Why this ride
The highest point is about 5,250 m. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Qinghai Tibet Highway: Tanggula Pass to Lhasa
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 553 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 6 h 30
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Scenic road chapters
Tanggula Pass → Nagqu
This is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else. 391 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 222 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Tanggula Pass
Tanggula Pass is a place of thin air and big silence. At 5,231 metres on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, it is one of the high points of the road that crosses the plateau from Golmud to Lhasa, and it marks the boundary between Qinghai and the Tibet Autonomous Region. There is little here but a stone marker, a wide view and a landscape of bare brown hills dusted with snow. You will feel the altitude as soon as you step off the bike: a pounding head, short breath and a strange slowness in your limbs.
Read the complete Tanggula Pass write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Tanggula Pass is where the day begins. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Nagqu, mostly downhill.
2. Nagqu
Nagqu is the biggest town you will meet on the northern half of the Tibetan plateau, and it feels like a frontier. It sits at roughly 4,500 metres on the open grassland between the Tanggula range and Lhasa, a high, cold country of yak herders, black tents and wide rolling pasture, and the Chinese name for it is Naqu. The Tibetan name means the black river, and the pastures around it have fed nomadic families for centuries.
Read the complete Nagqu write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Nagqu comes up about 222 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lhasa.
3. Lhasa
Lhasa lies at about 3,650 metres in a wide, dry valley beside the Kyichu River, and almost every rider who arrives there from the east is a little dizzy from the altitude, a little sunburnt and more than a little humbled. The G318, known as the Sichuan-Tibet Highway, runs over two thousand kilometres from Chengdu, crossing a series of passes above 4,000 metres, plunging through gorges and following the great bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo before it finally settles on this plateau. Reaching the city is the culmination of one of the world's classic overland roads.
Read the complete Lhasa write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 553 km.
Leg by leg
Tanggula Pass to Nagqu
Tanggula Pass → Nagqu is 222 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Nagqu to Lhasa
Nagqu → Lhasa is 331 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.