Well, we're finally congregating in Lhasa with Jim, Cathy, Paul, Sue and me getting here this morning and the rest (hopefully including our last to arrive in China - Larry Young) arriving late this afternoon. The weather has been a little messy though we're not really still in the monsoon season but it's cool, overcast, windy with an occasional drizzle. Our flight in from Beijing via Chengdu yesterday got to short final (~1-2 miles) and hit some turbulence and aborted the landing. We expected there would be another attempt but the pilot did a 180 deg. and headed back 2-1/2 hrs to Chengdu! Once back there it was quite a drill to find buses, transport us to severaL different hotels, check-in, get late dinners (ours was pistachios Sue had brought along and cold beers) and we turned in around 10:00 in a downtown, very "untouristy" hotel. They woke us up at 03:45 and we were on the bus at 4:00 headed back to the airport for a 06:30 second attempt on Lhasa. The rest of the day was uneventful with a perfect landing this time, Ang met us at the airport with our Tibetan guide (Norbu Sonham) and a much faster trip into Lhasa than the last time I was here on a new superhighway through multiple new tunnels. Much has changed in Lhasa in five years with significant infrastructure having been built including a new railroad going in to Shigatse, many new apartment building complexes in Lhasa, much more billboard advertising and a general feeling that this is now a Chinese (not Tibetan) city with a tremendous increase in PLA and police presence seemingly everywhere, like every corner! We've also met our Nepali cycling guide (Ang Gelu) and been introduced to our bikes which, though banged up some, seemed quite serviceable. So we've done our exploratory walk around the old Tibetan (Barkhor Square) section of Lhasa, had lunch overlooking the Jokhang and will shortly get about modifying our rental bikes with our own saddles, pedals, tires, etc. We're starting to feel like this trip is really underway and looking forward to the arrival of the rest of the group.
We unfortunately don't seem to be able to access our blog site (nor any Google sites including our g-mail accounts) in China so will trying to send postings to friends in the States to see if they will post them.
Gene
If you would like to post this to the blog over my name that would be fine with us. (We can't access the blog at all from here it seems.)
Cheers,
Gene
