In Shigatse, the second largest town in Tibet after Lhasa, we stayed at the Tenzin hotel with all the other low-budget travelers. It's probably the quirkiest hotel we've stayed at in all of Asia.

They have a sign above a normal sort of glass and steel double door but they didn't let us in that door. They led us up a narrow alley, through a door behind the kitchen into this area contained several 55-gallon drums of stagnate water and various tools and equipment including a portable generator. The uneven rock and concrete floor was wet. Light and rain came in from above. At the other end of the space was a steep stairway, more like a ladder, leading up.

This damp toolshed and the ladder turned out to be the only way in and out of the hotel. The staff was very friendly. A very small but quite strong young girl carried Joan's bike all the way up to our room on the third floor. This required climbing the ladder then a steep and very narrow spiral staircase. A guy in a PSB (public security bureau - the police) uniform also help carry stuff.

Our room was on the roof. We had to step over various ropes holding tarps taut over holes to get to it. So many extra rooms had been added to the roof it seemed more like just the top floor. The guests hung out on the roof talking and drinking beers. They even had a fridge up there.

Our room had a sliding glass door. We only had thin curtain to hide ourselves from view from the "hall." At night when we had the lights on, anyone could clearly see inside while we couldn't see outside. The room was big anyway.

We never were sure where to find "reception." When it came time to pay, a woman knocked on our sliding door. She was very friendly but that was the last we contacted the management.

In a large room that seemed more like a laundry room they had hot showers! Each of the three stalls just had a pip with a spigot above your head. You could not balance the hot and cold yourself. The water just came out one temperature - hot but could have been hotter. It had been six days since our last shower.

In addition to all the backpackers who were going across Tibet in 4WDs, we met six other cyclists at the Tenzin Hotel.

As we rolled into the hotel we ran into Team Bavaria, Matthias and Nely (Cornelius), whose bikes we had last seen on the back of a truck outside Gyantse. It turned out they had more trouble with the bikes so they stopped at a village for help. No one could help them fix the bikes though so they caught a truck to Gyantse. In Gyantse they got someone to weld on Matthias's left pedal so the bolt would stop coming loose. They arrived in Shigatse one day ahead of us.

At dinner, in the strange, difficult restaurant on the ground floor (ordering a meal was bit like I imagine trying to trade shares at the NY stock exchange on a busy day), we met Pete and Pat, two British Air pilots also biking to Kathmandu. They had just two weeks and flew into Lhasa specifically to ride the Friendship highway. It took them two days to get to Shigatse from Lhasa via the new road, arriving at the hotel less than an hour before us.

In Lhasa they had met Team Swiss and said they were planning to leave Lhasa in a day or two.

The London Pilots, as we began referring to them, had done the Karakorum highway and several other major adventurous trips but Pete said this would be his last one for a long time because he was going to be a father in three months. We told him about the people we had met cycling with children in back seats or trailers.

We really hit it off with the pilots. When the panic began about the police forbidding cyclists on the road, they always stayed calm. It helped us stay calm as well.

The panic hit over breakfast the next morning. Team Bavaria started it by pissing off the PSB. They went to the PSB (Public Security Bureau) the night before, after meeting us in the hotel, to get travel permits for the rest of the ride. The PSB was closed. Matthias, who speaks and reads Chinese, read a sign directing people to use a different entrance when the main one is closed. They went to this back entrance, walked in and soon got in big trouble. Nely told us the PSB bawled them out for 40 minutes for being in a forbidden area (the PSB loves the word forbidden). The sign was supposed to be just for Chinese, not foreigners.

It seems speaking Chinese was more of a detriment than an advantage for Team Bavaria. Nely, normally a happy-go-lucky relaxed guy, seemed just a little upset with Matthias for arguing with the police. Nely didn't speak Chinese but his fate was linked to Matthias's. So listening to those loud but incomprehensible exchanges must have been frustrating.

Then, Monday morning, while we were still eating banana pancakes, they went back to the PSB, used the correct door this time, and applied for the permits. Unfortunately they didn't know about China's Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy regarding foreign cyclists in Tibet. On the application you are suppose to write "car" on the line that asks for "Method of Transportation." We knew this but few of the other cyclists at the Tenzin knew. Team Bavaria wrote that they were cycling.

The PSB refused to issue the permits, Matthias argued again, and they got another long lecture--this one titled "NO INDIVIDUAL TRAVEL IN TIBET!!!"

At the breakfast table, as Nely told us the story he appeared really shaken. The PSB told them they must book a group tour in a jeep through CITS, the official Chinese travel agency. The PSB also said they would call ahead to the check points, tell them their passport numbers, and to make sure that they arrived in a tour, not on bicycles.

Another German was sitting at the table and he seemed to be mixed up with team Bavaria somehow. He was a stout guy with very small oval lenses in his glasses. We didn't know it at the time, but his name was Andy and he was also a cyclist. Andy had stories of how the PSB was turning back all individual travelers at the check points, including cyclists. One American woman, he said, got all the way to the Nepali border but was turned away and had to return all the way to Lhasa then get a flight to Kathmandu.

I thought this guy was trying deliberately to scare us. It was working. Joan said he gave her the heebie-jeebies. I had those butterflies in my stomach again, just like the ones I had after my fourth flat and when the stove and water filter broke. Tibet can beat you in a lot of ways. Now it was the PSB. Give me a headwind! Give me a mountain! Hell, give me flat tires! But don't give me trouble with the police!

After telling all the stories (they were to get even better as the day went on) Andy asked what we were going to do. All the paranoid talk had made Joan a little nervous but also a little angry. I don't remember her exact words but it was to the effect that we didn't come half way around the world just to give up our ride because of rumors flying around a hotel.

The London pilots remained level-headed. The four of us decided to go to the PSB at the same time, apply for separate permits, and pretend we were all part of the same tour if the PSB gave us grief. Fortunately they granted our permits under the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy.

The PSB was far less scary than I expected. The pilots and I got so relaxed we started discussing other bike tours we had done. Joan kicked me to shut up already about the cycling at least until we'd gotten out the door. Good thinking. Also another American was getting a permit at the same time. He was looking for people to share a jeep with so he kept asking us how we planned to get to the border. We kept saying "car!" but he wanted to know more specifically. Finally we whispered that we didn't want to talk about it just then.

Despite our loose tongues we all got the permits in about 15 minutes with no problem, no lecture, hardly even a question asked by the PSB man who handled us.

Meanwhile Team Bavaria's troubles continued for the rest of the day and into the next morning. They talked some friendly guide into booking a fake tour for them and getting their permits. This worked and they were quite happy for awhile in the afternoon. But then the guide's tour company got cold feet and demanded the permit back. They gave it back reluctantly and felt very bad in the evening. Finally the tour company changed its mind again and they got the permit back.

The next morning all eight of us left. At breakfast the rumor mill spouted more stories. Supposedly the PSB had told the hotel managers to inform their guests that independent travel was forbidden. And supposedly this was a new policy. The management never told us anything.

My favorite rumor claimed that plain clothes PSB agents would be roaming the streets all morning looking for cyclists. For God's sake! There's a guy in PSB uniform right in the hotel! It doesn't take Charlie Chan to figure out where we all are. Even if they didn't know where we were they could have set up a road block 2km out of town and nabbed us all! This rumor was so preposterous that it actually relieved my tension.

(Joan: We later learned it wasn't totally preposterous. Less than 24 hours after we left Shigatse, other cyclists were hassled. Team Swiss arrived the night we left, and had their hotel room invaded by police the night they arrived (the PSB screamed at them about how they had to buy a 'bicycle' permit). A nd three other cyclists were nabbed at a checkpoint outside of town. So our fear wasn't totally ridiculous after all).

To play it safe, Team Bavaria, Andy, and a German woman traveling alone departed Shigatse by bus to Lhotse (two days away by bike). The pilots followed an hour later by bike, and we cycled out an hour after that. We took a circuitous route out of town, since the direct route passed in front of the PSB.

Next: Things start to look up

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