Other than the overworked rumor mill at the Tenzin, meeting the other cyclists helped a lot in Shigatse. The London Pilots lent us their stove cleaning kit. It was for a slightly different stove but the directions really helped. I got the stove working in less than an hour. In return we lent them Ben's Notes. We also lent the notes to Team Bavaria but they didn't seem particularly interested.

We did not have a fuel bottle so I bought a heavy tea thermos that would fit in a bottle cage on my bike. We filled it with gasoline which we bought at an oil shack on a corner. The shack had a tens of drums filled with various flammable liquids and hundreds of small cans and things with rags and funnels sticking out the top. Fifteen feet away, just across the alley, a man smoked a cigarette.

We disassembled the water filter and thought we found something blocking a valve in the bottom. When we put it back together it pumped OK but the flow was only maybe half as strong as usual.

Shigatse was not a great place for supplies despite its size. We walked around for a few hours, checking out many, many shops. They mostly sold the same useless things. We couldn't find macaroni noodles, Snickers bars, or Muesli. We did find one thing of use - instant cream corn. It tasted pretty good and mixed with just about any meal, even ramen.

Nonetheless we felt confident that our current supplies, a stove and a half-working water filter would be adequate. The police worried us more as we rolled out of Shigatse. The fastest route out of town going west passes directly in front of the PSB office that issued are permits the day before. We took a circuitous route in the narrow alleys north of the monastery. We worried a couple times when we passed uniformed people but they didn't bother us. I think they would have helped us if we had needed something.

We had no road blocks and super clear skies. The road was not in bad shape and slightly up and down. We even had about 15km of pavement in the middle of the day. The scenery didn't include any snow capped peaks or spectacular Himalayan vistas. It looked more like the desert southwest. Few plants, mostly just rocks.

Children and some young adults were the main problem. We got stoned three times. The first one we told an old man sitting among the kids. He lightly, playfully slapped four or five heads. Not much but something. Another little kid threw a really big rock and unfortunately for him, he hit the pot I carry on the outside of my rear right pannier.

It made a loud clank and even left a dent. I caught him red-handed. I yelled my usual "DON'T THROW STONES!" as demonically as possible. Joan, enraged again, threw her bike down and chased the kid. The kid was also unlucky to be the only one in a striped shirt so he was easy to pick out. Joan chased him across the field and once again told an elder what he had one. The elder clucked his tongue. Joan walked across the field like Frankenstein, as she put it, with one hand raised pointing fixedly on the brat in the striped shirt. He was terrified.

When an older 'boy' (maybe 20 years old?) threw a stone about 20km later, Joan chased him and he ran away. Then she grabbed his jacket and started riding away. He chased her for a while until she dropped it in a ditch.

Despite all the incidents it was a mostly good, easy day of riding. The police didn't bother us and our equipment worked.

For lunch we had some instant cream corn mixed with instant rice porridge we had bought way back in Laos. It was surprisingly good.

We had a little trouble camping that night. We found a long empty valley gently leading up from the road. We had passed barley fields for hours but this valley had no green in it visible from the road. We walked the bikes on the rocks about 1km up the valley looking for a protected flat spot to camp. Then near the foot of the mountain we ran across some (harvested) barley fields! We were so surprised to find them. I didn't want to camp on the fields so while Joan waited I walked partly back down and to the side of the valley. While I was gone a farmer appeared and waved his arms at Joan to tell her to get out. All the while he was yelling up the hill in a strange howling/singing/chanting sound that was really eerie. When I got back we rushed out of there.

A few kms later we found an excellent sight above the road (near km marker 4978) and behind a low bluff just high enough to hide our tent from a village across the valley.

Immediately after we finished lugging the bikes over a rock pile and got them both to the tent site, I smelled gasoline. I grabbed the tea bottle that we had employed to carry fuel for the stove and found it leaking fast. In a moment I had the stove out and let the remainder of the fuel leak into it. Still we had lost quite a bit.

The village across the valley was especially scenic in the low evening sun. From sunset until an hour or two later we heard chanting/howling/singing sounds coming from the village like we had heard the man doing in the barley field earlier. It was still a bit eerie but nice to hear. It must be the evening entertainment in towns without electricity.

We listened to the village sing while I cooked macaroni noodles mixed with cream of mushroom soup. It was great. Also we were starving.

Next: Lhotse

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