Transhimalaya (Gangdise Shan) and Friendship Highway

Transhimalaya (Gangdise Shan)

snow-capped mountains

frozen river

frozen Takyd Co

The road across the Transhimalaya is extremely beautiful, but also very hard. The road has many stretches with altitudes over 5000m, and is not very well maintained, and there are not many truckstops and villages. However, there is regular truck and bus traffic. It is among the roads less traveled...

The Transhimalaya road leaves the 'northern route' from Amdo to Ali at Donco and joins the 'southern route' from Lhatse to Ali at Raka. Coqen is the only bigger (Chinese) town where a wide selection of supplies is available, the other settlements are Tibetan villages and wooden shacks as truck stops - you can usually still buy packages of instant noodles and biscuits there.
A traffic-control checkpoint is located at the bridge over a tributary river to the Sama Tasangpo just a few kilometers south of Coqen - no problems there coming from the North.

Other descriptions of this stretch across the Transhimalaya:
Kathmandu-Kashi "The Northern Route" (Janne Corax)

Friendship Highway

small road along Yarlung Tsangpo between Lhatse and Shigatse

village in the Yarlung Tsangpo valley
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turnoff of KyiChu valley to Lhasa
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There are basically three alternative routes between Lhasa and Shigatse:

From Shigatse to Lhatse, again there are two alternatives:

Other descriptions of the Friendship Higway in full length between Lhasa and Kathmandu:
Route descriptions Tibet Central (Fred Ferchaux)
Friendship Highway (Martin Adserballe)
Lhasa-Kathmandu, two alternatives (Janne Corax)
Tibet Overland, the book contains descriptions of all three major variants of the Friendship Highway