CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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.
A one-way ride of 1979 km, Chengdu to Lhasa - roughly 23 h 38 in the saddle. On the way it passes Kangding, Litang, Batang and Nyingchi. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Chengdu is the sort of city where the main achievement is that people there have a good time, and the rest is background. The capital of Sichuan province sits in a wide, humid plain in western China, home to more than seven million people in the city proper and a lot more in the wider area. It has an easy, teahouse-and-mahjong rhythm, a pace the rest of the country envies, and a cuisine whose reputation is global. Sichuan pepper, the tingling spice that numbs the lips, flavours the hotpot, the mapo tofu and the dan dan noodles, and a rider arriving here should plan on eating well.
Read the complete Chengdu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chengdu is where the day begins. Next is Kangding.
Kangding is where the Chinese road meets the Tibetan plateau. The town sits in a narrow gorge where two rivers join, at the foot of the Gongga massif, and for centuries it was the main trading point between Han China and Tibet, where tea from Sichuan was exchanged for horses, wool and medicinal herbs. The Tibetan name is Dartsedo, and the town remains a meeting place of two cultures, with Tibetan monasteries, prayer flags and markets beside Chinese shops and restaurants.
Read the complete Kangding write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kangding comes up about 260 km into the recorded legs. Next is Litang.
Litang is one of the highest towns in the world, at roughly four thousand metres, a Tibetan settlement on a wide grassy plateau in western Sichuan, where the G318 highway crosses on its long journey from Chengdu to Lhasa. The mountains around it are rounded and bare, the sky is huge and the air is thin enough that every staircase becomes a conversation with your lungs.
Read the complete Litang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 532 km into the recorded legs you reach Litang. Next is Batang.
Batang lies on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, on a broad highland plain at about 2,600 metres, near the Jinsha river, the upper Yangtze, which forms the border with the Tibet Autonomous Region. The town is Tibetan in culture, with a large monastery, prayer flags on every hill and a population of Tibetan herders and traders, and it has been a staging post on the route between Sichuan and Lhasa for centuries.
Read the complete Batang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Batang, about halfway. Next is Nyingchi.
Nyingchi is the green end of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway, and it comes as a shock after the bare plateau that precedes it. The Tibetan name is Nyingtri, and the town lies at about three thousand metres in the valley of the Niyang river, close to where the great Yarlung Tsangpo bends around the east end of the Himalaya. Here the air is thick and moist, the hillsides are covered in pine, cedar and rhododendron, and the nights smell of damp earth. It is often called the Switzerland of Tibet, a phrase that undersells it.
Read the complete Nyingchi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nyingchi sits at 2296 km, late in the day. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 1979 km.
Chengdu → Kangding is 260 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Kangding → Litang is 272 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Litang → Batang is 170 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Batang → Nyingchi is 883 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Nyingchi → Lhasa is 394 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.