I have been traveling too much lately, and now I finally had a relaxed weekend in Shanghai. It’s nice to be home and sleep in my own bed, especially after having been away for the the major part of the past 5-6 weeks. I even started to miss making my own breakfast…

Friday around lunch time I arrived in Shanghai from Europe, and I went straight to the office. A couple of things had to be urgently straightened out, so it was good that I had returned before the weekend already. After work I had a burger and some beers with Joeri Gianotten. He used to be the director of Red Herring Asia-Pacific several years ago, and then moved on to Singapore where he worked for RBS/Worldpay. In that position we had contact every now and then about payment solutions in Asia for websites, and he helped me with some research as well. I never met him in person though, we only had contact through phone and email. He now quit corporate life and is doing business development for a social networking start-up (Ammado.com, still in alpha). He was in Shanghai for business and that was a good opportunity to finally meet up. We had some interesting talks, and as usual in the internet business in Asia it turned out we have several mutual friends. I did not stay too late, because I had hardly slept on the plane and was in serious need of some horizontal time.

After a 10-hour sleep I got up at 9 AM on Saturday, feeling fresh and relaxed. I had a quick breakfast and checked and answered most of my Friday night mails. Then Qi and I went to the 100-day birthday party for Xu Huan’s baby. We had a nice seafood lunch with lots of family and several colleagues. After the meal we went home around 2:30, and I decided to have a 15-minute sleep to compensate the couple of beers we had at lunch. A short sleep always does wonders for me, and it also worked this time. Then I drove to Pioco‘s office where I had a meeting with Steve (the CEO) and two friends from the US (Markus and Michele). We talked until 6, when they had to leave for a dinner. I joined my wife for dinner at home and worked a bit until 9 PM when I went out for a beer with Gary. We went to Abbey Road, a nice new bar on Yueyang Lu / Dongping Lu, in the location of the former Cotton’s. It is a nice place and we sat outside in the secluded garden under the umbrellas (the rainy season has started in Shanghai), brainstorming among others about a new business idea we developed in Nepal. When I got home I read ‘The Ascent of Rum Doodle’ that I had bought in Kathmandu – actually a pirated version of the book, like most of the books on sale there. A very funny novel, although a bit dated. I was not very tired but when I finished the book I noticed it was 4 AM already!

This morning I got up around 10, answered my emails and did some research for a blog post on Marketingfacts. I had lunch with my wife and talked with her for a while, while listening to CD from Aaron Neville that I bought. After that I finished the blog post and went to the gym. I still have a knee injury, but decided to try to run a little bit anyway. That went much better than I thought, and I ended up running for 30 minutes at over 12 km/h. Hardly any pain in my knees, and I did not feel tired at all (still in good shape from Tibet). That made me very happy, because I was quite worried about my knees, and I really missed running. Last weekend I did a 45-minute run with my dad over the Lemelerberg and Archemerberg (2 hills in the woods close to my parents house in Holland) and that still caused me a lot of pain. But now things are really improving. I will take it easy for the next few days and really start training again. It was great to be back in the gym, listening to my iPod while overlooking the swimming pool in our compound. I realize I cannot live without endurance sports anymore, it motivates me in my daily life and it gives me so many new ideas.

Every Dutch child grows up with the Jip & Janneke books. These books are written in very simple Dutch, with short sentences and easy words, so kids can already read them when they are still young. The short stories are about two toddlers, the boy Jip and the girl Janneke that experience a lot of things together. Mainly events out of daily life that children can relate to, but many with a bit of an educational undertone. They were also nicely illustrated, and every Dutch kid will immediately recognize the Jip and Janneke drawing style. As a kid I liked the books a lot, and although I have not seen my Jip & Janneke book in probably 25 years, I still know exactly what it looked like.

Today the “Yipu he Yaneke” books were also officially introduced in China, this afternoon the Dutch ambassador presented them in Beijing’s Wangfujing bookstore. They are translated into Chinese, and the book contain both the Chinese characters and the matching pinyin (the romanization of the characters) – of course together with the original illustrations.

I wonder, however, whether Chinese kids can relate to the stories. In contrast to Dutch youngsters, they do not play on the streets or have adventures outside of the house with their friends. From a very young age onwards they need to study to become the best in their class, so they can get further in life (something most Dutch kids would never be able to understand). The concept of learning about life by playing is very foreign to most Chinese parents, and only for that reason already they might not even buy the books. The first edition was printed only 10,000 times, a very low figure for Chinese publishing houses, so it seems they are also not too sure that the books will become a success.

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, which is not smart when the water is still under high voltage. Both were killed instantly…
(Source: today’s paper version of the Shanghai Daily)

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), would go away after a few days. That’s not the case: when I walked up the stairs to my 7th floor office every step hurt, and I now consider taking the elevator from tomorrow onwards. Yesterday I went for a run, but had to give up after about 30 minutes because my knee was interfering. I think I will take it slow for a few days, I don’t want to make it worse. Right now I can hardly get out of a chair without pushing myself up. If anybody has suggestions what to do, let me know.

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 that
Set 3: Mount Everest Base Camp and the ride to the Nepalese border
Set 4: Nepal (Kodari, The Last Resort, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu)

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 knows?), but at least it gives me a different perspective on life. It’s good to go back to nature sometimes, back to the very basics, in order to more appreciate the luxuries you get used to in daily life. The last days in Kathmandu were already very luxurious, but being home again is still different, and I am glad to be back in Shanghai now.

Kathmandu was a nice end of the trip. The 2 days before that from the border to the capital city were quite impressive, Nepal is a beautiful country. Nature is stunning, and actually much more beautiful than Tibet. It is much greener and much more developed. But on the other hand also much more undeveloped: in Tibet things seem to work, in Nepal that is not the case. In Tibet at least I was able to make a call when I had a connection, in Nepal that’s not the case. In Tibet buses tend to ride on time, in Nepal we met a backpacker who waited for a scheduled bus for 8 hours and then decided to walk. In Tibet if there was electricity it was working most of the time, in Nepal (even in Kathmandu) electricity cuts were the norm. Nepal still has a long way to go if it wants to become a tourist destination.

Like most people, I knew that the Maoists had joined the Nepal government last year, and I (naively?) assumed that things would be quite stable in Nepal by now. But that turned out to be wrong. Shortly after passing the border the checkpoints started already, and they were quite different from the ones we encountered in Tibet. The Nepali ones has soldiers with automatic weapons hidden behind sandbags and surrounded by barbed wire, not a young smiling police man enjoying the sunshine on a chair next to the road like in Tibet. When reading the Himalaya Times (an English language newspaper in Kathmandu) it became clear that although the Maoists are part of the establishment now, they cannot even control their own people. Kidnappings by the Maoists were very normal in the countryside, and they also did not seem to mind to kill the occasional government official. It seems the prime minister has no power at all anymore, or just tries to hold on to the little power that he still has. When we were there the national oil supply ran out, and there were long lines at gas stations (even before they opened cars already lined up). The king, who used to have absolute power, will be gone soon as well. The PM announced during the few days that we were in Kathmandu that it was 80% sure that the monarchy would be over (one of the things the Maoist want). The PM should in my humble opinion try to find a middle way between the monarchy and the Maoists, but he seems to be afraid of the rebel communists, and is giving in to all their demands. Maybe I just have a partial view because of the short time we were there?

Kathmandu itself is a nice city for a day or two, but not much more. It’s quite noisy and polluted, and although it has a lot of temples, stupas and monasteries, I was not too impressd. I actually liked Lhasa a lot better. The backpacker area Thamel is similar to backpacker areas all over Asia. Cheap beer and pizza’s like everywhere, but the only thing missing were the tourists. It seems they are all gone (I assume they were here a few years ago when things were more stable politically?), and being the only guest in a restaurant at lunch time gives me a creepy feeling. As a result everybody tries to earn an extra penny, and the touts on the street are hard to shake off. Kathmandu is the only city I know of where it is better to negotiate a fare with the taxi driver than to rely on their meters. The meters have all been tampered with we found out after having to pay way too much twice in a row. I don’t mind paying a bit more (it’s dirt cheap anyway), but I don’t like the feeling that everybody is trying to rip you off.

The experience at the airport was another example. People literally pull the luggage out of your car before you can even get out. If porters do that I refuse to use them, I was glad I did not lose any luggage. In the departure hall there were lots of signs from airlines that used to fly to Nepal but have since disappeared. The day we left was the last day that Austrian Airlines flew to Kathmandu, and with that the last airline flying directly to Europe was gone. It’s a pity, but this country is going down the drain. Service at the airport was quite bad (it reminded me of Jakarta’s airport more than 10 years ago), with queues everywhere. We probably had some overweight, but a small bribe by my dad helped to smoothen that out easily (that won’t work in Europe). The hand luggage check was the worst experience. Everyone has to open his/her luggage and the security goes through everything. A Chinese tourist in front of me bought a small football for his kids, and one of the guards wanted to have it. He did not want to give it to him, and really started nagging him. The tourist got quite upset about it, at which point I walked away. This is not the kind of thing you like to see at the end of a holiday, and this kind of experiences make me reluctant to come back quickly. A pity, because the country is beautiful and has a lot of potential.

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 calls get through sometimes, no clue how that is possible. On Thursday we will fly to Hong Kong and from there to Shanghai, I look forward to being in the office again on Friday and to be back ‘on the grid’.

The last week was not as difficult as the week before, but it certainly wasn’t easy. The day after my last post from Tingri we thought we would have an easy day over paved roads to the foot of the Lalung La. But as usual during this trip things were not as easy as they sounded. Already 5 km outside of Tingri the paved road suddenly stopped, and we found ourselves on a dirt road once again. The dirt road went slightly up for most of the 80 km that we rode it, making it a bit more difficult as well. But when after lunch suddenly a heavy storm (windforce 9) hit us right in the head, my dad and I were close to giving up again. We had to walk against the storm sometimes, because we could not bike against it. When we still had more than 20 km to go, a sandstorm came up and filled our clothes and mouth with fine pieces of sand. Shortly after that it also started to snow a bit, and we seriously started to doubt whether we could make this stage. But we went on and on and on, and finally around 7 pm we arrived in our camp, totally exhausted. We thought Gary and Jay were still riding, but it turned out that the wind had been too much for them, and one of the support vehicles had picked them up around 4:30 pm. The camp was in a beautiful location, on a piece of grassland next to a river, surrounded by huge mountains, but we were too tired to really enjoy it, and it also became dark quickly after we arrived. We had a bit of food and dropped into our sleeping bags right after.

The next morning we got up very early, because in the morning there is always less wind in the Himalaya. Around 7:30 we were having breakfast in the freezing cold, and before the sun had reached our valley camp ground (at 4600 meter altitude) we were already on our bikes. My hands and feet felt like they were from ice, but after 15 minutes we suddenly rode in the sun, and it got warm quite quickly. This day we had to climb two passes over 5000 meters, the first 13 km from our camp and the second 26 km, meaning that we started to climb almost immediately. The good news was that these would be the last two major passes of the trip, if we would make the second one we would have a 150 km downhill into Nepal right after it. We were still very tired from the day before, and already had to walk part of the first pass. We made it around 11, and had several Snicker bars and a can of Red Bull to get some calories and energy in. The second mountain pass was really hard, and I walked at least 3 km with my bike in my hand. Walking is actually more difficult due to the lack of oxygen, but changing from biking to walking sometimes can motivate you not to give up. Around 1 pm my dad and I managed to reach the top of the second pass at about 5200 meters. Our guide was there with hot noodles, but we were too tired to eat and decided to first descend to a lower altitude. After doing that we sat in the support vehicle for almost an hour to regain our strength, but our spirits were high: we conquered all the Tibetan mountain passes! Two hours later Gary and Sean also managed to reach the top, and when we heard that news we were very happy.

After the last mountain my dad and I started the descent and rode in the direction of Nyalam, the last city on the Tibetan plateau. However, the headwind got much worse once again, and we were thinking of camping and continuing the next day. Then we heard from our guide that the road ahead would be under construction for 50 kilometers (until Zhangmu / Dram, the Chinese bordertown), and most of it would be very difficult to navigate by bike. We decided to take the car and ride back to Gary to discuss what to do. We found him on the mountain, and after a short discussion we decided to take the car to Zhangmu. That was a good decision, because the road was in a terrible condition and even in the Land Cruiser it seemed like a dangerous undertaking. Basically the road from Nyalam to Zhangmu was a 2-3 meter ridge on the side of the mountain, with a 1 km deep gorge right next to it. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in nature, but not something to ride on bicycle when road crews are building it. We even encountered a small landslide right in front of us (we had to wait 30 minutes before the road was cleared), and at one point we rode right through a glacier with ice towering above the car on both sides. Even by car the 50 km took us over 4 hours, by bike this would have been much longer, even though it was all downhill.

Zhanghmu turned out to be subtropical city, at an altitude of only 2300 meters. We had a not-so-very-clean hotel right on the border with Nepal, where we had a good night of sleep anyway. The next morning we went through all border formalities, first on the Chinese side, then a steep 8 km dirt road down (over 1000 altitude meters down) to the Nepali town of Kodari, where we crossed the Friendship bridge and had to go through Nepal customs. This took us several hours, but there were no big problems. The sight and sounds changed within these 8 km, and we were suddenly in a different world. The people not only spoke a different language, but even looked different, and we were suddenly in a tropical third-world country. New smells in the air from all the spices that were used to cook, and a warm wind because of the lower altitude and different climate. We even had to ride on the other side of the road, which we only figured out after several hundred meters in Nepal. It felt like a new adventure!

From Kodari we rode about 20 km to a great place called The Last Resort. A small resort consisting of relatively luxurious tents, set on the side of a mountain overlooking the valley below it. You had to cross a 100 meter hanging bridge to get there, giving it an even more special feeling. We spent the afternoon relaxing in the gardens and in the bar. For the first time in weeks we allowed ourselves a couple of beers, and we talked the whole afternoon and night about our experiences of the trip and ideas about the future. Gary, my dad and I developed a new business concept as well in a few hours, for a likely very successful new venture. Gary and I won’t have time to work on this, so we will only be involved in the fund raising and using our Chinese network to make it happen. If the idea still sounds good in a few weeks you will likely read about it on this blog. A memorable day for all of us I think.

The next morning at breakfast we decided to take it easy and instead of riding the 70 km along the river to Bhaktapur, to take the car and do some sightseeing along the way. Jay went bungy jumping after breakfast, and although he tried hard to convince all of us to join, none of us thought this was a good idea. If I ever go bungy jumping I prefer not to do it in a place where the closest hospital is a 3-hour bumpy ride away! The car ride to Bhaktapur was very nice, and we made several stops along the way. We had lunch in a mountain resort, before the final descent into the valley where Bhaktapur and Kathmandu are located. Bhaktapur turned out to be a medieval city, that had hardly changed over the past hundreds of years. During daytime there were some tourists from Kathmandu, but at night they all went back, so we seemed to be the only foreigners here. We had a hotel right on the main city square, with great views over the market and the temples around it. The only bad sid
e was that people started worshipping around 4:30 AM and they did so by ringing a big bell in front of the temple. So we decided to get up, and by 6 AM we were strolling around the old town. An unforgettable experience!

A few hours later we had breakfast and then started our last stage from Bhaktapur to Kathmandu. That turned out to be an easy ride, although the heavy trafffic slowed us down a lot. When we arrived in Kathmandu we had the bad luck to end up in a demonstration, and people had closed the road. My dad decided to talk to the mob, and they eventually agreed to let us through. Our Nepali guide, however, was scared, and he wanted us to take a different route. We had to follow him, which was a pity because now we were back on congested streets again. Later we found out that there are several demonstrations per day, because Nepal the struggle against the Maoist rebels left the country virtually bankrupt. It is strongly advised to stay away from these demonstrations, because they easily turn violent. I guess we were lucky!

In the Shangri-La hotel my wife and Gary’s girlfriend were waiting for us (they had flown in the night before), and it was very nice to see them again. They had been a bit worried, something I did not realize while bike riding. I did not really see it as a dangerous undertaking, more as a test for myself how far I could go and as a good way to look at my current life from a different perspective. The trip is too fresh in my mind to be able to really grasp what we did, but it feels like I made the right decision to do this bike ride. It was good to go back to nature, to feel its force and to live a less luxurious life for a few weeks. It makes you appreciate your normal life a lot more. And at the very least I lost about 5 kilos, which is also not too bad. Although I am afraid that the kilos might be back after a few days in Kathmandu: we are all eating twice as much as we used to!

Note: I made hundreds of pictures during the trip, some of which I will start uploading this weekend to http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs. I had planned to do that here already, but the Nepalese Internet turns out to be about 10 years behind the rest of the world, so I have given up on that idea.