Book - Cycling Tibet

It was a journey through vast and magnificent landscapes, a long and rugged road. When I crossed the first mountain pass at an altitude of 4,000 meters, the unexpected exhaustion made me repeatedly question why I had chosen to put myself through such hardship. Looking back years later, I wished the journey had been even more challenging: that there had been fewer roadside lodges and restaurants, that supplies were harder to come by, that there were fewer tunnels and more rough roads, fewer online discussions, and fewer vehicles and bikes on the road. I wished there were fewer tourists, fewer police and security checkpoints in Lhasa. I always longed to return to a past where there was less of everything—the era before department stores and American fast food, before the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, before "The Seventeen Point Agreement", and even before the British-Tibetan War.

On the journey, I encountered a like-minded traveler who gifted me a guidebook for cycling to Tibet. In the highland areas where internet access was scarce and electricity unreliable, paper book still proved to be an important travel tool. That simple, poorly made book, which became crumpled and worn after guiding us through the journey, remains on my bookshelf today alongside my travel diary.