The Road to Deqin (cont.)

For those of you familiar with the curvy, two-lane, cliffside portion of California's Highway 1 near Big Sur, imagine being on that, only with the following changes:
(a) Longer -- we rode a roughly 180km section, though the road actually goes over 1500km further, to Lhasa.
(b) Higher -- from 2500 to almost 4300m of altitude;
(c) With more variable weather conditions -- we passed through rainy grey skies, blazing sun (and corresponding glare), clear skies but wind and cold, and finally rain and sleet again;
(d) 4x4s trying to pass you from behind, sometimes as you're rounding a curve;
(e) Occasional road construction -- landslide-clearing, or at least debris in the form of rock piles -- on the side of the road, narrowing it further; and
(f) For roughly the last 50 km, the pavement more or less turns to cobblestone.
Traffic

I'm pretty sure there's less traffic on the road to Deqin than on Hwy 1, but what it loses in four-wheeled vehicles, it makes up for with an increase in cows, yaks, and Tibetan monks.

Sometimes the traffic is less scenic. The group of workers accompanying this scene appeared to be clearing tree trunks and rocks that had resulted from a small landslide -- it had rained quite a bit recently. Note the lack of any separation between vehicle and construction/repair, construction/repair and slope, and (implied) vehicle and slope.
Detour

All of these conditions, plus a ten-minute detour when we missed a fork in the road and our driver had to execute a 6-point turn of said 38-person bus on this portion of the 2-lane road (see the tire tracks?), combined to turn a projected 5.5-hour drive into roughly eight hours.
Long Way Down

Nope, no guardrail. Just you and the road, and that biiiig slope.
Of course, there is something to be said for the view.
