A day that is undoubtedly one of the craziest end of the year. We were to drive a long distance to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The night was very, very cold. When I checked the oil on my bike and pulled the dip stick out, I couldn’t help, but think of a spoon pulled out of a glass of honey. I took a couple of thermos jugs with hot water from the breakfast buffet to the yard and slowly poured it over the engine. I respectfully thanked the battery after dragging the tenacious engine along for over a minute, until the it finally started.
Even before I put my helmet on, it started to snow. It took me 5 hours to conquer the first 100 km / 60 miles. It was a tough ride. I counted one car slid off the road every eight kilometres. A couple of times it was the police that had their car lie on the roof. A drive in a chinese X5 replicate was pushed of the road by a truck and stood all bloody by his vehicle when I came by. I don’t know how, but I made it to Lhasa in one piece.
In Lhasa I was keen to get some good food and was treated with a “Hot-Pot”. We all sat on a round table with a hole in the centre where the pot was placed onto a stove. The waitress chucked all kind of ingredients into the pot. I think it would have been much more enjoyable, if, while fishing through the pot, the chicken’s head or feet didn’t come up the surface to surprise me.