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Saturday 2005-10-01 - Golmud, China
The Qinghai-Tibet Highway
I never feel comfortable leaning, so most of the time I sit upright — with the disadvantage that I can’t look out of the window very well, you only can do that from a reclining position. While we leave Golmud I take a measurement with my GPS: we’re at an elevation of 2775m (my book says it’s 3200m), at about N 36.34340, E 094.81511. We’ve embarked on the 1115km Qinghai-Tibet Highway from Golmud to Lhasa.
The weather is overcast and misty, so at first the landscape, near-desert with scarce vegetation, looks very bleak. I notice some tamarisk where run-off water collects along the road, but that soon disappears completely. Still, for the first time we now see snow-capped mountains in the distance; at first with only a very light dusting of snow, later a more solid snow cover. At times some very fine powder snow is falling but it doesn’t even seem to reach the ground.
Slowly the landscape outside the windows changes from a river valley into a tundra-like high plain; there are streams (with occasionally a dam) and pools of water, here and there it looks like a flood plain. Vegetation is still scarce, with small tufts of short grass and herbs.
Gradually, the weather gets better now; the sun brings out the rich variety of greens and browns: it’s not as bleak as it looked at first. Actually, it’s breathtakingly beautiful, this wide, wild landscape. Where the vegetation is a little denser we occasionally see herds of “yak cows” and sheep. One of our short stops along the way is near the Tibetan Antelope Rescue Center: within the fence some antelopes are grazing. Later we see some small herds of Tibetan Antelope, as well as some wild asses. There are birds, too: we note (white) Wagtails, Thick-billed Crows and an (unknown) kind of gull.
Our first high pass is at 5010m (higher ones come later). As long as we are above 4000m and getting higher we’re not allowed to go to sleep — mostly to avoid altitude sickness but it can actually be dangerous: when you sleep your breathing slows down and with the lack of oxygen on the high passes you might never wake up again…
