Attachment 16008
All these are from the top of the dirt hillclimb we did
Attachment 16009
Attachment 16010
Attachment 16011
Printable View
Attachment 16008
All these are from the top of the dirt hillclimb we did
Attachment 16009
Attachment 16010
Attachment 16011
I have developed the zhu scale of assholeness regarding 4wd's. Taking into account tailgating , horn honking, road hogging and blind corner passing.
Top of the list is the worst;
Any black Audi
Bmw
Jeep
Toyota
Bread Van
Blue truck
Santana
Hello Kitty Smart Car
Granny leading Donkey
Kid leading Goats
Dogs
Attachment 16013
Every little bike shop seemed to have an old rice rocket hanging out in the back
Attachment 16015
This one was well guarded
15
Left at 7.25, George's bike was a little reluctant to start due to the cold but he got it going. We had some nice fast roads for 100 Ks then hit 40 kms of absolute road under construction hell. We then hit some great twisties and descended a few thousand kms very very fast, George said he considered his bike totally run in now because there wasn't a chance he was taking it easy on twisties of that quality. We then went through some fairly grim, dusty, predominantly muslim towns (in Gansu) before starting to head up in altitude once more. We got on this amazing bypass around Xining which doesn't appear on google but does on baidu maps. I can't say enough about this road, easily the best of the trip. We took a little detour up to an isolated farmhouse for me to take some pics and George managed to drop his bike on a nasty uphill hairpin. He was unable to lift it upright by himself and I couldn't hear his shouts for help 'cos I was so busy snapping away...sorry George. The road eventually comes out on Qinghai Lake and the traffic went from pretty much zero to complete carnage. Bicycles, cars, trucks, buses, yak....nobody looking at the road, people wandering about posing for photos, not my cup of tea at all. We went a ways up a mountain to get a nice pic of the lake then got the hell out of there.
We arrived in Quaidam at 8.15 and found all the hotels had fixed their prices at 480 quai per room, I was less than impressed and said no way I'm paying that, let's try and find a pikey room somewhere. Then, whilst riding along in first gear lookinng for possible guest houses and blinded by anger and frustration, I managed to ride straight in to an open manhole. Incredibly the bike stayed upright and at first I thought I'd just gone over a massive pothole but it soon becme clear how lucky I was not to have damaged the bike in any way. If that's not an adevrtisement for the JH600 I don't know what is! George was an oasis of calm during this whole episode and after we had a good laugh about the pothole we decided that 480 wasn't actually going to break the bank so we went back to the hotel with our tails between our legs. We ended up sharing a crappy room with a voiyeuristic glass bathroom which just capped off a funny evening. We hit the whiskey fairly hard that night and had some very spicy mutton in the only restaurant in town.
610 kms
3370 total.
Attachment 16017
Attachment 16018
The whole hillside was covered in what looked like drilling rigs, no idea what was going on
Attachment 16019
honey
Attachment 16020
Attachment 16021
Attachment 16022
These were taken at the bottom of an awesome descent into Gansu
Attachment 16023
Attachment 16024
Attachment 16025
Attachment 16026
Best road of the trip - Xining bypass
Attachment 16028
Attachment 16029
Attachment 16030
Attachment 16031
More Xining bypass and Qinghai lake
Attachment 16032
Attachment 16033
Attachment 16034
Attachment 16035
The manhole missing a cover! The jialing just ploughed straight over it without any damage, the locals were amazed, as were we
Attachment 16036
16
Left at 10.40 with me suffering from the previous night's excesses, one of George's whiskeys was 55% and he drank it like water, without a trace of a hangover. The road to Golmud was very straight, boring and fast. We arrived at 5.40 and met our Guide Nyima. We had dinner and a few beers then had an early night.
465 kms
3833 total
Hotel – 280 each. At this point I'd resigned myself to this trip being the most expensive ever hotel wise, this didn't stop me from bitching and whining about the sorry state of affairs however! The thing that really got me was that the hotels were shite! It wasn't as if there was only one really posh hotel that'd accept foreigners, they were 50-100 quai hotels charging the bloody earth!