So we left Everest in good spirits and headed back towards Lhasa turning off onto the Tibetan highway. That's where the problems began. We have a permit for the road and we are the only tourists to be travelling on it this year. This means that there's alot of police interest. We have the People's Security Bureau following us and police check points are taking longer. We were planning to bush camp the whole route to Shangrila but it turns out that due to some rule, we have to check into hotels- a unexpected problem when there is 22 of us turning up in towns on a very small budget. Night 1 was spent on the roadside, camping, due to a lorry being stuck in the mud. We spent hours watching it but it wasn't budging. The next morning we made the decision to join the queue rather than back track 2 day's drive. The road was just churned up mud and with frustration kicking in, the boys, armed with a huge jack and sand mats climbed the pass to go and help get the lorry out. The problems start as the lorries are overloaded, have inexperienced and under equipped drivers. With the first lorry free, but many more getting stuck, it was hours and hours before we moved at all. Simon and Lesley did their best with the traffic controlling but it was a struggle to make people understand that 2 lanes of traffic couldn't move at once and it wasn't helped by the landrover drivers over taking all the time.
Our truck only got stuck once as we slipped in the mud trying to take over a stuck car. Easy to free though as our big group pushed the truck free. Eventually we got to the top of the pass covering about 10km in 8 hours but greeted by spectacular scenery.
We are currently stuck in Linzhi as the road ahead is closed due to a landslide. We expect to be on the move tomorrow but it was a mission to get us all in a hotel as the town is packed- amazing what a bit of government arm twisting can do! It's been nice to be in a hotel for 2 nights- karaoke last night- great fun!
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