This is Nick Baggarly. Today we traveled from Xining City to Dulan.

Dan Freedman of Calgary, Alberta asks how we like driving in China, a land with many more bicycles than cars?

Well, if you were a teen-age video game junkie during the 1980's you might remember the arcade game, PaperBoy. You play the part of a boy on a bicycle, delivering papers and trying to avoid things like cars backing out of driveways, pedestrians, kids on skateboards, trucks, and women with baby carriages, all of which seem to cross the road the moment you approach.

Driving in this country is exactly like an intense game of PaperBoy!

When we first arrived we spent one week in Beijing waiting for the cars. During this time the only driving we did was as a passenger in taxis. We took some good notes watching the traffic patterns and customs of the cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. One thing we immediately noticed is that many intersections have only one visible signal light. The light is visible from every approaching direction but their position in the intersection was never in the same place which made it difficult to know whether an intersection was signal controlled or not and sometimes you would be half way through the intersection before you notice the light is red.

A word about these small carts we keep seeing. Since we left Beijing we will see a small motor driven cart stacked twice high with a leafy Chinese cabbage that looks like bok choy. These carts are forbidden on the roads during the day. If caught the driver will receive a large fine so they are forced to deliver their produce to market at night. The carts are very slow and while they try to keep to the right they have no reflectors or lights so while we drive we must be very cautious of these and other obstacles.

So, you need to be constantly alert, even more so then when you drive on the roads and highways back home, and it helps to have a co-pilot beside you to call out obstacles and potential dangers. Most downtown roads in Beijing were two or four lane undivided road with a wide divided shoulder to your right for bicycle traffic. These people really have their wits about them. They drive using instincts and intuition and they seem keenly aware of the actions of others and themselves.

Two pieces of advice my father, Brad Baggarly, taught me have come in quite handy. Number 1 - Drive defensively, and Number 2 - Back up only as far as you have to. This may seem like common sense but this is something that should always be in the back of your mind when driving in a foreign land. Likewise, when Mr. Zhang Jian Ping, our Chinese host and Manager of China International Sports Travel, gave us some advice as he distributed our Chinese drivers licenses in a formal lineup ceremony which occurred after a short drivers test, eye, and health test. He said, "Stop at red lights, slow down in small villages, and speed up in the wild." By wild he meant the Chinese countryside.

So on to today's journal report. We rose very early at 5:15 AM in Xining City which is in the Qinghai province. We stayed at the Xining Hotel which was very nice. By now I have quite a collection of hotel soaps, tooth brushes, matchbooks, sewing kits, and shampoo as these seem to be standard complimentary items at every hotel in China.

Since Lanzhou, our interpreter Jack has been riding along with us. When Jack was learning English he had to choose a name so initially it was Beatles because he like the Beatles. Eventually he chose Jack. We all were impressed with Jack's knowledge of all aspects of China, whether it be historic, provincial, geographic, geologic, ancient or contemporary knowledge - Jack seemed to know it all. He also had quite a grasp on other parts of the world as he would frequently compare landmarks in China to landmarks in other parts of the world. We couldn't drive five kilometers without hearing an interesting fact from Jack. In a way though, his job is easy because his country has such a long rich history so there's always something to talk about. But I'm sure it wasn't easy cramming all of those facts in his noodle. Jack takes his job very seriously and he did an excellent job educating us along the way. We thank him for his time with us.

Last night we were treated to a very delicious dinner with Mr. Deng Haiping, the Manager of Qinghai International Sports Travel. We're guessing that he is Mr. Li and Jack's Boss. Before dinner he presented each of us with a full colour brochure that describes all the various tours his company offers. In it there were also descriptions of groups, like ours, who have hiked, expeditioned, climbed, rafted, and trekked, throughout this fascinating and huge province. And the brochure contained a lot of local information as well like all the climbable peaks in this province and their height.

A big tourist draw in China and in many other countries for that matter is hiring an agency like this one, to find the source of a river. Many people will traced their lineage to an area around a particular river in China and they find spiritual renewal by visiting the source of this river. The agency will provide a guide who knows the way. For example, our guide, Mr. Li helped some Japanese travelers find the source of the Yellow river which wasn't easy the first time he did it but since then, he has managed to source many other rivers in China and guide seekers to the waters they seek.

When you're having dinner with people who don't speak your language, and you don't speak a word of theirs it's easy to simply sit back and default to a conversation with your English speaking friends and just talk amongst yourselves. For various reasons it is sometimes not easy to have a dinner conversation with your hosts using a translator. You'd probably have to be put in this situation to know what I am talking about but I can tell you, if you try, you'll always find something to talk about and it's always worth it. We had a great time at dinner with Mr. Haiping and we thank him for supplying with two of his best guides.

Today we are driving to Dulan in the Tibetan Autonomous Region which is 400km (249 miles) away. Shortly after we left Xining City we picked highway 109 which is the road to Lhasa. This roadway was built by the Chinese Liberation Army approximately 50 years ago in a huge scale labor project that lasted many years. A lot of people died during it's construction and they say that if you laid the number of casualties head to toe, they would extend from Xining City all the way to Lhasa or about 1900 kilometers long! That's about 1180 miles long.

About two hours into this day we crossed into the Tibetan Autonomous Region. We stopped at the top of a low mountain pass and took pictures with a man and his Yak.

Highest point reached today was 12,600 ft which is a new record for these two old Land Rovers, braking our previous elevation record set during our 1997 Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala expedition where we reached 11,200 feet near Mexico City.

I'm obliged to share some obligatory Land Rover content for my Mendo Recce friends in The Northern California Land Rover Club back home. The Rovers are running stock 2.25 liter engines with Rodchester B-series carburetors. The carb main jets measure .048 inch in diameter and they run well at sea level all the way up to about 7000 feet. Thanks to Pat Young, our pre-expedition mechanic, and Keith and Tim of British Pacific and the folks at Ace Fuel Systems in Santa Clara, we have a variety of smaller jets to install for the big climb that is store for us three days from now. We wanted to see how high we could climb with the stock jets so I can now report that the 2.25L engine with stock timing and a Rodchester carb can climb to about 10,500 feet before it begins to run poorly and 12,300 feet before it starts missing. For the kids listening, missing means one or more of the engine's cylinders isn't firing like it should.

We spent a large portion of our day above 11,000 feet but ended up in city of Dulan at 10,500 feet so this was a good day of altitude acclimation to prepare our bodies for the steep climb ahead up the Tibetan Plateau.

There were some beautiful vistas (vista is Spanish for View for the kids in the audience) as we drove across the North-Eastern portion of the Tibetan plateau. We passed two large lakes. Koko Nor is China's largest lake which measures slightly smaller than the Great lakes in the United States. Following Koko Nor we passed rubber mountain. The Tibetan people found the earth around this mountain to be very soft so they called it rubber mountain. Around the corner from Rubber Mountain was Chaka lake. Both Koko Nor and Chaka are salt lakes but Chaka is saltier. Koko Nor is a name given to this great body of water by the British. The Chinese know this lake as Qinghai which is also the name of the province we're in right now. It contains huge numbers of fish. We stopped off briefly at this lake to take pictures.

The Chinese previously used this lake for torpedo testing but they don't any longer. The Tibetans, however, know this lake as the Western Sea. That's what it was called during ancient times. According to our guide, the Tibetan Nature Oracle and other spiritual leaders converge upon this lake to locate the next incarnation of Buddha. After the Dalai Lama dies, the monks search the land for the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama whose name means Ocean of Wisdom. They begin their search by reading the waters of the Koko Nor Lake. If they see waves and choppy water, they know he is in a mountainous region. If they see calm waters he is in the plains or on the plateau. By reading the waters, an artist is able to sketch his location, after which a full scale search begins to find an area that resembles the sketch. Their search takes a long time and usually, by the time they find him, the new Dalai Lama is just a baby or young boy.

It was a day of endless rattles as we traveled a 150 kilometer dirt and gravel road that was very bumpy. Our speed on these roads was 40 kilometers per hour or 25 miles per hour - that is, when I was driving. At mid-day Doug took the wheel of Alaska and gave the suspension a good workout by going 20 miles per hour faster. Doug and Earle did most of the driving today and they did a fantastic job navigating some pretty treacherous road. There was a good deal of off roading involved. The majority of driving today was dirt roads. Highway 190 is under heavy construction west of the Koko Nor Lake all the way to Dulan.

Along this stretch I saw a Tibetan boy sitting on the ground, with feet outstretched-a large rock in front of him, a iron spike for a chisel and a large piece of iron in his hand. He was making gravel for the roads in the most manual process you can imagine. There was a huge pile of gravel beside him and he seemed very happy in his work although the indigenous people of this region seem genuinely happy at all times.

Once again, we drove at night which we don't like to do but, unlike last night, there was no rain and the road, for the most part, was clear of other vehicles and obstacles. We arrived in Dulan at about 9:00 pm.

Well, that's it for today. We hope you will tune in tomorrow for more from Team AroundTheWorld1999! Good night.