A drive of 220 miles through the most incredible landscape took us to Baxoi. We drove out of Markam and turned left on the iconic G318 which runs from Shanghai through Chengdu and Lhasa to the Nepalese border at Zhongma and, after running alongside the Brahmaputra River for some way, then rose through some hairpins and came to a pass which claims to be 4,875 metres but Tensing said was a mistake and was only a mere 4,375 metres. A steep downhill through many hairpins brought us down to about 3,000 metres to Zogang where we had lunch. The view over the pass was incredible with snow-capped mountains on the left and the cliffs were the highest yet and the gorges were the deepest. The rock of the cliffs was a multitude of colours from deep purple to almost silver
After Zogang a beautiful almost flat road ran westwards to the Jade Green Pastures alongside a turquoise river where we stopped for a leak and met a Tibetan family with three beautiful children having a picnic. They told us there was a shorter road if we went back to the last town and turned right. The town was of traditional Tibetan houses with what looks like two flat roofs, and generally covered in hay spread out to dry. Throughout the town and the surrounding tiny fields there are wooden structures on which barley straw is hung out to dry as fodder for the yaks in winter. There were frequent herds of cows, yaks and dropkos (a mixture of cow and yak) as well as horses, donkeys, dogs and chickens filling the road.
On turning right as advised, we soon came to a long line of trucks and were beckoned past to crawl past a truck which had crashed into a bus. The driver’s sides of both vehicles were totally smashed. Doesnt look good..Truck drivers were filling the drainage channel beside the road with rocks so that trucks could get past.
The road rose through an enormous number of hairpins to the Nianla pass at 4,658 metres which is slightly higher than the Ak Baital on the Pamir Highway and our highest pass yet. It runs over the Yala Mountain which is part of the Hongduan Range. It then drops nearly three kms over a horizontal distance of seven kms and we were held up again by the Wu Jing (military road building division) who were filling potholes with tar. It was almost dark when we got to the bottom of the pass, and the road then ran through the Nujian River Grand Canyon along a road cut into the side of a cliff with the cliff overhanging the road. Sadly, it was too dark to see the river and, after crossing a bridge we eventually came to the small town of Bashoe where the very friendly staff at the police post directed us to a hotel where we camped in the carpark for £5.
