Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.
T.S. Eliot once said “The Journey not the arrival matters.” This trip was very much about the journey. To drive from Lhasa to Nepal’s Southern border you will spend the vast majority of your time in the car.
However, this is a marvelous thing — especially in the Himalayan.
After taking historic car routes in other parts of the world I do believe the Friendship Highway may be one of the coolest roads in the world. The legendary road drops thousands of meters from the Tibetan Plateau into the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. This is one of the most dramatic roads I have ever been on.
For those familiar with other epic drives in the United States — such as California’s Highway 1, the “Million Dollar Highway” U.S. Route 550, U.S. Route 30 in Maui, the Oregon Coast, U.S. Route 375 (Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway) or California’s Route 395 — this road is a step up on the dramatic meter (this is usually just left of your odometer).
As the elavation drops, temperatures rise and humidity fills the air often creating thick fog and mist. Snow melt from glaciers and the world’s tallest mountains funnel down the canyon creating endless waterfalls over seemingly never ending cliffs next to one very small road with no guard railing. If you look at the top photo, you can barely make out the road, but it is on the far cliff snaking down the Himalayan ridge.
The stretch of highway from Lhasa to Kathmandu is 865 kilometers (537 miles); however, you need to allow a good deal of time due to varying road conditions, steep icy sections, road blocks, landslides and any other bit of chaos you are likely to encounter.
As you travel down the road your elevation drops dramatically. As you look down the cliff, the road inevitably becomes lost in the thick fog filling the canyon. From Tong-la, the section of the highway directly before the decline, the elevation is 5120 meters (16,797 feet). Very quickly at the Chinese/Nepal border town of Nyalam you already fall to 3750 meters, followed by Zhangmu at 2300 meters, to Kodari at 1873 meters to Kathmandu — elevation 1300 meters (12,500 feet).
The road drops 3,820 meters in a short amount of time. How short? This is hard to answer because the road is so steep and at points narrow that its hard to gauge what type of distance you are traveling. On my descent into the Kathmandu Valley I was also stuck in a landslide for about 3 hours (more on that next week).
Another fun part of this trip is the actual border between the two (3?) countries. There is a bridge that crosses the canyon which you actually walk over to enter Nepal (or TIbet). While in the middle of the bridge you are effectively in no man’s land, which is a unique thing. Beyond being in international waters, its pretty difficult to not be in any country. This is one place you can do it.
Although the highway is spectacular, there are some obstacles and annoyances for people looking to make this overland voyage. First, the Chinese authorities will not let you enter Tibet without a TTB permit as well as a tour group. To make things more complicated, travelers on Lonely Planet’s Tree Thorne have reported their Chinese visas being canceled upon entry and forced to buy a tourist visa. This means, if you are holding a Z-Visa you will forfeit it and have to reapply. More information on this annoyance here.
Next post in this series brings us to Nepal.
Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:
- Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
- Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
- In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
- Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
- Tibetan Cloudscapes
- Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
- Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
- 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
- Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
- ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
- Namaste and welcome to Nepal
- Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
- Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
- ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
- Who has the strongest necks in the world?
- Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
- After the Himalayan: The Terai
- Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
- At the end of the road: Pokhara
- Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
- Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’
