with rocks in their hands. Fearing the worst, we didn't stop but then realised they were trying to sell us fossils.

The last part of the journey into New Tingri was on a rough track as the road was being upgraded. We saw more boys with rocks and stopped. They showed us fossil ammonites and we bought one for 5 yuan. We arrived soon after at the Qomolangma Hotel, which was not as bad as we feared it might be.

New Tingri is a small town in the middle of nowhere and the starting point for trekkers and mountaineers going to the Himalayas and Everest. We met up with many of the group in the car park outside the hotel and enjoyed the warm sunshine.

Tomorrow is the highlight of the Great Tour of China, the visit to Everest Base Camp. Few people get the opportunity to drive there and we feel very fortunate.