Around China in 100 Days

Huangshan to Hangzhou – Day 20

We rode out from Huangshan and onto the G324 towards Hangzhou.

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Lulu told me of a place called Xiatai (下呔), known to many Chinese people as a beautiful place in this area. The very small turnoff to the village (I would have passed right by it) led us up a thin concrete path among terraces of blooming yellow rapeseed flowers to a small village at the top of a valley covered in yellow.

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The road changed from slightly old and worn to excellent asphalt at the Yulingguan pass (昱岭关), the Anhui/Zhejiang border, and I was confident of making Hangzhou in good time. We had the goal of getting to the Lifan shop, just outside Hangzhou (on the far eastern side), so that we could get the bikes serviced and looked at properly. “No problem” I thought “I have a GPS, we can go anywhere”.

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It started to get dark before we found a place to stay. We had already been on the road for 11 hours and I thought it would be a good idea to find the Lifan shop (or a place near it) so that it would be easy to get to in the morning. However, I didn’t know exactly how to get there (because the map on my GPS is a bit old), only that it was on the other side of Hangzhou, and that I needed to find a road leading south-east.

With my GPS zoomed right in, I didn’t realise we were in the centre of the city until we drove along a lakefront. Lulu pulled up beside me at a traffic light and let me know, very clearly, that we were in the centre of the city (right beside Hangzhou’s famous Xihu, or the west lake), and we shouldn’t be there. We then spent a rather stressful hour or so, trying to get back out of the city before the dreaded traffic police found us and gave us a traffic fine. We made like the lines of electric scooters (as much as motorcycles loaded up with bags can) on the road fringes and ducked down alleys when we saw police cars in the rear-view mirrors.

We passed under the city’s ring road and found ourselves on a national highway, a place we were finally within our rights to be. The problem now was to find a place to stay for two very tired motorcyclists. It was more than an hour, in suddenly very cold air, to find a guest-house cheap enough to stay at. The idiot navigator (me) volunteered to pay for separate rooms for the night, as relations had frozen in the cold Hangzhou air.

Hangzhou – Day 21

We had another chat in the morning morning. I apologised for the previous night’s decisions and promised that we won’t drive at night again, unless absolutely necessary.

We decided not to go get the bikes serviced at the Lifan shop. They were running fine and it was too much hassle to try and find a road leading in the opposite direction to which we should be going just for a simple service. I would have rather paid for another shop to do it than waste time and energy like that.

We bussed into Hangzhou, the first time using a bus on the trip, and we got to where we needed to be without too much hassle. Lulu met with a friend, LaoHu, she met in Kuala Lumpur while traveling last year. Soon after arriving in Malaysia, she had her bags stolen, but she continued her travels nonetheless. She offered to lend me her bike to ride around Xihu while they caught up together.

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I went back to the restaurant to get Lulu and we were off around a different part of the lake.

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We walked to the Qinghefang Old street market after dinner and bought a couple of things, before taking two buses out to our guest-house.

With all the walking, it wasn’t exactly a day for recovery, but the chilled-out atmosphere of the places we visited was definitely relaxing. And we weren’t arguing. There was that too.

Hangzhou to Qixing - Day 22

I had a flat back tyre in need of attention, so I had to get that some air (which I learnt was "Da qi"）before we headed off in the morning.

I found navigating around Hangzhou so much easier in the daytime. Our destination was Shanghai, some 200 kilometres away, but we still needed to get our bikes serviced.

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We stopped at a service station in Renhe, Zhejiang, a place affiliated with Lifan. Lulu’s bike got lavished with care from one mechanic, while my bike had engine oil smeared and slapped all over it in the worst case of an easy job I’ve ever seen. My poor degraded bike. I was also concerned about vibration coming from the front wheel. I didn't know what was wrong, so I got my (fairly disappointing mechanic by this point) to give it the once over. He had a bit of a drive around for a minute or two and came back with the answer I was already expecting: "No problems". If it aint broke, don't fix it, I thought.

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For most of the day we spent driving through towns, dodging all kinds of vehicles swerving into our path, not that that was out of the ordinary, just that we spent more time dodging death than usual. There wasn't much to speak of in terms of scenery and the drive was fairly boring, but at least the weather was nice for most of the day.

Once during one of our rest stops, one of us (I can't remember who, probably me) brought up the topic of the future of the expedition and once more we were arguing unintelligibly at each other, accomplishing nothing except to get the other's blood boiling.

We stopped at dusk in Qixing (sticking as close as possible to my pledge of no night driving), near Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, and parked up in the lobby of the first guest house we came to.

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this IS great reading, keep it coming. its great to come home from work and have something to read like this.. very inspiring.

We were still some distance from Shanghai, so we took a bus to Jiaxing train station, where we hopped on a train to the Shanghainan train station. We metro-ed to Renmin square for lunch, followed by a visit to the nearest ICBC, where we put the last of our cash donations into the fundraising account. We had decided to close the account because we wouldn't be seeking cash donations from Chinese people any more, mainly because we no longer thought we could get around the restrictions on donations to foreign NGOs inside China. I would continue to do my best to encourage donations from sources outside China.


From there we walked to the Bund, Shanghai's famous historical riverbank, for a good gawk at both sides of the Huangpu river and the iconic Shanghai skyline.

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Then the Shanghai museum for a dose of history and culture.

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We met Ada, another of Lulu's friends (who helped her get the place in her Chevrolet commercial), who showed us around Tianzifang and found us a restaurant which had excellent xiaolongbao.

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After dinner, Lulu went off to see more friends and I took the metro to Pudong, on the eastern side of the Huangpu.

Riding the elevator up the Shanghai World Financial Centre made me feel like I had walked into a 3D version of Halo, but the view at the top was definitely impressive.

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I walked around Pudong for a while, and tried to find a novel way across the river to the youth hostel on the other side, but it was too late. The lights on the Oriental Pearl tower had gone out and the Bund sightseeing tunnel (I had been told not to waste my money on it, but I wanted to try it anyway) had closed. I made my way back to the metro, swiped through the turnstile and waited for the next train. The board said it was a 15 minute wait. So I waited, and when the clock reached T -10 minutes, it changed back to 15 minutes. I waited some more. A train rushed past with its lights out and then an announcement in Chinese came over the station speakers. The board changed again and I knew that I wasn't going to take the metro that night. I made my way back up towards the exit to find the roller doors had been pulled down and locked. I had been locked into a metro station in Pudong. Bugger!

Someone must have seen the strange foreigner on the security cameras, wandering around like a lost child, and someone came out from somewhere and unlocked the doors for me. My last option was the taxi, the (relatively) stress-free (and boring) way to get where you need to be in a completely new city, especially when you have Chinese characters in your travel guide.

Shanghai – Day 24

I had a western-style, rooftop breakfast at the Captain’s youth hostel facing the Pudong skyline.

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We met Maria Tree from the Half the Sky Foundation office in Shanghai. It was really great to see her and talk about what she’s doing and what we’re doing with the trip. She explained the finer details of HTS’ activities to Lulu in Chinese and made herself understood much easier than I could. This was the high point of our visit to Shanghai，and turned out to be instrumental to the continuation of the journey, because it meant that Lulu and I now understand each other when it comes to the fundraising part. I came out of the restaurant feeling like a load had been lifted from my shoulders.

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Lulu went to the art museum and then to meet some of her friends that had just arrived in Shanghai while I trained back to Jiaxing. Lulu missed the last train and had a sleepless night in the Shanghainan train station.

Shanghai to Danyang – Day 25




Overall, an unremarkable day. Plenty of buildings, traffic, roads, concrete. The day was overcast, smoggy and a little cold and I was wearing my gloves, so I was reluctant to bring out the camera because that would mean half an hour of trying to get my gloves (the largest the shop had!!) back on. I would realise later in the trip, that the hardest (yet one of the most important) item to get right for an undertaking like this must be gloves, at least in China anyway.

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We drove past Taihu lake, heading north on the G104, and we decided not to head to Nanjing. It was a little out of the way, there are motorcycle restrictions inside the city, and it would take a good day to have a look around and see the sights, a day we didn’t really have. I also wanted to make up some time and get to Beijing as fast as possible over the next couple of days because we were way behind schedule. So we opted for the boring option and canned our Nanjing plans, heading instead to Zhenjiang.



We started looking for a place in Danyang and as we came across a promising hotel, we noticed a crowd milling around a guy covered in blood, a crashed motorcycle nearby. A police car and an ambulance arrived not long after, and the crowd quickly dispersed, but the reminder of what can happen when driving a motorcycle stayed with us.

Danyang to Huai’an – Day 26

The sun peeped out from the clouds mid-morning, warming my jacket and the air rushing past as I drove down towards Zhengjiang. Getting up this morning was hard, as always after a rest day throws out the daily rhythm, but a tasty egg fried rice breakfast cured the blurred vision and creaky bones.

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Not knowing eactly how we would cross the ChangJiang, we drove through Zhenjiang which had apparently banned motorcycles registered outside Jiangsu (after noticing the noticing the "No motorcycles" road sign). Driving skittishly through to the banks of the Yangtze where the GPS had led us and, expecting to see a bridge across the river, instead we drove up to a ferry terminal.

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Several kuai and 20 minutes later we were on the road at the other side.

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We crossed into Anhui on the S312 (and noticed a significant decrease in road quality right at the provincial border), past Tianchang, or 天长 and back into Jiangsu to stop for the night in an industrial city called Huai’an (淮安) which is the birthplace of Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People’s Republic of China.

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Awesome report Lulu & Jeremy ! Thanks a lot for sharing, it's also inspiring in terms of road and routes !

One question : I see you're both using the GDW saddle bags. We've been discussing about them in this thread, would you care giving us a review on them ? How are they holding up ? Strong points, weaknesses ?

Zaozhuang to Ji’nan – Day 28

We visited the Mencius (also known as Mengzi or 孟子) temple in Zoucheng. Mencius is a prominent figure in Confucianism, being the second most famous Confucianist after Confucius himself. He wandered around China for 40 years during the Warring States Period (403–221 BCE), trying to convert rulers and lords along the way.

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While it would have been great to hike Taishan, a mountain climbed by the most famous people in Chinese history (and also the most climbed mountain in China), we were already way behind where we needed to be. I doubted our muscles could get us up to the top and it would have taken the best part of a day so we had to give it a pass.

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Lulu had organised to do a lecture at ’Where?’(那儿) cafe in Ji’nan, the capital of Shandong, which I wasn’t interested in at that time. About thirty people turned up and she was busy talking when I left to try and find myself a place to sleep (she planned to sleep on the couch in the cafe). One place said “Fine, just take your bags off and put them in the office, you need to wait” (in Chinese, so that’s the approximate meaning I got from it). So I went back and waited at the cafe. Going back about an hour later, the owner told me he cant take foreigners, so I would have to find somewhere else to stay. I put the bags back on the bike, and then Lvcuiyi, the owner of the cafe, asked me to do a short TV interview for a reporter friend of his about what we are doing after which he suggested I put my bags in the cafe until Lulu finished her presentation. After that we could find a place for me to stay.

We were in Shandong during Qingming, or the Tomb sweeping festival, so there were plenty of people out burning paper to honour their ancestors.

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But after Lulu finished, Some of Lvcuiyi’s friends invited us to a traditional Shandong dinner, which was very tasty and went quite late.

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By then, the hostels had closed. So I was offered a place to stay, and I asked if it was alright if I paid them for their hospitality (as I said I would, I still felt like a bit of an idiot). I spent about 10 minutes trying to explain why I wanted to pay for a night’s stay. I think a couple of the guys got it. We left our bags at the cafe (30 minutes walk away) and, dead on my feet, I traipsed up the stairs of a student dormitory and flopped on the couch at 2am.

Ji’nan to Nanpi – Day 29

Had a short and fitful sleep, so I woke up still very tired from the day before. I got a call from Lulu ordering me to get downstairs ASAP because the guys that we stayed with had a morning class. Not such a good start to the day.

It was drizzly and a little cold, and still half asleep while I put the bags on the motorcycle, Lulu and I started to get on each others nerves, which would culminate in an on-road verbal explosion later in the day.

The drive was unremarkable. Cloudy, little cold, and not much in the way of scenery after crossing the Yellow River, but the roads were good and at one point in took me more than half an hour to catch up with Lulu after I stopped to figure out our route.

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We got into Dezhou and I thought she ran a red light (I’m pretty sure she did) but the accusation did nothing for her mood. She sulkily mentioned being hungry. I started off, intending to find a cheap place to eat outside the main city area. Not long after that, I realised she wasn’t behind me any more and stopped to wait for her to catch up. She drove past me minutes later, not even slowing down, so I hurried to the next set of traffic lights to catch her. I pulled up beside her. “Where did you go?”. “Are you crazy?!! she screamed, “there was a jiaozi (dumpling) place just back there, didn’t you see it?”. I was surprised for a fraction of a second, but that gave way to cold fury “Calm down!!” I yelled back at her. “Can’t you see I’m looking for a place”. I drove off, my illiterate pride smarting a little and keeping an eye on the rear view mirror to see if she was following.

Five minutes later, I recognised the characters for noodle house (面馆) and stopped. She asked me not to speak to her for the rest of the day, and I knew she needed space, so I ate lunch by myself.

We drove on for another 80 kilometres, each rider stopping at their own leisure, waiting for the other, but not communicating, until it was close to dusk and I thought it best to stop early at a fairly nice Lvguan in Nanpi.

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We had a long talk about what went wrong during the day and sorted ourselves out with a mutual apology. I will never forget the Chinese characters for jiaozi (饺子).

Nanpi to Beijing – Day 30

We passed 5000 kilometres together in Cangzhou, Hebei. We were both cheery and refreshed after the talk the night before and a good night’s rest.Our 5000 kilometres per month would be pretty standard the whole way through, despite my hopes that we would beef up our daily average.

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We came across a couple of roadworks, the biggest of which was the G104 heading north from Tianjin into Beijing. After talking to a local rider, we found the way around along a fantastic country road as the sun was setting.

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It was dark before we got into Beijing and there were a couple of times when I nearly hit pedestrians, walking along the shoulder of the road wearing black clothing, not exactly the wisest thing to do. In the interest of potentially saving a life, I dispensed with common road courtesy and drove in the middle of my lane with my high beams up.

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We met Annie, who Lulu had been in touch with for weeks, outside the fourth ring road (motorcycles without Beijing A plates can have issues with the police inside the fourth ring road) and we found a place to park our bikes.

We had dinner and then were off to find the guest house that Annie had arranged for us, only to find that they can’t take foreigners. Half asleep and lugging my body weight in ungainly bags, I asked if it was okay if I could sleep on the couch. Annie said it was no problem; she had been in contact with Lulu for most of the trip, and she understood what we were doing.

Safe! We made it to Beijing!

Beijing – day 31

Lulu stayed back at Annie's because she wasn't feeling very well and it took me a while to get my bearings on the way out from the apartment. We had arrived in a taxi in the middle of the night, so I wasn't quite sure where I was on the map of Beijing in my Lonely Planet. I walked around for a couple of hours, ate some McDonalds, which had never tasted so good, and found a Metro station so I could do my tourist thing.

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I didn't really know what to do after the Tiananmen square because it was getting late, so I headed to Dongcheng to check out the Hutongs, Beijing's narrow alleys.

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I found them incredibly interesting in the cool, spring, orange-tinted dusk as I wandered around. I found a bar with a Chinese rock band doing a sound check and stopped for a beer as a one-man audience before heading off for some noodles beside some instrument shops and a place called the Bed bar. This stylishly decorated establishment really refueled my spirits. We have nothing like it in Chongqing, so I had a couple of glasses of wine on the beds/couches and listened to some very relaxing western style music. Just what I needed after a month driving a motorcycle, day after day after day.

Beijing – Day 32

The night before I arranged to meet Lulu at the 798 art area with XiaoZhu, a friend of Lulu's who once worked at a youth hostel in Zhongdian (also known as Shangrila) in Yunnan with her. I managed to do a little bit of internet in the morning on one of the hostel computers and found a friendly invitation waiting for the both of us. Richard (AKA Lao Jia Hou) from the Mychinamoto forum kindly invited us out for a Saturday ride with him and a couple of his mates.

It would have been great to get to meet some of the Beijing bikers and I should have organised my activities a little better before getting to Beijing.

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My girlfriend recently went to Beijing and I asked her to take drop off some cold weather gear (a full body rain suit and a Powerlet heated vest) to a friend, which was great because I knew that I could manage some seriously cold weather. I chucked these (rather bulky) items into my increasingly ragged looking Bass bag, where they stayed for the remainder of the trip. I never needed the rain suit (except for when we slept on a very cold marble floor in Inner Mongolia), and I could never justify taking the time and effort to get the power socket installed on my bike for the heated vest because I never felt like it would be cold enough to use, now that we had to cancel our plans to drive to Haerbin.

We metro-ed to the Peace Cafe, on a hutong near the Forbidden City, where Lulu made another presentation to thrity poeple squeezed in to a small room. There was no space for me, and I wasn't directly involved, so I sat outside and enjoyed the view.

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Beijing to Gubeikou - Day 33

We got started late (as usual) so the plan of getting to Simatai in the morning to do the great wall hike by the afternoon started to look shakey. We had a healthy brunch of dumplings and veges with Annie and Zhuzhu (XiaoZhu's nickname, funny because it sounds like the Chinese word for pig) before saying goodbye and thanks to Annie. ZhuZhu had decided to come with us to Chengde, so he courageously hopped on the back of Lulu's bike to brave the Beijing traffic.

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We picked up our bikes from the parking lot outside the third ring road and Lulu found her bike keys. She had been looking for them all morning and found them resting comfortably in the ignition of her bike, which had been left alone for three nights. It may or may not have been my fault, as I was the one who chained them together. I guess leaving them in a carpark next to a traffic police booth did the trick.

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It took a couple of hours to get around Beijing, avoiding the inner city, but soon we were cruising along at a good speed. The landscape started to change to arid scrubland and we started climbing through hills and valleys north of Beijing. We passed by the Miyun reservoir, by far the largest source of water for Beijing, looking very empty.

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Driving to Simatai we came across a sign saying that this section of the great wall was closed for "internal transformation of the scenic spot". We asked some locals if there was any way in, and they said that a new resort was being built there, and the whole section was closed off. Looking for an authentic Great Wall experience, we were surely grateful to the developers for closing off one of the highly regarded parts of the wall, while they went about their business in anticipation of the great tourist profit the development will surely bring in.

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We decided to drive on anyway and see what we could, but the side road leading to the section was closed off with a checkpoint, so no hiking the Simatai great wall today. Quite a shame, because it looked like it would have been incredible.

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We drove to Gubeikou at dusk, past pieces of great wall sticking into the darkening sky from ridges above the valley, and found a Lvguan for the night

That's Rock n Roll.

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Gubeikou to Jinshanling to Chengde - Day 34

We drove to the Jinshanling great wall after breakfast. Lulu and Zhuzhu wanted to find less expensive ways in, but in the end we all opted for the less adventurous option of paying the 50 kuai entrance fee.

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The part closest to the entrance had been renovated recently. It looked nice and airbrushed, but we were keen to find a more authentic part of the wall. There was plenty of hiking involved, and we soon got separated by the level of exercise we each wanted to exert. After a couple of hours hiking along the wall, which got more dilapidated and the scenery more breathtaking, I came across a sign announcing the end of my hike. "the Simatai Great Wall is closed". I kept walking because signs aren't much of a deterrent when you're looking at high ridges topped with Great Wall watch towers overlooking huge drops. I came across a group of Lithuanians who had the same idea and were coming back the opposite way. They said that there was an official looking guard in one of the watch towers watching out for overzealous tourists and turning them back. My plans for flouting the rules protecting the "internal transformation" were dashed.

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I walked the 8 kms back through a detour down the hillside built for those who had come as far as was permitted by the sign, all the way to the Jinshanling entrance along a nice newly paved road. Minivan taxis stopped every now and again to offer me rides (for a price).

For those who would appreciate a baksheesh-free way of enjoying one of the wonders of the world, this road forks left at the last paved-road intersection before the main Jinshanling gate. 5-8 kilometres up the road should be a flight of stone steps leading up to the right, overlooked by a pagoda (which was under construction 9 months ago). Keep in mind that by now it could well have someone manning a money collecting station at the bottom of the stairs.

I met up with Lulu and Zhuzhu who had made it about halfway along the wall and we headed back to Gubeikou to get our bags and quickly packed our bikes and headed back into Hebei to Chengde.

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We had some issues finding a place for us all to stay, the main problem (again) was the fact that I'm not Chinese and most of the places we asked couldn't take foreigners. In the end we found a two bed room for the three of us and Zhuzhu and I played paper-scissors-rock to see who would be lumped with the middle spot. I lost. Dammit!!

Chengde to Guojiatun - Day 35

I visited the Puning temple while the 80 kuai entrance fee convinced Lulu that she should write one of her articles for the paper back in Chongqing. Puning temple was built in the Qing dynasty and is one of eight temples built around the Emperor's former summer palace in Chengde to show respect to the ethnic minorities of the empires' neighbours and vassal states, in this case, the Tibetans.

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Inside the main temple stands a towering 22metre high wooden statue of Guanyin, the buddhist goddess of mercy. This is the largest wooden sculpture of Guanyin in the world.

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By the time I left the temple, Lulu had finished her article under a tree near the bikes. Not only did she save money by staying outside, she also saved a couple of kuai by looking after the bikes herself.

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We had the oil changed and chains tightened and other bits and pieces outside Chengde. I was particularly concerned about the roads in Inner Mongolia because I had been told that they could be pretty bad, so we had to make sure the bikes were happy before the roads gave them any punishment. I picked up some spare chain and master links, which could have come in handy much further down the road.

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The further north we got, the more empty the roads became, which made the going easier, faster and more fun. We started to pass iced over rivers, still unthawed from the winter, and small villages among vast spaces of land and mountains covered with tufts of sun-bleached grass. After the massive urban sprawls that we had been riding through for so long, for me at least, it felt like heaven.

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We stopped in a small, quiet village at a family guest house, who were very friendly, served us a meal and even let us use their internet in their lounge while an old man snored in a bed against the far wall.The room was very small, but we managed to pile our bags between the beds and hoist ourselves inside without too much fuss.

We didn't have a particular destination in mind as there is a distinct lack of cities in northern Hebei. Not the worst situation to be in; I certainly had had enough of crowded urban areas by that point.

Guojiatun to Yuanshangdu – Day 36

We quickly packed our bags, which was a little harder than usual because of the size of our room.

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We continued through the beautiful valleys and iced rivers of northern Hebei, slowly climbing in altitude towards the steppes and stopping every now and again to appreciate our surroundings.

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We rolled down through the last pass onto vast plains stretching to the horizon and soon came to the border with Inner Mongolia. I thought that the road quality might change at the border, but it was decently paved asphalt.

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The only tourist sign we had come across for the day told us to go down a side road, so we did, and came to a series of lakes covered in thawing ice, various bird life swimming around in what must have been a wildlife sanctuary.

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The next tourist sign we followed led us down an awfully corrugated gravel road to a Mongolian culture centre, which was deserted except for what must have been the owner who came out of his conventional looking house to see what the dogs were barking at. The house was at the back of a cluster of solid looking concrete gers. Obviously the centre didn’t demonstrate the nomadic history of the Mongols, unless they had a big flatbed truck hidden around nearby.

Out on the Inner Mongolian plains, the sense of freedom that I tasted heading north from Beijing became a full body sensation. The roads were well paved and the horizon wide and burning with the setting sun.

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We came to an agreement over lodging at the first place we stopped at in Yuanshangdu, a town off the main road in the middle of nowhere.

Yuanshangdu to Huade – Day 37


We headed out of Yuanshangdu out west and soon hit some pretty bad roads, the first length of difficult road since Guizhou. After about 30 minutes of driving through gravel and potholes, we came to a tarmac road running parallel. Lulu blamed the navigator again, I blamed the 2 year old map loaded on the GPS. I didn't mind so much. It's good to have some variation in road texture.

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But that was only the start. We branched off from the main road heading back into Hebei, and soon found ourselves in a sun scorched, wind torn landscape with yet more gravel roads and locals herding horses with motorcycles. It took a long time to find a place to have lunch, but when we came to the intersection of a main road heading to Manzhouli we found a sole building with trucks parked outside. Stopping was a no-brainer as we were both hungry, and the wind was starting to get quite bad and large dust devils twisted, writhed and rose into the air in all directions.

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Continuing on down the county road we came across Eeyore and friends wandering along the road.

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I did a little of my own wandering and drove up a side road as Lulu was catching up. I'm not sure if this is part of the Gobi desert, but it certainly looked like a desert to me.

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We got into Huade before dusk and the only problem finding a place to stay was pairing up our expectations of price with those of potential hosts. While I like the cheap rooms, I’m always a little paranoid about whether the cops will care whether I’m there and whether my hosts might get in trouble for taking a suspicious looking foreigner and his collaborator.

Huade to Sunid Youqi – Day 38

We drove along roads lined with wind generators. As a source of energy, we could understand how much they generate as we spent plenty of energy trying to fight the wind that makes these propellers spin.

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In search of a little more entertaining terrain, we ventured off onto a dirt track for a break, soon to be accosted by a herd of sheep.

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Again, obeying the directions from tourist road signs, we drove off down a gravel road looking for a temple, but instead we came across a newly constructed complex. It didn’t look like a temple and after parking our bikes, we saw a scooter following our tracks with bags of vegetables off the side. The two guys who greeted us and invited us inside turned out to be the security guard and the supervisor of construction of the site. They offered us a really good lunch and gave us a tour. This place was the site of a rather important man in Inner Mongolia, which could be seen by the seven horses on the eaves of the most important building (the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City has nine horses on its eaves).

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At its height in the 1930s, the estate had three cars and its own airplane. Not long after that, the Japanese invaded, and the duke (I assume the right translation is duke, or baron) cooperated with the Japanese army so that his dreams of an independent Inner Mongolia could be realised. After the 1949 reunification, he was put in prison and his estate fell into ruins. Over 50 years later, it is being rebuilt and should be open to the public late 2011.

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It was pretty interesting for me, and quite fascinating for Lulu (who could understand everything the temporary guides said, and translated some for me).
As we got into Sunid Youqi, we contemplated going to Erenhot, on the border with Mongolia, and even entertained thoughts of going into Mongolia.

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But we decided to be boring and stay in Sunid Youqi and watch the sun set on the desert.

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Thanks for the detailed and engaging account of your trip. I like that you write honestly about your thoughts, worries and differences. I'm also glad that you seemed to be getting over them at this point in the trip.

Looking forward to the rest, getting out of the ugly urban china and into the vast emptiness that is western china!

This is great stuff - well worth the wait! I'm glad you've found the time to write all this up - I'm looking forward to the Xinjiang stories! (And still bummed we didn't get another chance to meet up when you were in Yunnan this past summer).

Sunid Youqi to Hohhot – Day 39

We were told that there weren’t many petrol stations on the road between Sonid Youqi and Hohhot so we filled up our tanks as much as possible before starting off.

We couldn’t find any restaurants on the deserted plains, so stopped outside a building next to some concrete gers. It was yet another tourist place closed until the new season, and the only occupants seemed to be security guards. Lulu asked them if they had anything to eat and soon we were eating some quickly prepared pork with mantou, which I thought was quite generous. I got Lulu to ask if they would like any money, and they said “As you please”. They looked disappointingly at the 10 kuai note I handed over, probably expecting more from the foreigner who over lunch told them how much an English teacher in a second-tier Chinese city.

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We headed towards Gegentala and Huixengtile, well known for it’s grasslands and exhibitions of Mongolian culture, but all we saw as we drove past were deserted tourist complexes rows and rows of concrete gers, angry dust devils out in the distance and the persistent high winds gave us the reason why no-one goes there at that time of year. Throughout the ride, I harbored a strange desire to ride through a dust devil as it crossed the road. I knew it was an incredibly dumb idea, and fortunately, I never came across an obliging vortex that would help me out; we saw so many, but they always crossed the road in front of me.

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We found a Buddhist temple down another rough road and took some time to check it out. Tibetan Buddhism became an important part of Mongolian culture as far back as the Mongol empire, when Altan Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and head of the empire and his officials converted to the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.

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Inner Mongolia is divided in two by a mountain range that separates the plains from the lowlands, where Hohhot and Baotou are situated. We met two elderly gentlemen on the twisting roads on their way back to Hohhot after a light day of mountain-biking.

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Lulu had been busy on couchsurfing again and contacted a couple of people in Hohhot, and a very nice Jennie offered to take us. We had some issues navigating the streets of Hohhot but we found a great restaurant and had Mongolian style cook-your-own-mutton and fried bread while we waited for her to finish work at one of the local English language schools.

Her apartment was very nice and spacious, which felt unusual after the shoeboxes we had been staying in. Luxuriously enough, there was even a bathtub.

We got a much needed sleep-in while Jennie left early to take a Saturday English classes. We were told to grab what we liked from the fridge and I sorted myself out with a tasty bacon and egg sandwich, but not before dropping some on the ground.

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We were both very slow getting up, watching TV and listening to some music, completely forgetting about the schedule and taking the opportunity to truly relax.

We had another talk about what we wanted from the tour. Lulu suggested that we should separate at some point in the near future, as we had stopped fundraising for the charity since Shanghai, and also as our traveling styles seemed to be quite different in a few important ways. She liked cities, and taking it slow so she could absorb the new cultures she came across. I wanted to experience the different landscapes of China, and I also enjoy a good challenge where I can push my limits. I also wanted to experience the cultures too, but I was afforded much less time than her which limited my flexibility. Essentially, all our troubles came down to a lack of that most infinitely valuable resource: time.

These differences in travel interests could be a challenge, especially when we were cranky at the end of a hard day. I had noticed that our personalities could be rather similar at times, which often led to a clash of wills. I was alarmed at the thought that she would be driving off by herself, but knew that the decision was hers to make. I knew it would be a disappointment to let the team fall apart just as we were about to get into western China, which I felt would be the more interesting and enjoyable part of the trip (or so everyone on MCM had been telling me:icon10:)

We agreed that the best option was to stick together, but there needed to be some compromise so we could take it easier with not so many days on the road. In order to slow things down I figured that we shouldn't go to Yunnan, and instead return to Chongqing through Kangding and Chengdu, which would give us an extra 5 days or so. We would need to take the route planning week by week and see how we managed.

We finally decided to go and see some of Hohhot in the afternoon. We visited the CITS branch (China International Travel Service) to see if we needed a permit to drive through western Inner Mongolia. We were told that we might be able to drive through on the road to Alashan Youqi, but the road to Ejina Qi was closed for the military, which meant we would miss Khara Khoto, a Mongolian fortress in the Gobi desert abandoned near the end of the Mongol empire's rule in China, when the Ming army diverted the nearby river, the only source of water, away from the fortress.

Lulu had arranged to do another presentation about her travels at a the Ashes of Time cafe, but this time not so many people turned up, possibly because of the short notice with which she placed the notice on Douban. It was still pretty cool and we had English speakers this time; Jennie and a friend of hers, Tara from Mongolia, came along so I could do some side commentary.

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Jennie invited us for drinks at the local bar, which I couldn’t turn down, but Lulu headed back to the apartment for an early night. We had a few beers, played some pool and talked about what has happened lately in Hohhot. It was good to have a lengthy conversation in English to some new people, and it was more than interesting to hear the stories that Jennie served up. We ended up going to a club, a spitting image of the clubs in Chongqing, and ended up leaving not long after.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by felix

Thanks for the detailed and engaging account of your trip. I like that you write honestly about your thoughts, worries and differences. I'm also glad that you seemed to be getting over them at this point in the trip.

Looking forward to the rest, getting out of the ugly urban china and into the vast emptiness that is western china!

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Cheers Felix. Western China was the highlight of the trip, by a long, long way!!:thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pat

This is great stuff - well worth the wait! I'm glad you've found the time to write all this up - I'm looking forward to the Xinjiang stories! (And still bummed we didn't get another chance to meet up when you were in Yunnan this past summer).

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Xinjiang was great, but the real gold happened in Qinghai, just before we met you:riding:

I might be heading over to Yunnan again sooner than I thought. I'll let you know.

I like this forum very much. Really very informative.

just another quick note to say i am reading and finding it great, keep up the good work :-D

Hohhot – Day 41

I had another sleep in again while I slowly recovered from the night before. Lulu and I decided to go to the local market and the museum in the early afternoon. The museum idea was quickly squashed when Lulu realised that the museum was closed. Then followed some intense discussion about whether or not we should stay in Hohhot another day. I really didn’t want to give up one of the precious few rest-days we had left, and she really, really, really wanted to see the museum (the captions and information of which turned out to be only in Chinese). I relented on the agreement that she wouldn’t protest if we drove on harder for the next couple of days. Apparently, she appreciates cities more than I do, where I enjoy country riding much more.

We weren’t sure whether motorcycles were allowed inside Hohhot, but we had been told it was fine. As I drove up to a set of traffic lights with Lulu on the back, a policeman in sunglasses sauntered up to us in the middle of the road and told me to get off, took my keys, and told me to walk my bike through the intersection to park on the other side. Looking for my license, I realised that I had left it at the apartment. My bike is too big for Lulu to drive, so I had to walk back and get the papers, which took an hour or so out of our day. It was a right pain in the ass, and I made a mental note to always have my license with me. At least he didn’t give us a fine. At first I thought he pulled me over because I was the only motorcycle on the road, but he appeared to be one of the several policemen manning a traffic control station, pulling over taxis and trucks as well.

The markets were underwhelming. We were looking for handicrafts and a few quality gifts, but most of the things we came across were outrageously expensive, or made in factories in Tianjin, the kind of stuff you can find on Taobao. A trifle disappointed, we drove back to Jennie’s house where she had planned a pot luck dinner with the local English teachers (I forgot to bring food), drinks (I brought beer though) and poker (which I failed miserably at). Lulu went to sleep early again, and she was out cold when I checked her room.

I met a New Zealander at the party, Katie, who had been to India recently and we swapped some stories (after I gave up on poker) and absorbed each other’s accent.
After everyone decided to call it quits on the poker, we all headed out to KTV which was a little strange to see only expats at what is traditionally a Chinese pasttime. Another good night out in Hohhot.