Gyantse is one of the highlights of Tibet , mainly because the Wu Tse hotel has tv, hot showers,comfortable beds and serves Pizza in the restaurant which has a large vcd player and an indian dance music cd.
Oh and the town also has a large fort (the little potala) which was the site of the anti british war, and a huge monastry which has a big Pagoda.

Walking up to the little Potala through the Tibetan part of town you can see the town is split into two very distinct parts. The Tibetan old side colorfully decorated buildings and the drab concrete of Chinese modernity. Walking around the fort is a fun experience in Chinese propoganda. With wax worlkdummys depicting scenes from Tibetan history like the torture chamber the dungions and the tax hall. The fort survived the Chinese occupation because of the vallient defence of the ‘Motherland’ from the evil British imperialists. It is here that 600 Tibetans died in 10 minutes to four British casualties in1904. The Tibetans reduced to throwing rocks at the machine guns and light artillery of the British. Of course the palace has not been repaired since then and for the hardy who want to explore the whole place one must still scale the breached walls as they have not put in any stairs yet.

From Gyantse the next city is Shigatse 100 km along a rough rocky road that is a least flat. The main adventure on this bit of the trip is fighting the kids. This is tourist teritory and the kids are ready for cyclists. Greeted every 100meters by a new bunch, they chase the bikes first beggng for money, then as you pass they attempt to take things from the back of your bike then try to pull you back. If this fails their last weapon is the rock which they hurl after you sometimes using a sling. We confronted them everytime once catching one 7 year old who was too slow to get off the road. He at first claimed innocence but with us two foreigners towering over him shouting he soon changed tactics and started to bawl loudly. Feeling success at making a 7 year old cry we left him and happily rode on.

Shigatse is a big place also has a big monastry and a fort but it cost 30Yuan (4dollars)  to get in so we didn’t bother. What we did do was get Permits. First to the CITS govt. travel service to pay 50 yuan for.Umm for…well anyway you need to pay them then onto the police office. At the entrance the first thing you see is three bikes a cannondale amongst them chained together. Why would a Tibetan policeman ride a cannondale? Because three Japanese boys overstayed for7 days.

It costs 50 yuan for a permit but 150 yuan for a cycle permit. We thought a permit would be good enough so in we went. "Your cylists aren’t you?" was the first thing the policeman at the desk asked us.

"NO" I retort

"I saw you today on bikes" He counters.

"We will put them on a bus as it ’s too hard to cycle"

So he made up the permit and added  ‘Not permitted to ride a bike!’  (None of the other permits have this)

"Ok maybe we will cycle a little of the way here’s your 150Yuan”

Asking about the bikes and if we could buy some of the parts he told us of two Australians who were there theday before and stole the wheels. Good on ya boys!

We had met Dan in Lhasa whose rim had buckled. From Shigatse we did take a bus as it was my birthday and didn’t want to celebrate in a cold tent.The bus ride with pissed driver and very pissed merry conductor passing around the fruit wine wsentertaining with the Tibetans raising their hats and whooping as the bus crossed a pass. The conductor singing along with the heavily distorting cassete pumped up to full volume. We disembarked on the turnoff to Sakya the ancient capital of Tibet and sight of a huge monastry. Riding the guantlet of stone throwing kids and headwind we made the 25km without problem. Later that day inrocked The Australians Dan, Rich and Kath(American). Over a few beers they told the story of the shigatse incident.

Kath extending her visa, absolutly impossible in Tibet, Unless of course you are a blonde American girl with a beautiful smile, (Chinese police are suckers for blondes). The boys were busy downstairs swapping wheels from their broken bike with the Cannondale. Chinese police don’t know one from another but they can count so when one walked in a saw two extra wheels he knew something was up. On closer inpection they discovered the dastardly deception and were ready to expell these wretched Australians but as I’ve already said Chinese police are suckers for blondes and they got away with returning the wheels.