The long road out of Tibet

Tibet has two official tourist roads: the road from Nepal in the south, and the road we used to enter it from the north. We had to travel east, to Yunnan, using an unofficial road: the main road linking the two provinces. In another country, this would mean driving along a main road, but not in China.

The road varied from poor to terrible, with a smattering of non-existent thrown in for good measure. A relatively short distance took us five days of hard driving to complete, due to the state of the road and the extremely mountainous terrain. The upside of the journey was some of the most spectacular and different scenery in Tibet, with vast forests covering the mountains. It was more reminiscent of places like Scotland and northwest America than Tibet, albeit with steeper and higher terrain.

We were supposed to camp for the whole five days, but the weather turned very wet and we were put up in two hotels for the final two days: one in Markham, and one in Deqen. One of the photos is the traffic outside the hotel in Markham, it was a very rural town. So rural that the otherwise good hotel had only three rooms with showers, and the remaining rooms didn't even have access to one. However, it was much better than camping in the pouring rain.

Deqen was slightly more civilized, but still felt quite Wild West. We ate dinner in a little local restaurant: basically one room with half of it being the kitchen and half of it with chairs and tables. Whilst eating our meals, a scrabbling sound came from the kitchen area. A plastic bag rolled into view, and a chicken poked its head out! Its legs must have been tied up because it spent the rest of the time trying vainly to escape the bag. We didn't order chicken that night.

As you will see from one of the pictures, we had a rather large tyre failure. Thankfully the truck was stopped at the roadside at the time. I put a mug on the tyre to show how large the hole is, and yes, all the steel belts are broken.

The rest of the pictures are of the varying scenery on this road to Yunnan which, incidentally, we were the first overland truck to travel. It is very unusual for foreigners to see this area!