Shanghaied Weblog

My sister's wedding

This weekend I am in Holland because my sister (Sonja) had her wedding last Friday. Most of the weddings we attend are all over Asia, and they are often quite different from the ones in Holland. For my wife (who of course joined me) this was her first Dutch wedding, and she was surprised to see that there was no church wedding involved. I guess the movies give the wrong impression about weddings in the Western world.Sonja married her long-time boyfriend Bas in Zutphen, the city where she lives...

Don't put your hand in a Shanghai fountain!

Summer has started in Shanghai, with daily temperatures around 30 degrees. A nice way to cool off is to sit next to a public fountain, at least that's what two South Korean students in Shanghai thought this weekend. However, the wiring of the electric lights in the fountain in Baoshan district turned out to be not very safe. The result: a female student got electrocuted while putting her hand in the fountain. Because of that she fell into the water. Her male companion tried to pull her out,...

Knee injury

One 'present' I received during the bike ride was a knee injury that seems to be worse than I initially thought. My knees had been hurting from day 1 and it got progressively worse. The pain was especially bad in the morning, but normally would get better while riding for a while. But climbing mountains (which is what we did about 50% of the time) was still very painful. However, no reason to give up of course.I thought the pain (mainly on top of my right knee cap, but also below my left one),...

Lhasa – Kathmandu pictures online

Last night I uploaded a lot of the pictures that I took during the bike ride and put them on my Flickr account. I organized them into 4 sets, so they are easier to view.Set 1: Pictures of our acclimatization days in Lhasa (mainly sightseeing)Set 2: The first riding days - from Lhasa via Yamdrok-Tso and Gyantse to Shigatse, plus the two days in the high mountains after thatSet 3: Mount Everest Base Camp and the ride to the Nepalese borderSet 4: Nepal (Kodari, The Last Resort, Bhaktapur and...

Nepal – not a tourist destination (anymore?)

We are all back in Shanghai now and my first two working days are behind me already. I also worked today to get through as many emails as possible, if you are waiting for an answer to a mail: I try to finish the urgent ones by Sunday night. At the same time I am thinking about all our experiences over the past weeks. It was really amazing what we have seen and done, and the more I think about it the more happy I feel about the whole trip. It is maybe not life-changing (but then again, who...

Kathmandu (Nepal) – we made it!

We did it! Yesterday our group managed the last, very easy, stage into Kathmandu, and we are finally having a good bed and a hot shower again in the Shangri-La hotel. And finally access to the internet again, although the connection is too slow to be able to get in my emails and even to open my own weblog (I hope to find a better connection later to post this). Also my mobile phone does not work in Nepal, so I am not able to make any calls or send or receive an SMS. Strange enough incoming...

Tibet trip update: we reached Mount Everest Base Camp

I was not able to update my blog for a while because we have been camping far away from civilization for the past couple of days. I once tried to post a message through my mobile from my tent, but it was so cold that my computer's battery suddenly stopped working. But now we are in a guesthouse in the small town of Tingri (30 houses in the middle of a huge prairie), where we have electricity for the next 2-3 hours or so. At least, that is what the owners told us, they put on a generator for us...

Gyantse – Shigatse

Today is a resting day in Shigatse, Tibet's second biggest town. We were all very happy that we did not have to ride today, because we are all tired and suddenly everybody is getting injuries (mainly knee injuries: the joints in my knees cause me a lot of pain, but once you're on the bike you try to forget about it). We have covered about 350 km so far, and we are getting close to 1/3 of the trip.Yesterday we rode from Gyantse to Shigatse, a distance of about 95 kilometer at an average altitude...

Yamdrok-Tso to Gyantse

I am sitting in an internet cafe in the city of Gyantse, which is supposed to be the third biggest city in Tibet but is actually smaller than an average village in Holland. It's noisy around me with kids playing online games and watching video's, and people are looking over my shoulder all the time to figure out what this strange foreigner is doing.Yesterday we had our third riding day, from the shores of lake Yamdrok-Tso over the Karo-La pass to the foot of the Simi-La. The ride started off...