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Day 8 – near Yaleb to The Last Resort (100km from Kathmandu and 35km from the China/Nepal Border)

Casting our minds back to yesterday morning when we woke up in the tent in our camp spot near Yaleb, only a couple of hundred metres lower than the 5050m pass we had cycled over the night before (where we had officially crossed the Himalaya range). The wind was still blowing and icy cold, the landscape barren and brown, the sky grey and cloudy and we scrambled out of the tent to relieve ourselves behind a mound of gravel, piling on layers of thermals, beanies and jackets to keep warm.  Phil put the billy on for a cuppa and we climbed into the back of the van to eat our breakfast of Madeira buns (again), a jar of fruit and some stale bread we had bought the morning before, made edible by slathering it in honey. I was groggy from sleeping badly (again) altitude making breathing difficult combined with hacking cough, probably also a symptom of the thin dry air and we were both generally feeling a bit knackered from the climbs, the headwind and the cold. We pulled on yesterdays grubby cycling kit (though Phil had slept in his under layers of warm clothes) and jackets, gloves and for me, a balaclava to keep my ears warm, before setting off on our bikes. Fast forward to this morning and things could not have been more different!

We woke up (with me alert and refreshed at 7.15am after a sound nights sleep!!) in a luxury ‘safari’ tent, with proper beds and large enough we could easily stand up and move about, looking out to the pale blue sky above and the jungle of trees and exotic foliage around us. We dressed in T shirts and jandals and wandered up the stone path, through the jungly greenery, passing small waterfalls and with the sound of the raging river far below, to the breakfast area – a long table and bench seats loaded with cushions and looking out over the tranquil gardens. Coffee and tea were waiting for us to help ourselves and we ordered muesli with fruit and yoghurt followed by scrambled eggs and toast. All this was delicious and served by friendly and helpful staff. After brekky and morning ablutions on a proper sit down loo we had a hot shower, Phil having already had a dip in the plunge pool, and set off over the cable bridge strung high across the gorge with the raging river far below.

So how on earth did we get here?! Having left our high altitude, barren camp stop we started on what we had thought (or were led to believe by various maps/intel) was a long, long downhill all the way past the Nepal border. Our first few ks were on a slight downhill, though almost flat, into a strong, cold headwind. After a short downhill we then had a 40km section of undulating up and down with some solid pulls uphill and we must have only dropped a couple of hundred meters in total.  Thankfully, we eventually hit the proper downhill ad went plunging in the misty gorge down steep switch backs all the way to the border town of Zhangmu. We had our last Chinese lunch, loaded up the bikes with all our luggage, which the van had been carrying for us for the past 8 days, and headed through the border. There is always some anxiety going through Chinese checkpoints as they can be quite bureaucratic. We had heard stories that the border officials check for maps of China (to ensure the maps you are carrying only show the Chinese borders as they see them – not always the way the rest of the world would see the borders!!), books (apparently the recent Tibet Lonely Planet has a intro section all about the Dalai Lama and his signature and this is prohibited to even be taken out of China) so were prepared for a thorough inspection. We had little trouble. They were quite interested in where we had come from and how far we had travelled by bike. I think Phil impressed them with his Chinese and the fact that he had a road atlas in Chinese.

Leaving the checkpoint you then cross over a bridge into Nepal. At the start of the bridge i.e. on the China side, there is a large stone monument with some information and history about the bridge – called the Friendship Bridge. It is written in Chinese and had a full English translation and we stopped to read about the bridge. That is until a Chinese border patrolman charges over to us and tells us we cannot stop there, we are not allowed to read the sign and must continue on. This was the last straw for Phil who was already at the end of his tether with regard to Chinese paranoia, bureaucracy and military control. He stormed off to halfway across the bridge, just over the line into Nepal territory and gave a vigorous finger up to the Chinese guard and shouted a few expletives! Meanwhile I had started to hop on my bike to ride across the bridge and was order by the same guard to get off and walk, biking on the road across the bridge clearly also not allowed. Despite all the things we loved about China and Tibet, the political and military ‘overkill’ is not something we will miss.

Nepal. What an instantly different place. The villages we passed were all a little shabbier but colourful and lively. It was warm, wet and green. Shops here stock proper chocolate!! We spied Kit-Kats, Mars bars and even Toblerone! The road was a bit rubbish for much of the way with stretches of thick mud (where Phil came a cropper and toppled over, to the delight and laughter of the locals watching! When he got up, he took a bow, to applause and whoops), fords streaming with water and rocky, rubble patches. Having noticed on the way down the 30km steep downhill to Zhangmu that my brake pads were shot to pieces and hence my brakes were pretty ineffective (good work by the trip mechanic obviously!)  We were heading to a place called Barabise in order to get some distance under our belts and give us a reasonable chance of getting to Kathmandu the following day. That was until my instinct for spotting a bit of luxury kicked in!  We saw a sign ahead in English – “The Last Resort, Bungy. Inspired adventures and complete relaxation” and bungy apparatus set up on a huge cable bridge above the gorge. Being familiar with Chinese signs badly translated into English I thought this was quite funny – a relaxing bungy jump! After a few whirs of the brain cogs I managed to put 2 and 2 together and my suspicion that there might be an actual Resort here took hold. You need to keep in mind that we were in the middle of nowhere, on a shitty road, passing by a little strip of buildings. It didn’t look like there was any resort nearby.  We asked the guard in front of the gates to the cable bridge and he confirmed there was accommodation on the other side so Phil went off to investigate. What he found on the other side of the river was a luxury retreat set in amongst the trees on the hillside above the river with safari style tents, a restaurant, sauna, plunge pool, massage and all sorts of adventure activities from canyoning to Bungy jumping and abseiling down waterfalls. Needless to say I secured Tour Champion for the day for sniffing out this idyllic spot. It must be something in the blood as it turns out the resort was designed by a Kiwi adventurer (the man who had introduced rafting to Nepal apparently, David Allardise?) and it had a real Kiwi feel about the place, bearing similarities to Awaroa Lodge in the Able Tasmen. A far cry from our previous nights accommodation and also from what we had expected of accommodation in Barabise (likely a run down and slightly grubby guesthouse). We settled in, had a sauna and plunge followed by an unbelievable Nepali dinner. Bliss!!

STATS: distance 95km. Avg. 18.4. Time 5hrs 9 mins