Chen Miaolin Leads Kaiyuan Cycling Team to Challenge the "Kaiyuan New Tibet Route" Skyward Journey

    "The New Tibet Highway is even harder to traverse than the Shu Road. The Kudi Pass is perilous, like the gates of hell; the Mazha Pass is steep, rising a sheer 5,300 feet; the Heiqa Pass twists with ninety-nine bends; the Jieshan Pass curves so sharply you can almost touch the sky..." The Xinjiang-Tibet Highway is the highest-altitude, most treacherous, worst-conditioned, and harshest-environment highway in the world. It is China's National Highway 219, yet it is inferior even to a county-level road in inland China. Where the road is drivable, vehicles inevitably leave behind trails of dust stretching for miles; where driving is impossible, the road is riddled with potholes over 50 centimeters in diameter. As for sections washed away by floods, traversing riverbeds or wading through fields of cobblestones becomes the only option.

But what is most terrifying about the New Tibet Highway is not the poor road conditions, but the high altitude and thin oxygen that cause altitude sickness.

    On May 24, led by Chen Miaolin, Chairman of Kaiyuan Tourism Group, the Kaiyuan cycling team set off for Urumqi. A team of 15 cyclists began a 25-day ride on the "Kaiyuan New Tibet Route – Xinjiang to Tibet." This route primarily follows the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway, starting from Dushanzi in Xinjiang and ending in Lhasa, Tibet, with an average altitude of over 4,500 meters. It is the most challenging ride the Kaiyuan cycling team has undertaken to date in terms of environment, climate severity, and mental endurance.