So what was it all about ??? |
| Syabru Besi - New Tingri (Tibet). |
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| We were up bright and early. The mechanics had repaired the damage to my bike. |
| We arrived at the border nice and early. That's when the waiting started!!! |
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| Alex, the organiser / owner of Nomadic Knights, had picked a minor border crossing. A small bridge, typicall used by the local traffic. Apparently the bigger crossings are mega busy and can have even longer delays. So, we were, by all accounts at the express crossing. |
| The Border was also where we picked up our Official Chinese Tour guide. No Tourist can be without one !!! |
| Our Guide was actually Tibetian but the Chinese make all Tibetians have Chinese passports. |
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| Firstly, we had to wait ages. Nothing appeared to move, not us or any of the local traffic. Apparently, the border didn't open until 9am. Eventually the Nelapalese customs searched our bikes and allowed us to cross the bridge. |
| Once on the Tibetian (Chinese) side of the bridge we had to put the bike through custome checks and park them in cark park. Then we had to walk back through customs, pick up our luggage and go through customs again. At this point I thought we had passed Customs and could be on our way. |
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| Oh, but that would have been too easy. Now we had to wait for the Chinese Customs guards to complete the paper work. Shouldn't take too long but we hadn't facctored in the fact that it was now lunch time and all the Chinese Customs guards went to lunch at the same time. So, we were just left waiting until they had finished lunch. You have to smile. |
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| Well eventually it was all done-n-dusted and we were on our way. With our official Chinese guide & traditional silk scalfs (given to us by the guides). My guess is they were buttering up for tip at the end of the tour or . . . the scalf conatained a Chinese Government tracking device !!! |
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| Due to all the delays at the border. We arrived at our destination quite late but all our troubles were soon forgotten with a drink and some really tasty red chicken the hotel laid on for us. |
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