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 Our
planned route is marked with red color. Start from Qiemo. A day's
cycling along the main asphalt road and then into the foothills of the
mighty Altun shan. We expect to encounter hard conditions quite early.
Sandy, steep roads will make the climb from 900 meters to approximately
5200 meters one of the longest and hardest climbs you can find on this
planet.
After multiple passes over the many paralell ranges,
we drop onto the plateau and we are on the Chang Tang. Depending on the
choice of route over the uninhabited and roadless center of the plateau,
we reckon to spend 4-6 weeks and put 450-600 km behind us before we
finally arrive in the settlement of Shuanghu.
After this first outpost of civilization, we'll be on
the typical unsealed dusty roads until we hit Nagqu. The rest of the
journey to Lhasa is a breeze on the fine asphalt and the long downhill
from Yangbaijing will be of great help during the last day before we
reach our destination.
There are no accurate maps for the area and all
navigation and route finding will be done with the help of TPC (Tactical
Navigation Charts), GPS and copies of the original maps from Sven Hedins
expeditions to the area.
You, who are familiar with Chinese geography, can
immediately detect errors on the map. The mountain Mt Muztagh (Ulugh
Muztagh) is for example not 7723 m. The correct hight is just under 7000
m and the settlements in the interior of the Chang Tang doesn't exist.
Source about this fact is the Chinese-Tibetan Headquarters of geography
in Lhasa. They could not answer why these places had ended up on a map
in the first place, but were 100% sure the villages had never existed
Back up to the maps!
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