It was necessary to go to the police station at Rutog, about 70 miles from Ali for the permit to be stamped, and a very pleasant police woman sorted things quickly and efficiently and told us to drive carefully because there was snow on the road to Doumaxiang. We had noodles and cabbage for breakfast. There were some yurts which Tensing thought were for tourists. A further 50 miles took us to Douma, a rapidly growing town, and then another 240 miles to Humulufung. There was not a single house for the whole of this stretch and hardly any cars; the only traffic was the (very) occasional truck. The road was largely flat although surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and an interesting section was the north-east tip of the Soda Plains. We passed a beautiful lake of deep blue water which was the border between China and India; the mountains on the opposite side were in the Himachal Pradesh state of India. A fence of rolls of razor wire ran along the right hand side of the road for hundreds of kilometres. A Chinese soldier we gave a lift to told us that it was designed to stop terrorists from infiltrating Xinjiang Province. Periodic wind turbines with solar panels suggest that it was electrified. Little point describing the landscape as the pics speak for themselves. We got diesel at Humulufung and then drove a further 74 miles to Samliuling where we parked for the night in front of a small restaurant where we had a meal of egg-rice. We spent almost the whole day and most of the rest above 5,000 metres.
