When you plan to have own expedition you may need many arrangements required to success. Shipping is one of these and sometimes very important to success. I am lucky to have Tetsu. He was my room mate during collage era. And he work Japan’s biggest transportation company named Nippon Express. So we used this connection for Greenland Expedition, Antarctic Expedition, etc…

Then last night, we met again to discuss two potential future work 1) Kilimanjaro drilling for this month, and 2) the report for permafrost outreach network.  

I was looking for the printing company in US, Japan, China. We will have many permafrost temperature data, village description, educational materials next year at the end of this program. We like to summarize and making hard copy of permafrost reference book to delivery for the villages. It will be over 400 pages full color book!! It will be not cheap. So far China (Lanzhou) is the cheapest place to publish. If  I take this advantage, we need shipping from Lanzhou to Beijing, Seattle, and Anchorage… We discuss potential shipment from China to US. 

Kilimanjaro! of course the mountain, that’s the top of the Africa! We plan to drill at the summit in September (only 3 weeks from now!!)

After I left China to Japan. I travel around my friends from Japan Alpine Club, High mountain glacier driller… to collect information for drilling.

My drilling plan is that 1), I set shallow boreholes to install dataloggers 10 different elevation, 2) I will drill 5-10 class boreholes at summit (5890m) and the edge of the glacier (4700m). There are many difficulty such as generator power down, brill bit type, dry drilling etc. for this expedition. I try to figure  now in Japan including recruiting assistant.

Typical high mountain vegetation at Mt Kenya (4800m) in 1985.

Kilimanjaro from Kenya side in 1985.

Ricky Yuguchi’s 3rd village trip was complete! He flew over the Kotzubue sounds at this time. However, many of the permafrost monitoring sites had problem… I will contact each teacher later. Detail blog will be at:  http://husky-ricky.blogspot.com/

Cell phone is definitely recent world remarkable items! This made big change for expedition, mountaineering, other outdoor activities. In China, phone system is just great! Everybody have it now. You need buy SIM Card at arrival floor of the airport. You can have Chinese number and internet, e-mail for you phone. This network works all of the China including Tibet Plateau! The cost of SIM card is $10-20!

I bought double SIMcard phone in China. This phone fit two card! This means two numbers, two different phone companies in one phone! That is interesting and hope we will have similar system in US!

We back from the plateau to Lanzhou. Lanzhou is the capital city for Ganzu province, but also center of the permafrost research in China. Many institutes are located here in Lanzhou because of geographcally center of the China!!

Lanzhou is also the place to eat beef noodle soup!! Lanzhou noodle is so famous all of the China and this is my best noodle town!! When we go in to the noodle shop, they ask us what type of noodle do I want?? So this means they make noodle from dow by hand after ordering by scratch without any tools (less than $1)!! But waiting time is less than a minute!! Just amazing!

When you eat chinese food in US people thinking greasy sweet or hot food. That is big misunderstand and terrible thing. Also when you are in Paris you will see many chinese takeout. But this is pre-made and cold. They warm up microwave after ordering(terrible but better than US?!).

Anyway, real chinese food is everything, many different way of cooking. Just you could not make idea like Chinese food. Because of history, none of the area seriously cooking to develop food more than 4000-8000 years!! We found noodle in the ruins at least 1000BC. Chinese said, we can eat all of the 4 logs except table, 2legs except parents, and can eat flying object except airplane! 

This is also noodle family “Yow Myen Taku Koko”.

We eat sheep head today. We Japanese love to eat fish head (that is best part of the fish!). They said same things. It not bad, but I had a little warried about brain because mud cow disease.

Making noodle is just wonderful!

If you go somewhere, most of the time, people use road or railroad. Here Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is same thing today!  Train to Lhasa was finish in 2006 (total over 1100km). Most of section was overlying permafrost!! During the development period, many Chinese scientist and Engineer visiting Alaska. 

Clouds, feel closer here!

Here is the world highest train with permafrost! Permafrost temperature is not cold. We had our network village (school) here in Tibet!

After the railroad completion, I thought decreasing cargo/bus traffic on the road. Bus was almost absence today but not truck. Once it was heavy rain, road was getting mud pool. Almost all trucks were stack exactly same spot and taking 30-60 minutes to pass thru.

So this means, the car back of 50-100 truck have to stay here overnight!! Even you cannot U-turn.

Mud road is narrow, opposite direction trucks also need wait at 4700m elevation! Train makes another option today, that is big things! We appreciate Chinese permafrost scientists!

South side of the KunLun Mountain at Qunghai province is selected one of the most important parks in China. The area still living wild rare animals such dry high mountain condition.  This means illegal hunter also in that area.

If you have a chance to see this powerful Chinese move called “Kekexili- mountain patrol”, you have a deeply understand this region (but little bit violent to small kids!).

At the Kunlun Pass, one of the pingo is located next of the road. This maybe only the pingo had a stone sign with pingo. Chinese government try to blow up this mound for road construction.  

We left Golmud city at 8am, Four of us with Toyota Land cruiser  heading to Kunlun Mountain.

Kunlun Mountain is located northern edge of the Plateau. So we have to cross this big mountain for entering Tibet.

Just before pass, we saw small dune but still active! You can see powerline is in the dune!!

Here is Kunlun Mountain with glaciers.

Kunlun Pass is little less than 5000m altitude. It was not great  this hight for me, we drove within two hours to reach here  from Golmud (over 2000m difference!!!). After crossing this pass, we never drive down to lower altitude. The Plateau is keeping this hight another 1000km. 

Here is permafrost monitoring site!

I arrived Golmud (Geermu) railway station this morning. The overnight train was relatively comfortable. Once I arrived station Mr. Qiao pick me up. Golmud is about 2800m high next biggest city after Xining. It is cold and snow on the mountain.

I saw many hot water maker at the top of the building. it’s good for environmental!

We went shopping for food and preparing tomorrow!

At the dinner time, One of the engineer group back from plateau. we had a great Chinese dinner!

I left Mongolia moving to China yesterday. Xining is gateway town for Quinhai-Tibet Plateau, also the capital of the Quinhai province. The purpose of this trip is to visit Tibetan permafrost village “Amdo”. There is a borehole  with school in Amdo. Hopefully  I can connect internet and report it frequently.

Lighting above the Xining city, the gate of Tibet Plateau.

I like these classic vehicles still running on road!