Golmud is a city built on a salt flat, and it exists because of the road. The name comes from a Mongolian word for river, which sounds optimistic for a place on the edge of the Qaidam Basin, a vast, high desert of salt lakes, gravel plains and oil wells. At about 2,800 metres, with the Kunlun mountains rising to the south, it is a modern, wide-avenued city of several hundred thousand people that grew from almost nothing in the 1950s, when engineers began pushing a highway and later a railway across the Tibetan plateau.
This is the staging post for the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, the road that climbs from here over the Kunlun Pass, at well over 4,700 metres, and runs across the Tibetan plateau toward Lhasa, more than a thousand kilometres away. The railway to Lhasa, opened in 2006, was one of the most ambitious pieces of engineering of its time, laid partly on permafrost with cooling systems to keep the ground from thawing. The road runs alongside it in places, with herds of Tibetan antelope, wild yaks and kiang visible on the grasslands in the high country, and prayer flags marking passes.
The riding is of a kind that few ever experience. The road is mostly paved and busy with trucks, but the altitude is the real challenge, with long climbs to over five thousand metres, thin air, bitter cold even in summer and sudden snow. Engines lose power, riders lose concentration, and acute mountain sickness is a real danger on a rapid ascent. The plateau is vast and bare, with a sky of intense blue and clouds that throw long shadows across the ranges.
An honest note on access: foreign visitors generally cannot ride independently here. Tibet requires special permits and guided travel, and riding in China requires a Chinese licence and registration, so for most travellers this road is something to read about or to see from a train window. If you do plan any trip in the region, check current rules with an agency before committing.
Golmud itself has all the practical services of a regional city, including fuel, hotels, restaurants and workshops. Nearby salt lakes, including Qarhan, yield potash and other minerals, and the flat, glittering plains around them are some of the most surreal landscapes in China. The best months are usually late spring and early autumn, while winter closes parts of the high plateau with ice and snow.