We climbed out of bed just after sunrise and found the rest of the rooms in the hotel (laid out like a motel with six rooms facing the parking lot) were empty and the jeeps that had been parked outside the night before were gone. We slept so soundly we hadn't heard them leave.

I walked to the middle of the highway, paved through town, and looked at my shadow stretching for a long way directly down the road. The town was silent. Smoke rose white against the brilliant blue sky from a few of the wood and earthen structures that lined the highway. A cow looked at me contemptuously then wandered down the pavement like it owned the whole town.

It took us a while to find an open restaurant for breakfast. The first place was locked. The second place wasn't locked but the owner was sleeping under a blanket on a bench.

We ended up in a large single room that served as a restaurant and a Tibetan family home and kitchen. Half the room was laid out in the typical Tibetan style: benches along the walls covered with colorful cushions. In front of the benches were low tables with colorful intricate designs painted on them. They especially like deep blues and reds in the designs and cushions. The room was fairly dark with windows only on one side.

On the walls they tacked posters of "The Top of the World" - long skinny panoramic photographs of the Himalaya mountains. They had a big poster for some Scandinavian climbing school. And several pictures of attractive European yards - or as they say in Europe "gardens" - with nice lawn furniture, maybe a gazebo or a cute bridge. These posters also had odd sayings in English like "The point of speech isn't so much to express our wants as to conceal them." [Later we also saw these frequently in Nepal.]

We had sat in the restaurant for several minutes before we realized a baby lay sleeping under a carpet on the bench next to us. A young woman occasionally sprinkled his hair and face with water. She brushed his hair with a toothbrush.

An old woman sat on the floor across the room making chapati dough.

Strangely, the people weren't particularly friendly. In fact, you might say they were unfriendly. Though a man had anxiously invited us in, after that they ignored us as much as possible and only spoke to us gruffly. Their prices were double the going rate. Here we were in their living room practically and they didn't seem to want us, except they did run a restaurant and they did want our money. (Joan: The woman brushing her baby's hair was nice. She would smile at us and ask if her brushing job looked good, to which we enthusiastically said YES."

The first 35km were unremarkable except we both nearly wiped out riding through a foot deep stream. The scenery looked southwestern: arid, rounded hills with taller hills in the distance. We couldn't see any snowcapped mountains.

The road stayed mostly flat, though it very gradually climbed and descended now and then. At km marker 5217 we had another kid incident.

We were climbing one of the small hills. The road made a long turn to the right among a few buildings ahead of us. Several hundred meters past the buildings about 40 kids played in the fields on either side of the road.

Unfortunately, they saw us long before we reached them. From a distance I saw two herds of children converging on the road ahead of us, screaming gleefully as they ran like two armies charging each other. They had time to take off their coats and bags and place them across the road like a road block. They left a small opening on the far right, just past which was a big pothole.

I stared them down and yelled at them as we approached. Most ran off a little ways but several ran along side me and yelled things. I made it through okay, saw the hole just in time to avoid it and yelled to Joan to watch out.

When I turned around, however, Joan's bike was on the ground and she was yelling at the kids. (Joan: We'll spare you the details here. Let's just say they knocked my bike so I had to get off, and I retaliated by throwing some of their coats and bags into a shallow puddle).

Except for the kids whose coats got soaked, the boys appeared totally delighted at everything Joan did. They yelled and cheered. The whole incident was great entertainment for them.

Our reactions were exactly what they wanted to see. We hereby apologize to future cyclists if we have made the kids even more anxious to torment you.

Shortly after that incident the road turned westward into a gradually narrowing canyon. A powerful wind swept down the canyon and slowed us to about 10km/h. We fought it for the rest of the day. Joan drafted directly behind me for 35 long, long kilometers.

Wind is the worst enemy in cycle touring. We both felt miserable the whole time. My body suffered in ways it doesn't usually. My back hurt. My butt hurt. My head hurt from the roar of the wind in my ears. Fighting a wind feels like such a hopeless battle. It was so bad I entertained myself thinking of ways to earn money when we get home.

At least we didn't have that butterflies-in-the-stomach, we're-never-going-to-make-it-out-of-Tibet feeling.

Finally we camped about 70km from Old Tingri in a pretty place at the grassy edge of a rocky wash. We picked a place just on the lee side of a small hill, though it didn't provide much protection. The wind continued to beat us up while we erected the tent. The sky was brilliant blue despite the wind. Across the highway from us was a sheer rock wall maybe 300 meters high ascending directly out of a wide grassy meadow.

The camp sat about 4600m above sea level. The wind was bone chilling. We spent about 20 minutes collecting big rocks from the wash to make a fireplace to put the stove in.

Even in the igloo of a fireplace we built the stove still barely worked. For 25 minutes I played with it constantly pumping. A couple times it just went out on its own. I was so discouraged I was almost in tears. I managed to boil about two cups of water and we had a small dinner of ramen noodles. But I realized that was the last we could get out of the stove.

Next: Tibet Chapter 22 - Giving Up?

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