The Charm Of Kham

Biking through Kham, historically part of Tibet, unveils a land of wide vistas and deeply compassionate people.

- Matthew Crompton

UP AT 4,400 METRES, DESCENDING ON rough dirt road from the Cho La pass in the far west of China’s Sichuan Province, my rear tire suddenly feels spongy. A short section of sidewall on my tubeless setup had spontaneously failed the day before, and unwilling to delay undertaking a route I’d been planning for months, I’d simply sewed a tyre boot around the hole, stuck a tube in it, said a prayer, and set off again. Whatever god had at first smiled on me had evidently had second thoughts. There is no shelter anywhere as snow falls wet and heavy, the wind howls, and the road turns into a river of mud. I can’t feel my fingers. Welcome to Tibet.

The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), home to the city of Lhasa and heavy travel restrictions imposed on visitors by the Chinese government, is but one of three major regions of what was culturally, historically and geographically Tibet. The ancient region of Kham, twice the size of Sweden and extending across the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, is not only home to 35% of China’s Tibetan population, but – now being largely in Yunnan, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces – is generally free of the travel restrictions that shroud much of the TAR behind a bureaucratic curtain. I’ve been cycling through the region for weeks and still have to pinch myself at police checkpoints when no one stops me to tell me I’m not allowed to go any further.

In the whiteout, I find the puncture in the tube, stick an instant patch to it, pump the tyre back up and set off down the road through the storm, hoping against hope.