We started the day with a photo op organized by Phoenix TV that are still trailing, or preceeding, us. There are still 5 miss in the competition, from the 10 that started in Beijing, and they appear every night on TV, and us too I assume. Then we were told we had to visit a Tibetain school (we are still in Yunan), which was a condition to have the right to cross that town. We drove 20km in the mountain but the last leg was too steep to climb for reaching the school, so we did few pictures with some Tibetain scholboys in full colorful native costume and we took the road again.
One of the driver got mountain sick and had to go, he may rejoin us in Katmandou. His wife not driving, his 2CV was put on the second and last trailer. (The first one being occupied by a 2CV which frame broke beyond repair in Siberia on it way to Beijing from Paris).
The road this time was better than expected, it had been recently repaired.
We entered Tibet.
We enter Tibet
The police check was quick, they only compared our French plate licenses to the list they had already received, it took few seconds and we were officialy in Tibet. (I have to note that at all the police stop we encountered, the Chinese officers were extremely polite and expeditiv.
The road was again spectacular. Green valleys encased in high mountains sparkled with Tibetain farms consisting in one storey for people and cattle and another one to dry the hay.. The houses are white with all the wooden frames painted in vivid colors. They are all based on the same design.
We went over a 4,324 meter pass, for practice, and reached Markan at 6.30pm, the first time we reached our hotel by day time. So we could see the town consisting in one main street and few alleys, very frontier like.
Very nice diner at a local restaurant (we had only nice diner since our arrival, but very few lunches, not enough time). On our search for an internet place we went through the market where they were slicing up a bull. We found the place and I could eventualy send some pictures to Laureline for uploading the blog
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