Beijing to Qinghai, departing July 23, 2011

Yo, I'm looking for advice and potential partners on a trip from Beijing to Qinghai, Northwest China/Northern Tibet. I'm departing Beijing around July 23. The basic route will follow national highway 109 out of Beijing and through Hebei and Shanxi provinces. From Datong on, I plan on switching to smaller roads with a route that roughly heads through the Ordos region of inner Mongolia and then south into eastern Gansu Province. The idea is to travel between Beijing and Lanzhou, Gansu, in under a week and then head up onto the plateau in a more leisurely fashion.

My current travel companion is a small white Beijing street dog, Foniyo, who will ride in the crate strapped to the back seat of my GS 1150. So I'm looking for a human travel companion, someone who's up for camping and frequent dog walks.

I've lived in northwest China on and off since 2001 (Gansu province motorcycle license, 2002), and speak a bit of Tibetan and Uyghur in addition to Chinese, so I've got lots of ideas for points west of Shaanxi. I'm planning on spending all of August looping around Qinghai.

I just returned from a trip to Wutaishan in Shanxi where I got stuck in a line of 10,000 plus coal trucks on national highway 108. Moved 29 km in 5 hours. Any advice on how to avoid coal trucking in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia? Which roads are an absolute gridlock?

Thanks.

Shit that sounds like fun! I'm planning a trip in those regions too, but unfortunetly the dates don't line up. My trip is planned for sep-oct, not date set yet.

May you and foniyo have lots of fun!

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Originally Posted by Maxo

...Any advice on how to avoid coal trucking in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia? Which roads are an absolute gridlock?

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Dear Maxo,

Great first post and welcome to the forum!

As for how to avoid those immense traffic jams, the answer is probably "ride a dual sport with decent off-road tires, and make your escape to any alternative road that works". That region has been dealing with that problem of too many trucks on too little road for more than a decade. I got caught in such a jam back in 2001 in a VW Jetta, and only managed to get out by taking that passenger car off road for probably 20 km. You'll notice that in many of the worst stretches there are usable dirt tracks running crazily alongside the main tarmac, and these were indeed created by exasperated drivers.

Better yet, of course, is to avoid these main intercity highways. An excellent reference for this trip surely will be MCM poster Pat, whose Beijing-to-Kunming ride report you've surely seen by now. He managed to get through, or around, the Shanxi/Shaanxi coal region without getting ensnared.

I do hope you find a good riding companion, especially one who is adept with a camera, so you can post brilliant daily updates and awesome pet trick pictures featuring Foniyo.

The 1150GS should be a great companion too, especially if you are experienced riding such big artillery in China. Would love to hear a bit of your history in China and that of the bike too.

How is it that you've only joined MCM now?

cheers!

Thanks for the advice. The GS is indeed an unwieldy creature for China, especially when loaded with a dog. I've now put about 10km on her in China, including two major jaunts: 1) from Kashgar to Urumqi via the Kyrgyz border-regions and the Yili Valley in 2007; and 2) a loop from Lanzhou down to Yushu in southern Qinghai and then over the back roads of Qinghai to Xinjiang in 2009. On both trips I found myself dreaming of the 200cc Qingqi motorbikes that I have garaged in Lanzhou. Having done trips with both domestic dirt bikes and foreign imports, I have to agree with other posters that the former is in most cases the better option. Still, for all the crashes and drops, the monster has been absolutely reliable, which I can't say for the Chinese bikes. And when the highway opens up in the straight-shot expanses of Xinjiang or Tibet, it is pretty sweet to drop the thing into the sixth gear. For this upcoming trip I just threw on a pair of proper stubby off-road tires, unlike the 70%-30% combos I've used in the past. So I'm hoping that this will make weaving around the coal trucks in the dirt a bit less risky.

Sounds like an amazing trip you've got planned.. adding the dog element should make things interesting too! Are hotels in China pet friendly?

I followed the G109 out of Beijing and through Datong to roughly Youyu Xian before heading north up to Hohhot. I didn't hit much along the way in terms of traffic and didn't get ensnared by any of those infamous traffic jams.

I doesn't sound like you'll be as far north as Baotou, but if so, I can warn against the road between Baotou and Dongsheng. I think it's the G210 - it parallels a highway and was dusty, slow, and full of trucks. Not gridlock, but definitely not pleasant.

If you go west from Dongsheng, that section of the G109 is under a lot of "construction" - big mounds of dirt blocking the road and that will force you off into dusty bypasses.. sometimes the dust is six inches thick! On the positive side, the road itself is in good shape (when you're on it) and there's not a lot of traffic!

It sounds like you'll be moving pretty quick - but if you're looking for sights before Lanzhou, I'd recommend Wu Dang Zhao - a big, largely Mongolian Tibetan Buddhist monastery near Baotou. The Yungang caves near Datong are also cool - 51,000 Buddha statues spread across a mountainside of grottoes. On the flip side, I'd give the Xiang Sha Wan (singing dunes?) a pass (between Baotou and Dongsheng).. and I've heard nothing but bad things about the Genghis Kahn "mausoleum" (he's not actually there).

Your route sounds great - depending on time and where you've been before, western Inner Mongolia sounds fascinating - remote, deserts, dunes, etc. I spent a lot of time considering a NW loop through Inner Mongolia and then swinging down into Gansu.. but ultimately took the more direct route through Ningxia. Also Xiahe in SW Gansu is a fascinating place - and the S202 route into Qinghai is spectacular.

Hope this helps!

Attachment 5070Attachment 5071Attachment 5072Attachment 5073Steady rain has brought the traveling circus (laowai + BMW + dog) to a halt here in Pinglu, Shanxi, so I might as well take advantage of the free internet (in this somewhat aspirationally priced and starred hotel) to provide a brief update.

Pinglu (northwest Shanxi, at intersection of provincial routes 212 and 304) is apparently where a good number of lumbering coal trucks originate. I've spent far too many hours wondering where they all come from and where they all go. On the outskirts of town, a nice fellow who ambled over to gawk at the BMW with a dog perched on the back, explained that if Shanxi was the coal capital of China, Pinglu was the coal capital of Shanxi. The city is literally built on coal- it is situated on a vast pile of mine trailings. The splitting headache I woke up with this morning was more than adequately explained by the fact that my hotel was obscuring a large coal pit surrounded by at least 400 idling orange "aoman" trucks.

Why the hell are we here? Our trip out of Beijing had been relatively hick-up free. The three hours we spent sitting under the fifth ring road waiting out yet another torrential downpour was taken at the time as an auspicious sign. National Highway 109 proved to be a very pleasant route, the greenery up to the Hebei border is really astounding leafy by north China standards. I spent two nights on the Beijing/Hebei border on Lingshan mountain, giving the dog a chance to acclimate a bit to motorcycle travel.

In Hebei we decided to try our luck with provincial routes and make a more direct approach to Hengshan in northern Shanxi (Hebei S243- Yuxian, Shanxi S303 from Guangling-Hunyuan/Hengshan). The riding around Hengshan was very motorcycle friendly: nice switch-back mountain roads and even some off-roading opportunities. I highly recomend this slightly more southernly route as an alternative to 109 and Datong. From Hengshan we continued along S303 to Yingxian, then switched to S210 and headed north to ultimately return to 109 in Zuoyun. Although this is heavily trucked, traffic moved pretty smoothly.

However, as a warning to anyone else traveling through northern Shanxi, routes from Zuoyun west are heavily trucked. S210 is basically 65 km-long train of coal trucks. We continued on 109 all the way to the Inner Mongolian border were we were dismayed to discover that the highway was torn up and reduced to one way traffic. The situation was a bit hard to read at first: about a hundred trucks were piled up on a slope heading west with no on-coming traffic. Naturally I sprinted ahead for a couple of km until I came up against the oncoming convoy. After wedging myself in between two trucks, I learned from the drivers that the next 30km (from Shanxi border to Qingshuihe) would pretty much be stop-start first gear hell. After sucking down a good half hour of diesel and dust without moving so much as an inch, I decided to suck it up and head back to find detour. In all honesty, the dog is not that big a fan of riding on the back of the motorcycle, and a potential five to ten hours of exhaust and noise probably would have done her in.

The scenery on the northwest rim of Shanxi does quite a bit to redeem the road: the rolling pastureland is reminiscent of the Dakotas and one can easily imagine why various Chinese regimes had to erect several layers of walls and beacon towers to keep the nomads out.

Our detour: Having backtracked 40 km on 109, we turned south to Pinglu (S212). According to truckers and local highway officers, there is a new westerly route south of 109 that ultimately will link up with the roads around Ordos city (Dongsheng). This would be S304 to Pianguan, then across the Yellow River into the Ordos region where we pick up S103 and then X601, then 109 again). None of my maps have either the road in question or the requisite bridge across the Yellow River, so I might be back to square one by tomorrow afternoon.

Ms. Foniyo, the dog, has most likely lost a certain degree of hearing, and probably a number of ribs as well from rattling along the shoulders or cutting across construction sites to avoid trucks. But that said, she rallies when we stop and it has been remarkably easy to travel with. We've mostly been staying over at peasant guesthouses (the Nongjiale), but have yet to be turned away are more high-class enterprises. Restaurants have all been okay, including the morning buffet line at the four-star hotel we splurged on today. Neither has she been rejected from entry from any scenic spot. In a country where there is a rule for everything, they seem to have overlooked pets. It seems quite rare for people to travel with their "spoiled objects" (chongwu in Chinese), so they don't seem to have the regulations in place yet.

Tomorrow we'll see how she gets along with the Mongols.

Good stuff Maxo, you're actually doing it! I always thought sidecars were ideal for canine transportation but am happy to see it can be done on two wheels too.

It seems ridiculous, but it took four days to get the hell out of Shanxi. Attempt one, as I mentioned in a previous update, ended on National Highway 109, just over the Inner Mongolia border. The second day ended in heavy rain. On day three I attempted Provincial Highway S304 from Pinglu. This attempt ended here:
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This point would be mere two km out of town. I ascertained that the road had become clogged the night before: the entire 82 km section, from Pinglu to Pianguan (county town to county town) was stuck. At least it was a beautiful day.

The traffic police then directed me to attempt three, a small "tourist road" to the north. After some slithering about through the mud, I arrived at this:

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This was apparently also the road to the 17th century. Still, it seemed okay until:

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That would be the very same S304 that I had attempted 1.5 hours earlier. The rural route dropped me off at a point a mere 20 km out from my original starting point (Pinglu). The bridge in the background is packed with trucks going exactly nowhere, as they had since yesterday.

On the advice of the truckers, I stormed up the grassy knoll to the right, scrambled across some fields, and gained, perhaps, one more km, before grinding to a halt.

From here on it was a dicey game of lane splitting for perhaps fifty plus km, a journey of 9 hours. I almost lost a case to a truck bumper. But I must tip my hat to the truckers who were preparing to spend yet another night on this road: they were quite good-humored and magnanimous, giving me as much space on this narrow road as they could afford.

Arriving in Pianguan, on the northwest frontier of Shanxi, the trucks finally thinned. On the advice of locals we motored north to the hamlet of Laoniuwan (old cow bend). Increasingly spectacular riding. This is the point on the Yellow River where the three provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia now converge, and is the site of a Ming-period fort that has now been opened as a tourist spot.

(As my internet connection has now ground to a halt, I'll have to post further pictures at a later date.)

The relief I felt at finally catching sight of clear roads and Inner Mongolia in the distance found expression in a delightful bottle of baijiu. The evils of which nearly delayed my departure from Shanxi for yet one more day.

I've just arrived in Lanzhou, Gansu. In the next couple days I'll post updates on routes through the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and eastern Gansu.

Max

Holy sheeeyit, Max, this is an unbelievable tale. Only in China.

All I can say is I hope you had company for that bottle of baijiu. On the other hand, what better way to erase your brain cells of a four-day nightmare.

Glad you and Foniyo made it in one piece to Lanzhou, which can be beautiful in the right light, especially down along the river. Actually, you didn't mention Foniyo. How's she holding up?

cheers!

For those concerned about the possible mistreatment of animals, rest assured that Foniyo has endured the trip from Beijing to Lanzhou quite well. I'll admit that I don't think that she enjoyed it. But she resigned herself to fate with as much dignity as a Beijing street dog can muster.

I removed the back seat from the GS and secured her travel crate over the tool compartment. This worked quite well, she was well protected from the wind and didn't interfere with my riding position. Foniyo weighs in at about 6 kg. At this small size, she really didn't affect the handling in any noticeable way. The only drawback was that the I could really hear the tools rattling away on particularly bumpy stretches. For most of the trip I kept her rain cover on. I think that this reduced some of the noise and made her feel more secure. I'm going to add some additional padding to her crate, however, before attempting the loop through Qinghai.

My internet connection here in Lanzhou is terrible, so I'll try to post pictures at a later date.

We are going to depart Lanzhou for Xining probably next week (August 8th). We will be in Qinghai for at least two weeks, looping through the south-central pasturelands. Any one in the area is welcome to join in.

Max

Wow - that traffic jam sounds wild.. four days to get out of Shanxi! That little detour road looked great. Glad to hear both rider and companion are holding up well - keep the updates coming! :popcorn:

(as an aside - the pictures look great - but it'd be great to see larger versions too... posting from the road can be hectic - but if you have time, you can upload them to imgur.com or another such site and then link back to them to get the large version.. see here.)

Okay so here are some belated updates on what was overall a very pleasant journey through Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. I primarily want to give everyone some first hand advice on the various road conditions I encountered. My main piece of wisdom: regardless of where you think you are going or what road conditions you expect, put on the knobbiest tires you can find. There was never a day that I did not regret putting on a pair of brand new Conti off-roads on the BMW GS.

Maps in China should only be considered aspirational statements about the distant future of China's road network!

My last post ended with us at the corner of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, attempting to sweat out four days worth of coal dust.

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It was at this point that we broke free of the heaviest traffic and entered Inner Mongolia. The background shot is of Laoniuwan ("old cow bend") a quite nice stopping point about thirty km north of Pianguan in Shanxi. There are numerous cave-house style guesthouses here.
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There is a road from Wanjiazhai zhen, just south of Lao-niu-wan, not marked on google maps, that crosses the Yellow River and then proceeds north to connect with Zhun-ge-er-qi, a largish town in Inner Mongolia. The road is heavily trucked, but in decent shape.

In Zhunge'er qi, I decided to poach the G18 expressway (gaosu), since national highway 109 is in terrible shape.

I had no trouble exiting the expressway near Dongsheng (Ordos) at the infamous ghost city of Kangbashi, or getting back on again. My impression is that it is not very difficult to take your motorcycle on the expressways in Inner Mongolia. The toll booth people were in fact quite gung-ho about the whole thing. I traveled south from Kangbashi on expressway 65.

I must put in a word about the surreal non-destination of Kangbashi: it is truly a remarkable testament to what will surely be the largest housing bubble in the history of real estate. Mostly empty, full of peasants wandering around looking for work and occasional parades of posh SUVs from elsewhere. I joined the peasants, looking for both food and a good place to sleep off the mid-day heat. Apparently the only food currently available in Kangbashi are a chain of small stands specializing in BBQ duck neck. Honestly, not the best meal one can hope for, especially after a night of baijiu.

In terms of sleeping spots, the locals directed me to a partially completed museum complex. I was able to park the moto inside the building and lay down in the shade with the dog. Try as I might to doze we quickly became the museum's virgin exhibition.

While fake sleeping, I overheard the following conversation:
"Is that the laowai's dog?"
"Yeah, definitely, it must be his dog. Must be a foreign dog."
"How can you tell?"
"Look at her eyes."
"What, are they blue?"
"No! But there is just something different about them. Those aren't Chinese dog eyes."

FYI, my dog is 100% Beijing street dog.

Also I got the only bad gas of the trip in Kangbashi at an official Sinopec fill station.

The riding in southern Ordos is terrific, especially once you get off the expressway and start exploring the lightly rolling dunescape. The environment is a mixture of little dunes, patches of woodland, and pasture. Due to recent natural gas exploration and preliminary drilling by China's state oil companies, the secondary roads in the region, although very narrow, and completely unmarked, are in relatively good condition, making for very pleasurable riding with almost no traffic.

I exited the G65 expressway about 60 km south of Ordos, onto provincial highway S313 which took me to the town of Wushenqi. This town is exploding with oil money, and the road here is in the process of being widened, but is in very passable. Within a couple months I'd assume that Wushenqi will connect very smoothly to Jingbian, a city in northern Shaanxi.

From Wushenqi I departed from the provincial highway and patched together a series of increasingly tiny roads. I was thus able to cross the Ordos desert in a more direct south-west line. I took a full day of riding to travel from Wushenqi to Dingbian, Shaanxi Province.

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I was navigating primarily by compass, Chinese gazetteer, and by asking everyone I passed where the hell I was going. The locals were extremely obliging, offering up lots of hospitality.

At one homestead I was treated to a fabulous lunch of roasted "chaomian" (barley?) mashed into watermelon.

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After a final couple km of wallowing in the mud, we came out of Ordos in Shaanxi at a spot called Ningtiaoliang. Here I again decided to try my luck with an expressway, the G20.

About five minutes after slipping around the barrier I became party to the first high-speed chase I've ever witnessed in China. A police van came blasting up behind behind me, lights flashing. Since every official vehicle seems to travel at high speed with the lights on, I assumed it had nothing to do with me. This assumption changed about five km down the expressway when the van physically forced me off onto the shoulder. There then unfolded an absurd puppet show as I tried to feign ignorance of all Chinese language and law, and they tried to convince me to follow them to a police station at the next exit.

They did not seem willing to let the matter drop. So I proceeded to trail the van to the next exit. Fortuitously however, the police were soon distracted by a disabled truck in the breakdown lane. I decided to proceed on down the highway at a reasonable pace, with the idea that I would give the cops the chance to catch back up. Before the next exit, though, I noticed a rest area, so I pulled over there to wait for the cops. While waiting, the cops drove by, apparently without noticing that I'd stopped. I never saw them again.

I decided, however, that the Shaanxi expressway was none too friendly, so I exited two stops down. The toll booth people seem to have been in a real rage, and were making full preparation to come out and have at it, when again, to my good fortune a truck spewing bees pulled by sending everyone scurrying for their netting. I slipped around behind the truck and put an end to the situation.

It has generally been my impression that most Chinese fully embrace the notion that laws are meant to be broken. While at the rest stop, the assembled crowd of drivers fully embraced the notion of screwing over the traffic police, and sent up a chorus of cheers as the police swept by oblivious.

But I have my reservations about this kind of action and generally try to stick to relevant laws and regulations. If not for the fact that China's binge on expressway construction has meant that every provincial road and national highway has been left to go to hell, I would not recommend going on the expressways. But in the case of Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Shanxi, it is simply not often safe as a motorcyclist to travel by some of the secondary roads.

August 2: looped through eastern and southern Ningxia, beautifully surfaced roads, with non-existent traffic and plenty of curves and hills. Traveled from Yanchi county south east, first on provincial highway S302 and then south on S203.

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Passing the great wall.

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That evening, after passing the Xumishan grottoes in south central Ningxia, we began to ascend into the Liupanshan mountains. Around dusk I spotted an abandoned village below. We descended by a narrow trail and camped in the remains of what had once been a mosque.


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More images from southern Ningxia:

Numerous abandoned villages in the Liupan region.

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the route down to the campsite was a bit tricky.

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my copilot.
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The last remaining family of Hui Muslims in the village. They explained that they had no interest in moving on to the city. Since the reservoir had failed to fill as expected, they had little immediate cause to move on.
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luckiest pup in the world! :) and sooo envious of your amazing tours around the northwest.. can't wait to return to my beloved 大西北! :)

The south west corner of Ningxia was a bit sketchy at points, but excellent scenery.
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Just east of Xiji, in southern Ningxia we came out on National Highway 309. This was a bit disappointing as this highway was little more than a pitted donkey track for the next 70 km, or until a little over the Gansu provincial boundary. The only thing in favor of this route to Lanzhou was that there was very, very little traffic. The road feels quite remote, with very sparse, isolated, population. The final 265 km (Xiji to Lanzhou) took two days to complete on account of the rough road.

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The road climbs quite steeply in Gansu. In contrast to Ningxia, the land was much more barren, seemed more like mid-winter than mid-August.

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Even the dog was a bit rattled up by this stretch of road. Before ascending up the Tibetan plateau, she earned herself a new custom made cushion for her crate.
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I spotted this rig several times over the course of the ride from Ningxia to Lanzhou.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maxo

While fake sleeping, I overheard the following conversation:
"Is that the laowai's dog?"
"Yeah, definitely, it must be his dog. Must be a foreign dog."
"How can you tell?"
"Look at her eyes."
"What, are they blue?"
"No! But there is just something different about them. Those aren't Chinese dog eyes."

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And you kept a straight face on while listening to that .. haha. Who said Chinese don't have a sense of humor?

I also took my dog on short rides around town. I had special messenger bag for him that I kept on my shoulder. But eventually he learned to climb out and put his paws on the handlebar pad, as if he's steering. If you're out in an empty road, it's a good idea. Somehow they just love wind in their face.
Also, better than cushioning, the best thing you can do for your dog is this ::

http://i.imgur.com/dHC5p.jpg

The more you could cut down on the noise levels, the more comfortable she'll be.

Good to hear you guys are still alive, what a trip! Many grateful words to you sharing, pictures like make me drool...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maxo

Also I got the only bad gas of the trip in Kangbashi at an official Sinopec fill station.

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Is the petrol out there made of beans?