The story of our arrival here needs telling from two sides. Clearly, arriving at the top of perhaps the hardest climb on the route between Kathmandu and Lhasa at just after seven in the evening could be deemed foolhardy. We had another thirty Kilometres of crazily rough downhill to manage before we could stop for the night, as well. But there were human circumstances and the wild and unpredictable 'Law of the Plateau' to be contended with! This story comes from one of the cyclists, but if we thought it was tough, wait 'til you hear the story from Nadine and Richard Sriven who were on the truck!

Tong La was the pass that delivered us onto the Tibetan Plateau. We'd taken a deliberately long time riding to the top of this one (seven days from the border) to ensure our gradual acclimatisation. It's multi-coloured prayer flags were fluttering wildly in a strong, bitterly cold wind and my own personal exhaustion, elation and many other emotions were captured as I tied up one of my own, given to me by Hannah. Truck drivers, travellers and nomads tie prayer flags on at the top of passes to offer a prayer with every flutter and for good luck with their onward journey. We had all been looking to this moment for a long time and I hoped that, along with all the thoughts it was holding for me, this little flag had strength enough left to release us some good luck to the Lhasa wind, too.

From Tong La the road dropped into a narrow, unstable, vegetationless valley which delivered us out onto the equally barren, but immense and impressive Plateau. We were to get used to the huge outwash fans, wide braided river channels, brown-red-orange-yellow cathedral peaks and smooth, rounded, high ridges that make up this most distant of landscapes. There were beautiful villages with houses of round, daub construction, low and seemingly moulded to their landscape, displaying more bright flags. The dwellings were more often than not decorated, too, the white of the walls representing compassion with short black, (anger), and red, (knowledge), stripes running down them. In two days, via a sojourn at some comfortable hot springs and some spectacular views of Mount Everest / Qomolomgma, we arrived at Xegar from where the road bucked wildly upwards once again to Gyatso La.

The climb up to 5220m, we thought, deserved two days and we arranged to meet the truck later on the first day for an overnight stop at a road workers camp, height 4800m. On a need to know basis is that we'd lost our trusty driver Pingu who had successfully negotiated all sorts of rough conditions thus far and was well-liked. We were sorry to see him go. On the truck were Dean, Richard Scriven, who had unfortunately fallen foul of a high-altitude bug, Sony, our lively, congenial and very wise-for-his-years guide and Lhapa, the new driver, whose bright white baseball cap, Tim thought, betrayed a lack of mechanics experience, but who Sony said "isn't as stupid as he looks!"

The morning began characteristically late, twisted time zones sucking Lhasa onto the same clock as Beijing and meaning that the sun is barely peeping over the mountains by 9 a.m. But bright it was once again, and the road followed the river valley north climbing steadily from the word go. We passed shepherds, cattle herders and villagers busy in riverside, lowly terraced fields diverting water onto their young crops from carefully constructed culverts and mini hydro-power schemes. The valley closed in and led us up onto a higher plateau where we sheltered from a dusty wind in a road workers compound. These are, by their nature, rather dismal places spaced evenly ten kilometres apart along the highway and therefore quite often in the middle of nowhere, windswept, squat and purely functional, four walls and a roof if you're lucky.

We were expecting the truck along the road behind us but when it didn't appear we thought we'd better carry on to the rendez-vous point. The wind changed, the road found its way up another narrow valley and as we crossed an incredible outwash fan of large, rounded boulders spilling down from jagged peaks that had appeared ahead and on the right hand side, a blizzard seemed to emerge from the very mountains themselves. This lasted, luckily, only a short while and the valley then became one wide braided river channel. Our track, clinging to the edge where water laps in the wet season, soon arrived at the next road workers compound.

The road had been in a disastrous state of repair for some time and the reason now became clear as we found the road workers capitalizing on a good post-blizzard drying afternoon to wash their hair! Fair enough. They invited us in, though, and we sat in their low, dark, warm room, dung-fired stove the centre-piece of all the furniture, sipping hot water, trying in vain to communicate our situation and asking if they had a bed for us for the night. We weren't completely sure where we were and when a tentative enquiry as to our current altitude led to uproarous laughter and energetic comparisons of the height of all those in the room, things started looking a bit tricky! Where was the truck and were they all OK?!

At 4.30 they pulled up outside. We were relieved to see them but it was with much tearing out of hair that Dean and Rich expressed grave doubts about Lhapas skills in the driving, let alone mechanics departments. The driver himself seemed unconcerned but Sony was clearly keen to get over the pass to the sizable town of Lhatze to sort a few things out. He told us so.

Crumbs! Another fifty kilometres, 400m of climbing in 20kms to the top, on very rough roads, at this altitude, so late in the day, with another blizzard on the horizon and a wooden leg (no, not that last bit!) This was quite an undertaking but we were up for it. Someone brought out a cheeky stash of Mars Bars and we were definitely up for it! Leaving the wash 'n' go road workers sheepishly apologising to the driver for the potholes and washouts and the driver blatantly not apologising for stalling at every approach to a pothole or washout, we legged it. The road followed the stream until it disappeared into a lumped icefield and the scenery changed to wide open mountain scape. Lhapa did manage to overtake us after a few kilometres but we caught them, progress once more halted by mechanical unknowns, 6 kms before the pass. From here we could see the road ahead climbing to the top at a truly cruel angle up the mountainside. The sun well on its way towards the western horizon, it was decided we'd better keep going. Hoping the truck would be back to life soon, the famous last words to Dean and Rich ran something like "see you at the top!"

The punishing last six kilometres took us an hour. Breathless, exhausted and wary of altitude sickness we pushed on very slowly up the road to Gyatso La. The tiredness couldn't overshadow the incredible scenery, though, which was truly vast, open, and unmistakably high. Doubts crept into my mind about whether I could really do this - surely I was making such minimal progress I would never get to the top. But I did. All four of us did. At just after seven p.m. Amazing emotions flooded my body as we shared our joy in embraces and then stood quietly (it was a calm evening) celebrating the Himalayas and the achievement of such incredible height gain inwardly and almost incomprehendingly. This highest pass, like I said, was a truly atmospheric place.

The truck, however, hadn't appeared. This was worrying, but again it was decided that we couldn't hang around. We knew what was ahead of us and hoped they had surmounted their difficulties and would soon be hot on our heels. At least, we thought we knew what was ahead of us! 30km of downhill. In fact this was 30 km of the most plummeting, corrugated, precipitous, twisting, boulder-strewn, washed out, iced up and "Danger - Yaks" downhill you've ever seen. Crazy stuff and so exciting! No-one got very far with Richards "Observation Round" at the bottom. I'm afraid the whole mad mountainside and narrow gorge, dropping-like-stones bonanza whizzed by in a blur. Never before have I encountered such a descent - it was excellent!

Eight kilometres before Lhatze, in a rapidly gathering dusk, an amazing lilac sky framing the mountains for some beautiful moments, there was still no sign of the truck. We flattered ourselves saying "they'd never have caught us coming down there" and stormed on along the last bit of dirt track and some blissful tarmac into town. Lhatze was a very weird place. The relief that we felt on seeing its bright lights in the dark was quickly usurped by mild shock at the unmistakable chinese style of straight-line architecture, sprawling urban planning and noise pollution; (they pump the soundtracks of films playing inside cafes out onto the street at distortion-level volumes so it sounds like there are gunfights and punch-ups going on all around!) The peaceful Tibetan settlements we were used to, this was not! Despite the tarmac, there were no accompanying street-lights and we dodged on-coming cyclists and tractors, open sewers, massive pot-holes and smaller dogs to luckily arrive in one piece outside a brightly lit hotel. This was a good, obvious one for the truck to spot when they rolled into town. That surely couldn't be long now?!

There's little of our story left to be told now, save to say it WAS a long time before Dean and Rich S. arrived, and when they did, very pale cheeks, icy cold hands and an initial unwillingness (or perhaps inability) to say anything, told a whole new story. Sony cowered on a different table with the hotel manager. Us cyclists waited with tired legs and anxious faces, to hear what had happened......