"The best part about traveling by bicycle is not traveling by bicycle" - Spencer

While this is true most of the time (hiking through beautiful gorges, exploring monasteries) this time it turned out not to be the case.....

So in Litang we met Christian, an Austrian cyclist, who was on an epic adventure from Australia back to Austria by bicycle his website (it's in German...but the pictures are nice). He had been cycling solo for the past 7 months and happily agreed to accompany us for the next 4 days until we reached Garze. So we rode as a group of 5.

Christian added to the mix

A Tibetan town nestled in a beautiful valley

When riding in such a large group, you stick out like a sore thumb, which isn't exactly what we were hoping to accomplish as we were stopped at almost every military checkpoint. (At this point, we're permitted to be in such areas but our proximity to Tibet is such that each checkpoint consists of ridiculously long paperwork and stupid speculation intermixed with thumb twiddling). We prefer ducking under the checkpoint bars which saves us time and energy.

Stopped at yet another military checkpoint (it's a town spectacle)

So we arrived in Garze. Garze has undoubtedly had some recent riots because the entire town was on lock down. Cops were numbered on every corner, Breckan couldn't send mail back to the states, the banks wouldn't exchange US dollars and when we walked into the internet cafe, we were told that 'Monks and Foreigners could not use the internet'. Ok......

So our visas were going to expire within the next few days (hard to believe we'd been in China almost a month!) and we needed to extend our visas ASAP as the overstay penalty is about $70 per day. We took a trip to the Tourist Police department and were told that the closest place to extend our visas was some 400 km away, which meant we had to take a bus. We then asked the police man if we could use the internet and he wrote us a permission slip. I felt like we were getting excused from Social Studies class for a dentists visit....he then told us that we could use the internet for one hour and we couldn't tell any foreigners about the 'situation in Garze'.

So we had to take a bus....we arrived at the bus station the next morning at 6 a.m. (let the chaos ensue). We could find no bus to take us to Yushu, and on top of that most of our stomachs weren't feeling quite right, so after some frantic searching and trying to communicate with people through phrase books (most of which couldn't read anyway) we arrived at the conclusion that we would have to hire a van/minibus to take us there. So with as many complications as humanly possible (to put it lightly) our 4 bikes were strapped on top of a van and we were stuffed inside of said van with 17 large sacks of rice/barley and a little girl sitting on the console. (They know how to get every penny out of their trip as the pistons to space ratio was maxed out). We back of the van exploded open a few times, releasing all of our gear into the road. It was a hellacious trip and it ended with us being dropped off, not in the town which we had agreed on, but in another town where we could take another bus to our destination the next morning.

Packed like sardines and sick as dogs

That night was one of the longest nights of my entire life....somehow a tazmanian devil had made its way inside of my stomach and was wreaking some serious havoc on my insides. Almost like some deranged adolescent had somehow incorporated a blender with my innards and had his finger on the pulverize button all night long. I've had my fair share of sickness in my day, but never had I experienced anything like this before.

So needless to say, the bus ride the next morning was terrible. The bus topped out at 15,000 ft as my stomach tried to convince the deranged adolescent to take his finger off the blender. We finally arrived in Yushu and when we arrived at the office to extend our visas, we were told that they were 'out of paper' and would have to wait until Monday (currently Wednesday) to renew our visas. On top of that, our pockets were getting frighteningly low on cash and guess what....none of the ATMs worked and none of the banks would exchange US dollars. So we were broke, sick and about to overstay our visas (a slight predicament). So Breckan (being the brave soul and least sick) decided to take a 14 hour bus to Xining to resupply our money the next morning. The next morning came around, and Breckan was sick, so Spencer (being the brave soul that he is) took the 14 hour bus ride to resupply money. We were all bed struck with sickness and luckily we found a place that rented us a DVD player, and the visa/money predicament came as a blessing to help us recover from our sickness as there was no way we could continue riding (well I guess we could have....but it would have been disastrous)

So we started feeling somewhat better but the stomach problems persisted and after a week of rumbling stomachs and uncertainty passing gas, we decided that there was something living inside of our stomachs (maybe there was a tazmanian devil afterall). We prematurely diagnosed ourselves with Giardia (as the hospital had no way of testing for it) and after a fast run through the hospital, we were given about 500 pills that we were to take each day. I think this is how they diagnosed us; 'Your stomach hurts?' here's a pill for every type of stomach problem known to man since 1750. So we decided to take only the pills for Giardia (6 each day) and so far we're recovering right nice. Charlie pood his pants (sorry Charlie) but Spencer needed some vengeance. And we've caught up on about 25 movies, mostly Brad Pit collections, but hopefully all will go smoothly when we start riding tomorrow.....wish us luck. In the mean time, since I got such positive feedback from my last 'people' posting, here's some more people pictures....

A kid monk with my glasses (looks kind of like Matrix monk)

Tibetan girls in Garze

Chinese warrior on horse in Yushu

Tibetan girl who really wanted us to take her picture (we were sick beyond belief)

We gave these guys a bicycle tire patch for their flat motorcycle tire, they were grateful (grateful not depicted in photo...they brought their confused look instead)

Every kid in the neighborhood came out to watch us

I went to an English class in Litang and spoke/taught a classroom of Tibetan kids. It was a cool experience

I swear these people aren't outlaws from the wild west