As we approached the Qinghai/Sichuan border we started to climb a pass and my engine started spluttering and losing power, much worse than usual. I was concerned that there was something seriously wrong with the carburetor or fuel lines, but pushed that thought to the back of my mind. Lulu zoomed past me, as I assured myself that it was just the bike dealing with the altitude again.
We made it to the top of the pass at 4700 metres, and were into Sichuan, a province Lulu and I had been many times before. This made me feel very close to home now, and even though I was already late getting back to work (I was supposed to be back on the 6th of June), and I was fatigued from the lack of rest days since Charklik, I didn’t want it to end. I took one look into Qinghai from the pass, and got on the bike to leave Qinghai behind me.
We stopped at the Serxu Dzong temple which looked as though it was being renovated. Even though he was a bit shy , young monk volunteered to show us around,
I nearly got bitten by a guard dog again, but monks saved me again and threw rocks at it.
We were running low on petrol as we got into Shiqu (also known as Serxu Xian). We looked around for a Sinopec or Petrochina but had to settle for a local station as it was the only working one in town. As we pulled into the station, we saw an unusual looking fellow on a strange looking bike. A foreigner? It was Pat, a solo rider from Beijing who had scored a job in Kunming and also preferred to drive than fly.
It was a stroke of luck to meet him just by chance, as he was just about to leave, and we had only just arrived in time. a couple of minutes either side and we would have missed him completely.
It was 5pm and we were only half way to Manigango, after doing just over 100 kilometres. It was too far to make before nightfall, so we made a trip to the local monastery to see if we could stay the night, but they don’t allow women to stay on the grounds.
So we found a nice (a little pricey) bingguan out the front of an army office and had Sichuan food for dinner again. It was good to have a native English speaker to blab to, and talk about the ride with. Lulu’s English is good, but there are plenty of ways I could (and had, many many times) mix up my meanings with her. He also had plenty of interesting stories and had come to Shiqu by almost a completely different way from us.
Two's up on cryptographicide. Roadrunner, that's a heck of a story and from trying to imagine myself in your shoes at the time, I feel exhausted!
Amazing photos and videos. It must have been an effort to stop and take them all so thanks for all the hard work.
Cheers! Lulu was the one to have the foresight to take the time to take pictures and video. At that point nothing mattered more to me than to get to the end of the road.
02-29-2012, 04:39 AM
soberpete
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roadrunner
At that point nothing mattered more to me than to get to the end of the road.
Haha. I think I'd feel exactly the same way. Afterwards, however, I'd regret not stopping to take a few snaps.
02-29-2012, 05:19 AM
Barry
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Having read all your posts so far, I'm still surprised you didn't dump some luggage (read female) along the way!
I would like to do a no-GF trip this year, sure it's useful to have a Chinese speaker with you but…
02-29-2012, 06:13 AM
bigdamo
Re: Around China in 100 Days
You where lucky they let you take photos inside the temples.I have never been allowed to take photos inside Buddhist temples but I have long since given up asking as a sign of respect.
Hope you didn't point your feet at anything while inside.
03-01-2012, 03:28 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barry
Having read all your posts so far, I'm still surprised you didn't dump some luggage (read female) along the way!
I would like to do a no-GF trip this year, sure it's useful to have a Chinese speaker with you but…
There were a couple of times where we both thought about separating, and it took a fair amount of willpower to keep things together. I signed up for a Lulu-and-I round trip in Chongqing, and I intended to finish what I started, even if it proved to be a less than optimal riding team.
I also felt some responsibility to get her back to Chongqing safe and sound, because I was the one who got her into this potentially dangerous drive in the first place.
I recently did a four day, Chongqing-Kunming bike trip by myself, and enjoyed it so much. There is definitely something to be said about the solo ride. Pure freedom:riding:
03-01-2012, 03:52 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigdamo
You where lucky they let you take photos inside the temples.I have never been allowed to take photos inside Buddhist temples but I have long since given up asking as a sign of respect.
Hope you didn't point your feet at anything while inside.
They were quite happy to let us take photos at the places we visited, but we may just have been lucky with the people that we met.
I wasn't too clear on the whole cultural-no-no foot-pointing thing until I looked it up. I thought you meant that it was culturally inappropriate to stand flat footed and point a foot in the direction of something.
In most Asian cultures (and I'm not talking east Asian, I'm talking all of Asia) as well as cultures with a strong Asian influence (for example, many European Muslim countries) the feet are considered dirty. Stepping over things, pointing with the feet, or placing respected objects on or under the feet is a huge no-no.
This can be a bit confusing from a western standpoint, since we don't have that association. I think almost every westerner working with Tibetans (myself included) has nudged someone with their foot, pointed with a foot, stepped over a book, stepped over a sleeping child, or stepped over food during a picnic--something like that--and been greeted with looks of absolute offense and horror. This is one that we all learn the hard way. But while the food/child/book rules are a bit harder to grasp, the religion one is pretty obvious.
No worries there. I tend to avoid touching anything when I'm visiting a temple, and certainly not with my foot.
Cheers
03-01-2012, 04:59 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Shiqu to Manigango – Day 94
We woke to another cold morning. I collected the washing I did the night before from the washing lines and we packed up the bikes.
We finished breakfast and at 10am and all three of us emerged under dark grey clouds. Since we were all heading in the same direction, we joined Pat's ride and he joined ours. As we left Shiqu, it started to snow. It was going to be another cold day on the bike.
The roads alternated between asphalt and slippery mud, slowly getting harder to drive on as the day progressed.
We didn’t find anywhere to eat for lunch, so we had to dig into our healthy rations of roasted peanuts and processed sausage during a dry period.
We drove past the Dzogchen Gompa and it’s surrounding buildings. The gompa is one of the most important monasteries of the Nyingma schools of T*betan Buddhism. It also marks part of the old T*betan kingdom of Kham (We had been traveling through Amdo since we got into Qinghai), historically an ethnically and linguistically diverse region.
We had dinner at a small, isolated hamlet beside a hot spring, while some guys splashed around sans clothes. One of the guys came up to us after dinner (with his clothes back on) and asked us where we were going in very good, Indian accented, English. He explained that he had studied English in India, at McLeod Ganj, one of my favourite places in India.
My back tyre started giving me trouble again and I had to pump it up while Lulu and Pat drove on. Pat came back after noticing that I wasn’t there. A couple of kilometres down the road and my chain broke at the master link, with one end getting caught in the front sprocket casing, which was a problem. I had an 8mm spanner, but the shape of the casing gave no room to fit it. I would need a socket wrench, something I didn’t have in my rudimentary tool arsenal. I was in trouble. Luckily, Pat was there to help. Lulu, however, was nowhere to be seen. (Photo taken by Pat)
Pat went off to find someone who could help, and I decided to push while I waited for him. Manigango was at 3800 metres and we were above 4000, and about 30 kms from the town so I thought that it would be a good idea to push the bike and see if I could wheel it down the inevitable incline. It wasn’t so smart an idea after all. I was in mud, pushing a 150+ kg loaded bike up a not-so-steep but muddy hill, in 4000+ altitude. It was cold. It snowed three times. There was less oxygen getting to my muscles and I was gasping for breath in no time. I looked at the river flowing along the bottom of the valley in the gathering darkness. It was flowing away from the direction I was going in, downhill. I would be pushing uphill for a long time before I would find any way down. Not good. I should have checked that before I pushed myself into exhaustion. As I turned a corner in the darkness I could also see the lights of trucks far off snaking along a road, in the sky! I was looking up at another pass. A mountain was between myself and Manigango.
Pat came back. There was still no sign of Lulu (which was strange because she would usually come back to find me if she noticed that I wasn’t behind her), but there was a house 2 kilometres up the track. We figured it would be best to tow my bike up the hill with Pat’s bike. We put the bags on his bike to lessen the load and he went back to see if he could find a tow rope. I kept pushing because I would have gotten freezing cold if I didn’t stay active.
It was pitch dark by the time he got back. I had pushed the bike 200 metres. We tied the tow rope to the forks of my bike and the luggage rack of Pat’s. He started up the engine with the kick-starter (hard to do in mud, balancing a big bike next to you) and we slow-walked the bikes up the hill. It was too slippery to drive, and dropping the bikes would drain us of the little energy we had. We paused to take breathers every 200 metres, and for trucks that cautiously edged around the slippery bends. By the time we got to the house I was a zombie, with frozen hands and mud clumps for feet. The young Chinese guy welcomed us into his shack, stoked up the fire with yak dung and offered us warm peanut milk. It was incredible how much pleasure these simple things brought us. I slowly warmed to human levels.
I was worried about Lulu. We had no reception on our cellphones (and I didn’t have money anyway, as I had discovered after leaving Shiqu that morning), so we couldn’t ring her to see if she made it through to Manigango or not. Knowing that the roads could be dangerous up to that pass and possibly onwards to Manigango, I set about worrying myself with scenarios of her crashing, injuring herslef and being unable to flag down any passing cars for help, while softly falling snow lulled her to sleep.
We asked our host if there was any way we could get a ride to Manigango, or just into cellphone range, so we could call her and make sure that she was okay. The owner of the house wasn’t happy about being woken up, but agreed to drive us to for 200 kuai after he was told about how concerned we were.
We left the bikes in the courtyard of the house next to the shack and piled into his small white, 2WD car. It was a very bumpy, uncomfortable ride through the muddy mountian tracks, with nothing but darkness at the edge of the road, conjuring images of precipitous drops to certain doom if the car slid more than a metre or two.
5 kilometress after we crossed the pass, we got cellphone reception. Lulu answered her phone after several rings and, with a slight hint of irritation, asked “what do you want?”. I was relieved, but also fairly pissed off. She had been asleep and oblivious to the serious worrying we had been doing. I hung up the phone. “Okay, so she’s fine”.
We needed to stay in Manigango to pick up the tools we would need to repair my bike, so we asked our driver to take us to a hotel. We pulled up to a large courtyard with barking dogs chained across the concrete. We had to wait for the manager to come out and get us past the dogs and as we walked in, to the side of the stairwell, we saw Lulu’s bike. She was staying there too.
We swapped stories about our evenings. She apparently got to the top of the pass before she realised we weren’t behind her, and because there were two of us, she assumed that we would be fine without her. It took her three hours to get up and down those muddy slopes in the dark, so I could understand that she didn’t want to drive back and find out what was going on, but we had been in this kind of situation before. It’s always better to stay together. She had been trying to contact us though. She had even asked a friend in Beijing to put money on my phone so she could call me.
We found our own room and I had the deepest sleep of the trip.
03-01-2012, 05:48 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Manigango: Bike rescue – Day 95
Goal for today: rescue the bike, again.
The first, and possibly most important, achievement of the day was getting out of bed. I felt like I nearly broke myself trying to push that bike up the mountain. My clothes weren’t dry from the day before, and it wasn’t a nice feeling to put them back on. Hopefully they would dry at some point in the day. No hope for my boots though.
We got Lulu up, found some breakfast, and made plans for the day. Pat and I had to go back and grab our bikes, and Lulu couldn’t fit the both of us on her bike, so she would take a day off and explore Manigango.
We found an 8mm socket wrench in less than 15 minutes of asking around. It cost about 20 kuai. The cost for not having a socket wrench would amount to over 300 kuai. It pays to have the right tools.
I was also a little concerned about the petrol level in my tank, so we walked 2 kilometres out of town to the nearest petrol station to get spare fuel in case what I have is not enough. I didn’t want to abandon the bike again.
Lulu suggested we try to hitchhike to save money (Lulu and I were low again), but pretty soon we gave up on this plan and just took one of the mini-van bus/taxis that sped through town. We tried to haggle it down, but settled somewhere around 80 rmb.
The van drove up and over the pass and we could see in daylight the road/mud track that we had taken in the pitch black of night. We were right to be scared to take this road at night.
10 minutes was all it took to fix such a small problem, but the problem was impossible to fix without the right tool.
My back tyre was flat again, and I had to take time to repair the inner tube. I wasn’t in a hurry. I knew we would stay in Manigango again that night.
I fixed the tube, put the wheel back on and about to pack my bags bags on the bike, when Pat came to tell me that the valve was stuffed, and leaking air. I didn’t have a completely new inner tube for the back wheel, but I had saved the one that had a small puncture in the Tian Shan. I took out the tube and found the leak. I had no rubber glue for the patch, so I tried the superglue that I had in my bag. I was a little concerned about how corrosive this stuff could be to rubber, but gave it the benefit of the doubt. (later I found that it would have been a better idea just to use the patch by itself)。
We said thanks and goodbye to our friend. He was a Han Chinese who believed wholeheartedly in the principle of karma, which is why we had received just great hospitality and help. It would have been so much harder without him.
The climb up the pass didn’t take so long, but it was hard to control the bike in the slippery mud. It was worth the effort because the view from the top was exceptional.
My back tyre started to deflate again and I went back to the foreshadowing technique that had worked so well so far. I got out my bike pump and as I tried to attach the hose, it snapped into three pieces. Apparently it was too cold for the budget plastic it was made from to handle and it had frozen. I would have to find someone with a pump. Luckily, it was all downhill from there. We tried to wave down a car that will sell me their pump. No luck.
Pat said that he would drive to Maduo to buy a pump and bring it back, while I pushed the bike down the mountain and continued to try and flag down motorists to see if I could use their pump. One van I stopped had a guy that spoke English quite well. He had studied in my hometown, Auckland, which was completely out of the blue.
A Tibetan motorcyclist with his dog in a basket strapped to the back stopped. He asked me whether I liked Tibetan Buddhism and started pumping it up for me. He said that he would follow me to make sure I was okay. It lasted for about one kilometre before it went completely flat. My motorcyclist mate said that he was going to Garze that day and he could buy a new one there, “would you like to buy this one?”. Okay. I handed over 80 kuai (I think they sell the same pumps for 80 kuai new, but I wasn’t complaining) and had a rather large and respectable looking hand pump. I pumped up the tyre again and I was ready to go.
However, its usefulness would soon run out because a little more down the road I had to start pushing again because the inner tube wouldn’t take any air at all. Then the tyre itself started to come away from the rim. I was almost at the bottom of the hill and figured that I should be able to get a signal and call Pat and tell him that I had a pump so he didn’t have to spend any money on a new one. I tried climbing a hillock, but there was still no reception. I turned around and an empty white lorry had stopped beside my bike and they waved me over. “Do you need a ride to Manigango?”. “Haha, hell yeah, how much?”. “How much do you say”. “Say 30 kuai” I said. “Hop on”. Awesome luck again. I guess it was so cheap because they were going that way anyway and thought they could save a bit of petrol money. Or maybe it was because they saw I was in trouble and genuinely wanted to help.
I had to straddle my bike and hold on to the side rails to keep the bike steady on the bumpy roads as there was no rope to tie it down with. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I tried calling Pat once I was in cellphone range, but he wasn’t answering. “He must be driving”. The driver started tooting maniacally at something on the road and I screamed out “PAT!!!” at the top of my lungs as he whizzed by. He turned around and I could almost see the grin on his face.
It was high moment, riding my bike on a moving truck, through beautifully raw scenery, passing waving Tibetan families sitting out in the fields, feeling that the moment’s troubles had no meaning.
The truckers were going to Garze too and I could have gone with them that day, but I wanted to ride it. Got the tyre fixed at the repair shop that they dropped me off at, and the days problems had melted away.
Later that night I sat in a restaurant and had a couple of beers with Pat, talking nonsense until they closed up and we had to leave.
03-04-2012, 05:58 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Manigango to Garze – Day 96
After getting up fairly late, we had thoughts of driving up to Derge, one of the three ancient centres of T*betan culture (along with Lhasa and Xiahe), but had to shelve them as it was 110 kilometres away on mountain roads. One day’s ride away for us. So we would go to Garze, county capital, to get the bikes looked at for the first time since Xiangride, and then push on as far as we could, thinking Luhuo would be a good stop.
Pat had left earlier because he was low on time, and would only be following our route until Garze. He tried to sneak out without waking us, but Lulu stirred first. “Get up!”.
As we were packing, some friendly locals who were interested in what we were doing came into our room and sat down on our beds, just watching us.
There were many more red robes than the day before in Manigango. Apparently it was a day off for the monks at the monasteries, so many monks came to town.
We were stopped by a checkpoint on the way out, and the officer asked us, a little quizzically, where we were going. The road out of Manigango was mostly asphalt, but had some very rocky parts which slowed things down a bit.
We drove through another beautiful lush valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It was a beautiful morning drive with beautiful weather.
We stopped for a break beside a village set into a hillside, playing Buddhist prayer music, prayer flags fluttering in the wind hanging off a massive rock. Thunder rolled over the mountains and angry clouds boiled over the passes as a storm moved in quickly from the south. It was amazing how quickly the weather could change. We got our waterproofs on, but we both still hadn’t been able to find waterproof gloves, and Lulu had been improvising with bags tied around her hands to keep the water out. I didn’t have any and couldn’t be bothered so I just had to manage without them.
We found the Lifan shop after asking around town. After calling Lifan, they asked the franchise owner to make them as good as new, if possible, so that they could make it to Chongqing. They got to disassembling both bikes after 17,000 kilometres on Chinese roads.
The bracket keeping Lulu’s seat off the back mudguard had broken in two (I first noticed this on the Xiangride-Maduo road), her fork seals had come off and the forks needed to be realigned, her battery needed replacing and so did her headlight and she finally got her front mudguard reattached after more than a week without it. My bike needed the air filter cleaned out, the carburetor adjusted and both sprockets replaced.
Both bikes got new chains, new Kenda back tyres with proper tread. There was probably a range of other smaller things that needed doing too, but those were the main jobs. They offered to adjust the carburettor on my bike for the altitude, but it would be a waste of time because we planned on being off the plateau in a couple of days.
It was amazing that they were still running considering what we had put them through, day after day for over three months.
All the workers in the shop were from Chengdu, and the only T*betans we saw were those who came in to buy parts or get a service.
The boss bought us a nice Sichuan takeaway dinner at the shop while they continued to work on the bikes. It was getting late and I started to think about staying in Garze for the night and moving on early in the morning.
They finished the bikes at about 5pm and mine was driving like new. They did an excellent job.
We found a nice, plain room before darkness fell. We parked our bikes by walking them down a narrow alley behind the guesthouses and into a courtyard surrounded by buildings topped with Tibetan style eaves. The owner unlocked some sort of garden shed for us and after we wheeled them in, advised us to lock the bikes. It seemed a little excessive, especially as there was a dog on a leash outside, but we did it anyway.
Lulu wanted to go find a hot spring, still thinking of the hot spring she missed out at the Wencheng temple, but after doing a little bit of writing I was too tired to be bothered. “Maybe tomorrow”.
03-04-2012, 06:20 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Garze to Mazi – Day 97
Pat had followed the S217 down to Litang, while we were to take the most direct route to Kangding, the G317. Christine (Meowzedong) had warned us about a seriously bad road on the way back to Chengdu from Garze. We didn’t know which one it was, but I would have like to have avoided it as it was a very uncomfortable 18 hour drive in a 4WD for her. What would it be like for us? Hopefully we could make Kangding, 290 kilometres away.
A breakfast shop owner said that some people had scattered poltcal leaflets in the main streets of Garzi, so assorted patrols and vehicles were out and about.
We visited the Garze monastery which is about 540 years old and overlooks Garze. Parts of it had been destroyed during the cultural revolution and has since been restored in Han Chinese style.
After Luhuo, there was about 20 kilometres of tarmac, then started the gravel and roadwork blockages.
Apparently, whoever was in charge of maintaining the road, decided that it was a good idea to tear up the whole length of the road before starting to repave at any point, instead of completing small sections at a time. We only managed to do 177 kilometres in the day. It was obvious by 6.30 that we wouldn’t be making to Kangding so we stopped in Mazi. It looked as though we had taken the road Christine had advised us not to. Pat later told me that the road that he took, the S217, wasn’t much better.
Lulu had asked the hostel owner if there was a hot spring around somewhere and we went off down the road to find it. It was supposed to be about 2 kilometres down the road, which turned into 5, which turned into 10. We asked some locals, but often what they said confused us more. After 2 hours of driving in the dark, cold night we couldn’t find it and I gave up.
03-04-2012, 06:52 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Mazi to Kangding – Day 98
The roads were even worse than the day before. The dust clouds raised by the massive wheels of the trucks that passed us had me holding my breath.
I tried driving through a big mud puddle taking up most of the road as a minivan came the other way and used the only dry part. It was much deeper than I thought, with the milk-chocolate coloured water coming up over the headlight. Lulu burst into fits of laughter as she drove past. She was managing these roads better than I was.
Lulu crashed trying to squeeze past a truck on a strip of one way gravel. She had to swerve at the last second and drove across the second lane (which was under construction) and only stopped after getting stuck in the ditch.
We stopped for lunch at Bamei, covered in dust and mud. The day’s hard work had been completed, and the roads were smooth from there.
We stopped to help a couple of Tibetan ladies who were having problems with their motorcycle. They had just run out of petrol but just needed to switch on the reserve tank.
Maybe a kilometre after that, we saw some Russian cyclists and stopped to say hi. They were riding from Laos to Russia and wanted to ride to Yushu and extend their visas there, but they had met some French guys in Garze who had told them that there is nothing much left of the city. They probably wouldn’t be able to renew their visas for another month there, so they had to turn around and head to Chengdu. They had cycled back through the rough roads and were still going strong.
We came to Tagong, a quaint Tibetan town in the beautiful valley. It is well known for its grasslands and is a popular tourist area. ChinaV, Felix and Mr. TwoWheelRTW had come through here a couple of years ago on their amazing south-west China tour.
But that didn’t last long and soon we were on perfect roads again. The G318 is one of the major highways into Tibet, and the most direct route from Chengdu to Lhasa. We started to see a lot of tourist traffic, as it was just starting to be tourist season on the plateau. We met some more cyclists. They were group of 20 from around China riding to Tibet as part of a sponsored event.
Driving up over Zheduo mountain pass (折多山) we saw a Chinese motorcycle tour group, flying red flags, on their way to Tibet. Again, I was affected by pangs of desire to see this mysterious land. Although, we had seen plenty of Tibetan culture in the last couple of weeks, I was thinking of when I would actually be able to go there.
We looked down on Kangding from the mountain road and shock! Apartment blocks, massive clumps of them at the bottom of the valley as we descended. I felt disappointment settle in my stomach. The charm and aesthete of the square, stone Tibetan homes that I had become accustomed to had been replaced, all too quickly, with mass produced, overdeveloped housing estates. We ended up driving further down the side of the mountain before we got to the valley floor. This was “New Kangding”. I immediately opted for staying in old Kangding at the intersection.
It had become significantly warmer over the past couple of hours, and I could eat my dinner without needing my jacket. We went to find a hostel close to some hot springs.
We finally had our hot springs. They weren’t so clean, but warm enough to massage my aching muscles. And, I also had a shower at the hostel, a second luxury for the night. Showers had been so scarce on the trip, and I didn’t take it for granted.
03-04-2012, 10:33 AM
soberpete
1 Attachment(s)
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Standard welding protective equipment: eyelids (squinted). Attachment 6501
03-04-2012, 10:37 AM
soberpete
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Incredible photos though I bet they aren't half as good as actually being there to see the sights.
03-04-2012, 10:56 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by soberpete
Standard welding protective equipment: eyelids (squinted). Attachment 6501
I'm always shocked/impressed when I see Chinese welders at work. I wonder how long a welder's eyes last when they don't use the right protection.
03-04-2012, 10:57 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by soberpete
Incredible photos though I bet they aren't half as good as actually being there to see the sights.
Nothing ever beats being there:thumbsup:
03-04-2012, 11:00 AM
soberpete
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roadrunner
I'm always shocked/impressed when I see Chinese welders at work. I wonder how long a welder's eyes last when they don't use the right protection.
Indeed. My local mechanic (Papa Smurf) has done all his welding like that since he starting fixing bikes at a young age; he seems to be around 50 years old now and still recognizes me from a distance.
03-05-2012, 04:17 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Kangding to Ya’an – Day 99 – 15th June, 2011
The day’s destination was Ya’an, a mere 190 kilometres away, to meet Yifan, a university student who had contacted me a couple of weeks earlier. I felt like we could better plan our travel times now that we were nearing more populated areas. We could make it back to Chongqing in under four days, on a Saturday. I gave the boss a call to let her know that I would be in on the following Monday.
Early in the day we noticed lines and lines of army trucks, all heading west. I counted over 100 trucks throughout the day before I got bored of the game. The canvas tarpaulins at the back had been pulled tight and I wondered what they were carrying.
It was another beautiful day driving in western Sichuan. The roads out of Kangding were great for 15 kilometres or so, before our good friend, gravel roads, came up to meet us once again. The long lines of traffic backed up at roadworks were not helped by the multitudes of camo-green trucks, but we managed to weave through the traffic.
The Erlang mountain tunnel is over 4 kilometres long. Apparently there used to be a nice twisty road over this pass, but the new tunnel made it redundant, which kind of takes the fun out of mountain driving.
On the other side the weather changed from clear air, dry and a little cloudy to foggy and humid. As we exited the Erlang Shan tunnel we had passed from western Sichuan onto the western slopes of the Sichuan Basin, the lowland region of Sichuan (and some of Chongqing Municipality) which is enclosed on all sides by mountains. The basin is home to the majority of the 80 million Sichuanese.
The people had changed. The culture and language, and even the tone of their voices, had changed. The climate changed. The square-style of Tibetan homes replaced by the sloped eaves of the Sichuan homes. It felt like I had passed in to a different country in the past couple of days. However, Sichuan food is everywhere in China, so our diet didn’t change much.
We hit a huge traffic jam 25 kilometres outside of Ya’an caused soley (as far as I could see) by roadworks paving one side of the road over a stretch of 200 metres, but that wasn’t what had caused the complete gridlock. The problem was the self-centred drivers in their expensive cars and SUVs who had used every square centimeter of the left side of the road to get ahead of the other traffic (mostly trucks and lorries) in their lane, forming a three car wide roadblock making it impossible for anyone coming the other way to get past, and ultimately, making it impossible for them to get past the cars on the other side, who had done the same. The jam continued for 3 kilometres either side, making things slow for us as we squeezed around fenders and through metal corridors, but at least we weren't stuck in that insane traffic jam. It would have driven me completely bonkers.
As we drove past the end of the jam, a minivan driver driving west asked us how long the jam was and we said it wasn’t budging at all. At the very least, it would be a couple of hours wait. He turned around and drove back the way he came.
Ya’an was our first big city since Golmud in Qinghai. It was noisy, crowded and confusing. I felt a little claustrophobic by it all. After asking several people for directions, we managed to make it to Sichuan Agriculture University to meet with Yifan and his friends who spoke good English. We put our stuff in the student dormitory and had Korean barbecue at the local food street.
He was interested in our trip because he was going to hitchhike through Tibet in a couple of months and wanted to hear what it was like. He was a bit bored with university life and, even though he was getting good grades, he wanted to take some time off and go traveling. He was also really interested in traveling to northern India and should be there sometime this year.
03-05-2012, 04:27 AM
bigdamo
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Your RR keeps getting better will be sad when it finishes.I was up near Dushanzi to Ermaoqiao part of your trip yesterday it is interesting to see that area and Xinjiang in winter with all the snow about totally different to summer.
03-05-2012, 04:47 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Ya’an to Jianyang – Day 100 - 16th of June, 2011
We said thanks and goodbye to our friends. Lifan told us that we needed to be in Chongqing on Saturday morning, because they were arranging a welcome back party on the 18th. We had a quick breakfast of baozi and soy milk for breakfast and we were off.
The weather was overcast, humid and a bit wet. Outside Ya’an, we drove onto the G108, while all the four wheeled vehicles hopped on the expressway. Even though the expressway is much faster, I would rather take the country roads anyway. It’s probably a more enjoyable, scenic experience.
Lulu had arranged an interview in Chengdu with a local newspaper. If I had thought driving through Ya’an was hectic, Chengdu was Armageddon. I still wasn’t used to masses of vehicles jostling for space over four lanes of road in the same direction, despite the fact that two months ago I was driving through comparable cities in eastern China. The wide open spaces had gotten to me, and they wanted me to go back. We spent a long, stressful time, and several confused phone calls, before we finally found the reporters.
Once we got that out of the way, I didn’t want to stay in the city because we could be caught out by the po-pos for not having Chengdu plates (which can cost up to ￥10,000) inside the ring road. Lulu had a friend that she wanted to stay with in the city, but agreed it was just too complicated. We would drive until night fell, then find a place to sleep.
The G321 out of Chengdu was a nice, relatively quiet road, so we took our time, twisting in and out of the low hills.
We drove into Jianyang, the bright neon lights covering the apartment buildings making my retinas itchy. It was a fairly nice city (what we saw of it anyway) of almost 1.5 million people on the banks of the Tuojiang river, which goes on to meet the ChangJiang in south-eastern Sichuan.
Your RR keeps getting better will be sad when it finishes.I was up near Dushanzi to Ermaoqiao part of your trip yesterday it is interesting to see that area and Xinjiang in winter with all the snow about totally different to summer.
Cheers mate. I know it's a bit of a read and I'm glad that you're enjoying it.
I'm guessing Dushanzi -> Ermaoqiao would be quite impossible this time of year. Are you still getting snow up there? That stretch is one of my favourite parts of the trip:riding:
03-05-2012, 05:16 AM
bigdamo
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roadrunner
Cheers mate. I know it's a bit of a read and I'm glad that you're enjoying it.
I'm guessing Dushanzi -> Ermaoqiao would be quite impossible this time of year. Are you still getting snow up there? That stretch is one of my favourite parts of the trip:riding:
Yes I'd say it would be closed.They have a foot or two of snow on the ground in the low lands I can't imagine what the depth is up there .I was east of there near Dongwanzhen where the S223 meets the S101.Yep still snowing.It started snowing when I was there yesterday so I turned around.Made it to the base of the Tian shans.
03-07-2012, 09:29 AM
lion
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Great job!Fantastic adventure!
Someday in the future I should ride follow your track,amazing!
03-09-2012, 03:35 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Jianyang to Tongliang – Day 101 - 17th June, 2011
We continued driving through the lush countryside of the Sichuan basin. It was another dreary, overcast day, with the odd light rain shower.
We stopped for a guy who had a flat front tyre. He could repair it, but he didn’t have a pump. I handed him the pump that I had obtained with luck near Manigango. Every time I stopped to help someone, it felt great to pass on the goodwill and help that I just could not have done without on this journey.
He didn’t have another spare, so I took him a couple of kilometres down the road to the nearest village to find one. Now that is was almost guaranteed that we would make Chongqing before our new deadline, I wasn’t worried about time so much. We still needed to be careful on the roads though.
Less than 100 kms out from Chongqing, we stopped for the night in Tongliang. Lifan arranged a convoy of motorcyclists from the Chongqing club for the next day, a Saturday, so we had to wait outside the city so they could ride in with us.
The first guest-house took us in. They said “Yeah it’s fine, you can stay here”. We dumped all of our stuff in the rooms and went off to have a nice relaxing dinner and a beer. We had less than a day’s ride to get home. I was mindful that anything could happen and the engine could fall off in the last 10 kilometres or, more likely, one of us could get into an accident with another vehicle on the crowded roads. All that aside, we were already congratulating each other for making it around China.
Returning to the hotel content and with full stomachs, the owner told us that they called the police station to check if I was allowed to stay there and apparently I couldn’t. “You must leave”. “Ahhh! Why did you call the police station???”.
We walk across to the next hotel, “Yeah it’s fine, you can stay here”. We drag all of our stuff across the road and up six flights of stairs. 20 minutes later the owner tells us that they called the police station to check if I was allowed to stay there and apparently I couldn’t. “You must leave”. “Why didn’t you put the room under Lulu’s name? It’s not like the police are going to waltz in and break down each door to check if there were any ‘undesirables’ staying”. The level of paranoia astonished me. Lulu was sick of dragging her things around. I could leave my things there, but I would need to find my own place to stay.
This time I took my time leaving. They said I could stay there, watched us drag half a house up the stairs and then tell me I have to move again, so I made them wait and stew in the anxiety they brought on themselves. I didn’t have much goodwill towards the owners at that point. At almost midnight, on the second-to-last day of the journey my irritation at this bureaucratic and highly inconvenient law that had been building over the last three and a half months almost had me popping an aneurysm. Especially now, on the last night when I just wanted to relax as the trip wound down.
I had a beer spare and opened it, sitting at the window looking over the parking lot of the town bus station, trying to chill out before looking for a new place to stay. When foreigners are not welcome at the majority of lodging establishments, turning up to the reception desk with smile on your face can do wonders to your chance of being accepted (but it's only worthwhile if they don't call the cops). What also helps is trying to find a place that isn’t near a bus station, as they are sure to be checked by the local police (as the most likely places that a foreigner would be staying), and these places would be especially paranoid about getting fined (the fine is ￥5000 for taking a foreigner without a license to do so, or so they said).
I walked down the street I thought I had the best chance with. Stopped in at about 6 or 7 hotels and guest-houses, and they told me that “We have no room”, or “we can’t take foregners”. Even the more expensive places which had the license, couldn’t take me because they were full. I had been screwed around with for too long at the first two hotels so I had run out of options, even with the places I wouldn’t normally have taken. On top of this, I was flat broke, with no more than 50 kuai of Chinese money in my wallet.
I wandered around like a vagrant, found a couch outside a convenience store and some people to talk to while I cooled off. I figured there was no point in getting stressed out about it. I would get more tired if I walked around assuming that I was entitled to a good night’s sleep.
I followed hotel signs down a narrow street, which turned on to another narrow street, which looked promising. “The harder the hotel to access, the better chance I have of finding a place to stay” I thought. I went to the reception, obviously looking like death at past 1am, and asked the guy if he had space. He looked nervous. A room was 100 kuai. I asked if he would take 20 American dollars instead (I kept USD$40 left over from a trip to America. I thought it might come in handy at some point) and I told him that I would be out of the room at 6 in the morning. He reluctantly said it was okay, “but you must leave early”.
03-09-2012, 04:03 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Tongliang to Chongqing – Day 102 - 18th June, 2011
I was up and gone early in the morning. I walked to the hostel, with the help of my GPS because it was quite far away, and I was walking around in the dark the previous night. I waited in the room for Lulu to get up and get ready. The hostel owner threw a fit after she found me in the room and demanded that I leave. I grabbed my things and told Lulu I would wait outside.
I waited on the stairs as two police officers walked in and climbed the stairs, presumably there to check the records. I hadn’t been taking their paranoia seriously, but it seems as though the police check the records every day. Or maybe they just check the records of the establishments that call them asking if foreigners could stay.
We were to meet the convoy boys at a restaurant at Bishan at lunchtime, which wasn’t too far away, so it was a relaxed morning drive. For once, I didn’t mind the slow pace.
The guys had their bikes, about 15 of them, parked up on the footpath beside the restaurant, and gave us a hearty welcome and I was presented with more cigarettes than I could smoke in a week. After lunch we all started over the last couple of ranges to the mountain city, Chongqing. There were dirt-bikes, dual-sports, cruisers, street bikes and even a scooter.
Traveling with the convoy meant I was released from my self-imposed obligation to stick to Lulu like glue in case she has an accident or broke down. I drove ahead with the faster bikes, opening up on the mountain roads like I hadn’t done since my solo day at Huangshan in Anhui.
We all met at the Lifan factory first, where we picked up even more riders.
It was very hot and humid (Chongqing is regarded as one of the three ‘furnaces’ of China in summer) and I was quite uncomfortable in my riding jacket. There was a bit of rain as the convoy drew nearer to the Ijijie studio on Nanbin Lu, the place where we started our journey in the cold rain 102 days earlier.
We had an interview with a couple of motorcycle magazines after the photos. Half pumped with adrenalin, and half dead from exhaustion (from three weeks without rest days), I had problems answering the questions.
Then, all of a sudden, it was over. Finished. It was like coming home from a rock concert, ears ringing. Although I was thankful to be able to get home and have a shower and a few days of sleep I felt an emptiness where the intense drive to keep driving had been. I would have to wait for the sense of achievement to find its way through the haze and replace it.
This sense of emptiness you describe, i feel it too realising that this is the last post in your RR. Thank you infinitely for taking us along for the ride, it's been a great read.
What does it feel like now, almost a year later, thinking back over the trip?
03-23-2012, 05:07 PM
Maux
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Welders eye is centralized blindness. I guess it was an old (plumber?) my dad worked with who would always look slightly away from something he was trying to see because he couldn't see anything he looked right at.
Once again, great report, thanks for the effort which must have gone into it!
04-08-2012, 07:08 AM
lightend
Re: Around China in 100 Days
you should really right a book about yours travels. its a very interesting read and coming to the end of the report does leave me with an emptiness (can only really be replaced with my own ride in July)
very good and well done.
04-12-2012, 04:45 AM
scratchndent
Re: Around China in 100 Days
This was nothing short of amazing, I have been glued to the computer for 3 days reading and drooling over the beautiful pictures. I like the others that have mentioned it, I really like your writing style. Its all in there, the good, the bad, the ugly and the confusion of a foreigner travelling desolate places. I am doing the preparations for a trip with my brother when he comes from the states and I am using your, and others stories for ride preparation and getting all the paperwork in order as I see you had to use it several times. Thanks for the time spent posting up on here, I have learned alot and will put it to good use on my upcoming trek. Great inspiration, both of you!!!!
04-19-2012, 08:56 AM
Roadrunner
Re: Around China in 100 Days
Quote:
Originally Posted by felix
Incredible.
This sense of emptiness you describe, i feel it too realising that this is the last post in your RR. Thank you infinitely for taking us along for the ride, it's been a great read.
What does it feel like now, almost a year later, thinking back over the trip?
Thanks for taking the time to read it:thumbsup:
Thinking back over the trip, It almost feels as though we never did it. After a couple of months of acclimatization back in Chongqing, the reality of what it was melted away and now the experience feels like a half-remembered dream. Writing and looking at photos helps keep things fresh for a while though, but that can't replace the experience of being out there.
Once we had a few day's rest and some time apart, Lulu and I couldn't help laughing at the stupid things we got upset about with each other.
There were a couple of times where things almost got too much for either of us and we thought about separating. The most important thing I realise now, is that we stuck together and finished together like we said we would. It wasn't easy, but we were each made to think in a different way, and do things we wouldn't normally have done if we had each done the trip solo, an effect I hadn't thought of before I started.
Our most memorable experience was the ~250 kilometres that took 3 days between Xiangride and Maduo (in Qinghai) when we got lost, ran out of petrol, crashed, broke down, battled rain, hail, snow, stayed with a Tibetan Yak herder family (who gave us some of their petrol and invaluable information about the road) and were extremely lucky to come out the other end. I might never have an experience like that again in my life. It taught me that there's a fine line between a feeling of gung-ho adventurousness and black desperation, and walking that edge is both exhilarating and very dangerous.
It goes without saying that it was an incredible, life-changing experience; completely unexplainable. I got a really eye-opening, holistic idea from the ground up about what China really is by meeting different people living their own unique lifestyles, seeing the diversity of the landscape, living in different climates at different altitudes, all on two wheels with nothing but what was in our saddlebags, fuel tanks and the stuff between our ears to keep us going. The vulnerability of motorcycle driving exposes us all to the world, and it gives us so much in return.
In terms of the fundraising, my overblown expectation that we could raise USD$20,000 was a little optimistic (just a little bit) and brought it's own problems when we realised we couldn't take cash donations from the Chinese public. I think the most positive thing about this aspect of the trip is that our problems with fundraising have been mentioned in most, if not all, of the media coverage we have been getting since we came back. I initially thought this was a bad thing (reflecting badly on our charity) but I think it has encouraged a few people to do charitable activities, and shown how to do them better:rolleyes1:.
Lulu liked it so much that she'll be doing a 20,000 km Chongqing -> London ride in May this year. I keep telling her she's crazy, but she just smiles. She knows what she wants.
She has spent the last couple of months in Chongqing looking for sponsors and preparing for her trip.
I've recently been working in Kunming and southern Yunnan, and the boss gave me a couple of days to get around by bike from Chongqing. Winter in Chongqing is perpetual twilight and it is possible to not see the sun for weeks at a time. The bike trip to sunny Yunnan was exactly what the doctor ordered for the winter blues. Most of all, it got me out on the road again, getting my freedom fix after being stuck inside for too long.
Solo riding is a very different experience, in good ways and bad. I have discovered that I REALLY enjoy morning riding, and have been up before dawn most days.
