Sep 20 midnight Linzhi (Nyingchi)林芝 Xiaotiane Hotel
We had the first bad weather day after our trip started. It rained all night the night before and was still raining when we left at 7:30am. Roads were ok but the temperature dropped dramatically as we climbed up the mountain. Before we reached Ranwu 然乌, it dropped to 4 degree and started snowing – the first snow we encountered on this trip! Last night was over 25 degree!! I noticed how much the temperature changes between night and day, from valley to mountain top – the difference is over 20 degree normally! Just the night before we were suffering from the over 30 degree heat in Zhuka! Cant believe I am wearing my down jacket today!
Its a pity that the weather was not as nice today. Without the clear blue sky, all pictures lost the color. Especially todays highlight was supposed to be Ranwu, one of the most beautiful places in Tibet, or I should say in China – its supposed to be the combination of Alps glacier and Jiuzhaigou water. However, because of the rainy weather, the color of the water changed and most mountains were covered by clouds. It still looked beautiful, but not as what I saw before on Gaos pictures: it is Gaos favorite place in Tibet and he was also disappointed today. Well, one more reason to come back later, I guess.
Since there was not too much to see in Ranwu, we decided to leave early and drive directly to Linzhi today so that we would have a more relaxed day to get to Lhasa on Monday.
Before Bomi, we had absolutely the worst road ever on this trip: 30 KM of washingboard road. The scenery was unbelievably beautiful, but the ride was unbelievably suffering: my whole body was completely numb because of the frequency of the bumps which I had never experienced before! I had never known that 30 KM was this long!!
But all day, I never felt being in Tibet: all the mountains covered by snow, the glacier, the lush forests, the running blue river (Lalong Zangbu 拉龙藏布 which merges into Yaluzangbu 雅鲁藏布）and mostly high quality paved roads, I almost felt being in Germany, Austria, or somewhere in Canada! I never known there is part of Tibet like this! Tibet is just so diverse!
When we arrived at the checkpoint of Pailong排龙 at around 1740, thinking that there was only 60 KM to get to Lulang and we could have the famous Stonepot chicken that Gao had highly recommended many times (we were very hungry already since we just snacked on the car for lunch in order to get to the next destination), the police gave us a card with our arrival time and told us that we have to reach the next checkpoint Lulang鲁朗 no earlier than 2 hours later and the last one Bayi/Linzhi also two hours later (also 60KM away) so that we dont drive too fast!! This means we wont be able to have our dinner until after 1940 and cant get to our destination until 2140! Since the road condition is quite good at this part, this is really a torture.
We ended up arriving at Lulang at about 1915 and we had to wait outside of the town for 25 minutes in order not to be caught…and then we found out that the officers at the Lulang checkpoint had already left:(…
But the chicken soup was extremely delicious, just as Gao described. For only 60 RMB (6 Euro), it was really worth the wait…