Once I got out of Saga I realized that I had begun the entry into the heart of the Chang Tang. The Chang Tang is the high altitude plateau that makes up most of Western Tibet. Just standing on the ground the average altitude is 14,500 feet [4420 meters]. The Drokpa, or Tibetan nomads make their home in this isolated place. I knew that it would be another two months before I ever descended below 14,000 feet [4268 meters] and at least as long before I ever saw another living tree. Just standing on the ground brings you to about the same height as the highest peak in the continental United States. The scale of everything in the Chang Tang is enormous. During the time that I spent traveling in this area, I came to understand space and distance in a vastly different way. I would glance at what looked to be a small hill off to the side of the road, when I located it on my maps it would often turn out to be a 18,000-or 19,000-foot [5487 meters or 5792 meters] “hill.” Meanwhile the mountain peaks that surrounded me stood 25,000 to 26,000 feet [7621 meters to 7926 meters] high. I could often clearly see a couple hundred miles to the south to the main mass of the Himalaya. The 26,000-foot [7926 meter] peaks from the Annapurna Range and most of the Dolpo region of North Central Nepal hovered on the southern horizon. I quickly came to realize what an insignificant speck I was on the face of the planet Earth as I spent my days slowly moving across the Chang Tang making 30 or 35 miles during the course of entire day. It was sometimes hard for me to believe that I could always keep moving, inching my way toward Mt. Kailash.
Most days I would crawl out of my sleeping bag about an hour after sunrise. If my tent sat down in the shadow of a ridge it would be a bit later, but most nights I carefully set up in a place that would be warmed by the early morning sunshine. By the time I rode through the Chang Tang, I had my routine down pretty well. I would start packing up my sleeping bag, and sleeping mat, then the tent. Once I strapped these on the rear bike rack, I would deal with the stove, radio and food. I would munch on raisins and peanuts for breakfast mixed with some tsampa. A quick check over the bike for any loose parts and I got rolling. Eight to ten hours a day of bouncing over gravel roads will loosen up just about any nut or bolt. I would ride for a couple of hours, then stop for another treat of peanuts, tsampa or biscuits and rest. During the course of the day I constantly kept an eye on how much water I carried and where I could fill up with more drinking water. Whenever I went to the bathroom I always checked the color of my pee, to see if I was becoming dehydrated. The darker the color of the urine the more my body needed additional water. In order to survive at such high altitudes I had to exercise diligence to make sure my body always had enough liquids.
By afternoon I would be beat, I often surrendered to a nap just a couple yards off the side of the road. It was not as if noisy traffic flowed by to wake me up. I often woke up disoriented for a moment or two, having forgotten exactly where I had fallen asleep. By the end of the day I would have put in eight to ten hours of riding, my butt ached from the constant pounding against the leather bicycle saddle, and my blood sugar levels most certainly resided in the “empty” range. Dismounting my bike I would try to set up camp. Camping near drinking water always made life easier, but if that were not possible, I rationed out what water I had left for cooking and drinking the next morning. Walking without tripping over rocks became a difficult task. I struggled against the hypoglycemic stupor just about every afternoon and evening. I struggled to pull things together enough to cook up a big cup of gelatinous noodles that would never really cook properly because of the extreme altitude. The high altitude lowers the boiling point of water enough that a pressure cooker is required to cook rice or noodles properly. With the extra weight of a pressure cooker being too much of a burden, my noodles always turned to mush. I chopped up pieces of pork fat to throw in with the boiling noodles because I knew that I needed whatever calories I could get. By the time that I had eaten the first half of this mixture, I could not stand the taste of the remaining portion. The problem was that I did not have a whole lot of choices when it came to what I had to eat, selection was limited and what I could carry was even more limited. While the water started to warm up for the noodles, I would set up my tent and roll out my sleeping bag. After I cleaned up a bit, I would slide into my warm sleeping bag. If I was lucky I would have a small piece of chocolate to eat, then listen to my Walkman-size short-wave radio for a bit. I had learned on a previous trip that “Happy Chocolates” were the premier chocolates of China. They came in small bars that I bought by the case, when I could, and rationed out during all the times in between. The Voice of America or the BBC often offered the only English language that I would hear during the day. I listened to World News, British News and cricket scores on the BBC. One night I listened to stories of how President Clinton wanted to renew Most Favored Nation trading status with China. The President talked about how MFN should not be linked to the human rights problems in China and Tibet. This was difficult for me to listen to after I had heard so many stories firsthand of how the Chinese police had beaten and imprisoned an extraordinary number of Tibetans. This type of news took on a whole new perspective when I lived in the area that was being debated.
I always tried to position my sleeping bag so that the tent door opened to the sky above my head. In this way I could fall asleep while gazing at the nighttime sky, ablaze with stars. Most nights while enjoying the coziness of my warm sleeping bag I looked above for the familiar constellations I knew from home, The Big Dipper, Pleiades, Virgo and Orion the Hunter. These figures linked me back to the land I had left behind so many weeks before.
Encounters with Dogs, Truck Drivers and a Cowboy
Just after dusk I set up my camp a couple hundred yards from the edge of town, behind some sand dunes. I could hear the diesel generator from town running in the distance. I set my watch alarm for 3 A.M. and went to sleep. I had gone to sleep to the sound of dogs barking in the distance. I woke up in the darkness to the same sounds. Every Tibetan town has its group of wild and stray dogs that roam the streets at night. I packed my sleeping bag up and got my shoes back on. The town of Drongba sat in a saddle between a high ridge and a sandy marsh land just as Jay had drawn it on the map he made for me back in Shigatse. I knew of only three possible ways past the police in Drongba. I could carry my bike a couple thousand feet [300 meters] up a 17,000-foot [5182 meter] ridge. This did not sound like much fun. The other route involved carrying my bike through the sand and marsh land, a seemingly painful detour. The last option was to just try to go straight through the center of town under the cover of darkness. One way or another I had no interest in repeating what had happened to Jay after the police caught him.
At three in the morning I figured that almost everyone would be sleeping, including the police. I started to push my bike in the darkness toward the town. As I approached the buildings on the edge of town, the barking dogs got closer and closer to me. The moon had not risen, so I could just barely make out the shape of these angry beasts. I slowly inched my way forward but the pack of dogs got closer and closer. I picked up a handful of rocks and threw them as hard as I could toward the barking. I kept trying to move forward, but the dogs blocked me. The dogs painfully made me aware that there was no way to get through town. I turned around and started to head back out of town before one of these dogs took a bite out of my leg. After a couple dozen yards, all the dogs gave up and went back into town, except for one persistent dog. I returned to where I had slept earlier in the evening. The damn persistent dog kept barking, 15 minutes, 25 minutes, I just tried to go to sleep and ignore it. The barking picked up, a couple other dogs came out to see what trouble their comrade had spotted. The next thing I knew a group of ten or fifteen dogs encircled me. Looking up the hill, I could barely make out the leader of this wild pack. I reached down and felt through the sand to find some rocks to heave into the darkness. It became apparent that the dogs had no intention of leaving. I put my shoes on, and put my sleeping bag around my neck. I only had a small three-inch knife with me, if they tried to attack me that was the only weapon that I possessed. I threw more rocks and slowly moved in a direction away from town. Fortunately the pack of dogs broke up. The same persistent one pursued me for another 15 minutes, before finally retreating to town. I climbed into my sleeping bag in a ditch off the side of the road. It looked like my trip may be over. I had no direct way through town. I could not deal with it then. I cried for a while and went to sleep. I would do something in the morning.