The road remained paved for abut 15km on the south side of the river heading west. Occasionally it was buried under sand drifts. We had to push over these places.

We had our first stoning on that road. And it was still on our first day out of Lhasa!. We cycled by three or four boys just hanging out by the road, looking for mischief. Our appearance no doubt totally made their day. First they yelled and begged. Then as we passed, a small kid flung a handful of rocks, pebbles and sand at me. He hit my left leg. It didn't but it set off an instinctive anger deep inside me.

I stopped and yelled at them like I was possessed by demons. Joan tossed a rock back in their general direction, though nowhere near them (Joan: luckily for me and them, I can't aim). I picked up the biggest rock I could find, a 10-pounder at least (in Tibet you are never more than arm's reach from a thousand rocks) and acted like I was going to throw it at them. This scared the little brats. Luckily for them, I take a high moral ground when it comes to adults murdering children. I think it's wrong. So I set the rock down.

(Joan: I was still mad so I ran up to them. The oldest one was pointing to a little two?-year-old, who was swaddled in his sweater. How can you get mad at a tot? So I said something about them not being nice. I wagged my finger at them. I hoped this gesture was universal, and they might realize that they were being scolded. I'm sure they had no clue. Later we learned that they actually like being scolded, because it amuses them to see us angry).

That was the only stoning incident that day. But we had other run-ins with kids. Once, as we approached a small bridge, three naked little girls who had been bathing in the creek jumped up and gleefully lay down on the bridge, blocking our way. A grown woman--their guardian?--watched the whole scene. As we approached they jumped up and held their hands out. Joan scared them off by braking suddenly. While they were still startled, we rode off. They chased us, screaming.

Soon after we rode up a hill to a village. Since we were going uphill, we made a great target for the 20 screaming children waiting for us. Joan figured they'd just knock her over, so she got off and walked her bike until she reached the only adult in sight. Then she got back on and tried to ride off slowly. The kids chased. Some pushed my bike, trying to help, but almost knocked me over. We shot an appealing look to the solo adult. He was an old man and he yelled something to the kids and it calmed them down a little. One little kid even tried to hold the other little kids back. But as soon as we started moving, they rushed after us, like a tidal wave. (Joan: when Eric almost fell over he started yelling at the kids and I thought they had knocked him down. So I dropped my bike and ran screaming after the mob. They retreated, screaming in glee. Then we rode off).

We missed the turnoff for our pass. The road we were supposed to take was a gravel road to our left, but the road straight ahead was well paved, so we took it. Two or three kms later, the road dead-ended at a brand new power station. We backtracked to a small village and asked directions. They net us up a steep, single-track road, partly washed out, that led back to the road.

From that trail it was uphill all the way to the top of the first pass, Kambala. Our plan, partly gleaned from Ben's notes, was to ride a couple of hundred vertical meters up the pass, camp, and tackle the rest in the morning. That was our plan for almost every pass ("We'll bivouac here and make the final assault in the morning") and it worked well. It made the passes easier, and since most of the people live in the valleys, not on the hills, we got private camping.

(The pass was called Kamba-la. "La" means pass so all the passes in Tibet end in "la." We kept calling the pass Kambala Pass, but that's technically redundant).

The climb started at about 3,700 meters (12,140 feet) above sea level. At first it didn't seem hard. The grade was only about 5% But by 3,800 meters I couldn't catch my breath. I had to stop every 200 yards or so to rest. I felt light-headed and would lean over my handlebar bag to try to get my head down. Joan tried to talk to me and I could only say "Can't talk ..." (gasp) "... breathing ..."

I could think, though, and I kept thinking, "Oh great, 1,000 meters of climb to go and the air is already too thin for me. What's going to happen at 4,900 meters?" On the other hand, by that point, we had already ridden 90km for the day. Naturally I would be tired. Fortunately, Joan still felt strong.

Around sunset I got a flat. The timing upset me since it would be a lot harder to find camping in the dark. But I was glad for the chance to rest.

Tire problems were one my primary nightmares during the tibet trip. We were each carrying four spare tubes, and we had at least five brand new patch kits, plus one spare tire for each bike.

Ever since British Columbia, where I had 12 flats in about three weeks, I get emotional about flats. They can be like diseases. One can lead to another. Knowing this, I assume the worst and don't look for simple solutions--like a nail in the tire. This attitude cost us later.

That night, I took my flat in stride. I put in a new tube, and I told myself this one flat would be an isolated incident, and would not lead to a lingering disease. Little did I know.

We got our flat near a dry creek, and considered camping there. But while I fixed my flat, Joan rode ahead. She found an awesome spot another one km up the hill, between some switchbacks (cyclists: about 3,950 meters high, between km markers 83 and 84). Amazingly the tent was barely visible from the road and we had a great view. The only drawback was it had no water. We hadn't filtered enough at the last stop, so we had PBJ's for dinner instead of hot noodles. That turned out to be fine. That was probably the warmest night of the whole trip.

We stayed up a little while to look at the starts. It was a new moon so the stars and Milky Way were crystal clear. We used binoculars to find nebula.

It felt great to be camping again. The last time we used the tent was along the Murray River in Australia. I found a few eucalyptus leaves and a used Q-tip inside. But we were a bit rusty at camping. It took us 10 minutes to find our silverware. We never did find our cups.

Since I had trouble cycling the night before, we shifted several pounds of food from my bags to Joan's.

In the morning we used most of our water to make hot muesli with milk. Fortunately we crossed a small creek (near km 85) shortly after we started.

The morning climb was very pretty. The sky was clear. the dirt road wasn't bad except for a few washouts. At least a dozen jeeps carrying tourists passed us. Lots of thumbs up. It felt especially good to finally be climbing the mountains we had worried about for so long.

At one washout a big truck lay on its side. Bad roads!

As we climbed, we got winded more and more easily. At first we could go a kilometer or so between rests. Gradually the distance got shorter until we rested every 200 meters or so.

Joan: This is how we lost our last two loaves of bread. I kept throwing my bike down so I could lie on my back to rest, and I usually threw it down on the side with the bread. The next time we went to make PBJ's, we found one big chunk of bread and many, many crumbs.

The road remained at a 5% grade the whole way. It made several huge switchbacks and sometimes we would see a truck far above, maybe three switchbacks away. This could be a little disheartening.

For encouragement we looked down at the switchbacks we'd already done. The views were awesome: terraced barley fields, brick ruins of Tibetan villages, circular stone walls in flat spots, and shepherds guiding sheep through valleys hundreds of meters below.

At lunch as I cooked up some more hot muesli, we saw yaks climbing straight up steep hillsides and crossing the road. This amazed us. Yaks look a lot more like cows than mountain goats. How they can climb like that is a miracle.

I got another flat tire shortly after lunch. This was truly bad news. It meant I really did have a flat tire disease. I was too weak to panic. I just put in another tube.

First Pass: Kambala. Lonely Planet's Altitude: 4,974 meters, or 16,310 feet (but only 4744 on my altimeter). KM marker 100.5.

We had left camp at 9:30. It was 5 p.m. by the time we made it to the top! We had been on the bikes for only three hours of that whole time, and had gone only 17km. That meant we had spent more than half the day resting.

The summit is marked with prayer flags and cairns. There was also lots of litter at the top, mostly broken beer bottle glass. The wind was stiff and a little cool Several trucks sat parked near the summit. The drivers sat around talking and inspecting their trucks and pissing.

The best part was the view over Yamdrok-Tso (Tso means lake). It gleamed turquoise in the afternoon sun. Such a relief to see some color in the otherwise barren hills.

On the rapid descent we took lots of photos. Unfortunately, when we changed film at the bottom of the hill we must have dropped the exposed roll. We never found it.

Next: Glaciers of rock and our dog Sparky.

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