Sept 14 21:29 Lamuzelinka Hotel
We didnt get to leave Chengdu until almost 11am this morning – it took us about 1 hour to get the maintenance done for the car and the traffic was quite bad. At the Jeep body shop, we saw SUVs in terrible shape because of accidents on Chuanzang Road. Its scary and really makes us more cautious about the drive. Gao is very experienced and he told us it is completely different driving in Tibet from other places. Just a small mistake would cost you everything.
We were on motorway for about 1.5 hours and that would be the last part of motorway that we would be on for the rest of the trip. We stopped at Yaan for lunch which is famous for the Ya Fish – it was truly delicious!!! Probably this would be the best meal we have during this trip since the closer we are getting to Tibet, the quality of cusine would be poorer. Once we left YaAn, we started climbing Er Lang mountain. The Route 318 is very crowded since this is almost the only path going from Si Chuan to Tibet. One side is rock and the other side is canyon and mountains, only two lane so quite difficult to drive on. We have to be extremely cautious: there were some crazy drivers and we did pass by several accidents on the way.
The weather was not that promising today: it rained half of the time and quite cold, about 15-18 degree. We know from now on its going to get colder and colder since we are at higher and higher altitude.
We passed by several bridges that were destroyed by the earthquake but luckily most part of the road has been fixed.
After passing the ErLang Mountain tunnel which is over 2000 meter high and 4 KM long, the weather completely changed. The rain stopped at the other side of the mountain and we are officially at the Tibetan habitant region. The scenery is absolutely beautiful from up here.
Arrived in Kang Ding at around 1930 – this town is famous because of one old Chinese song. We walked into the town center and had really delicious dumplings at a tiny little place for only 34 RMB for all of us!!! Amazing!!
We only drove about 300 KM today but took us over 6 hours because of the road condition. Today was an easy day, tomorrow we need to drive 800 KM in order to get to Xiang Cheng/Yunnan and we will go all the way up to over 4000 Meter high which would be our first test of the trip – lets see how bad it gets….