It seems that everyone who comes to China and wants to travel eventually starts talking about tibet and Lhasa. I'm no different, but in the end we decided to skip Tibet on a motorcycle. We did it the regular way. But we still wanted to get a big Chinese bike trip in. So here is the plan in short: Take a train from Yantai, Shandong to Lhasa. Spend a few days in Lhasa, then take another train to Urumqi, Xinjiang. We meet the bike in Urumqi, having sent it there the week ahead of time. Then we ride from Urumqi to Yantai. Baidu maps says it's 4500km. Simple enough. I'm going to be working on putting the ride report together in the next few days.
08-11-2015, 12:44 PM
cryptographicide
China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai) Prep
Prep
The first thing I had to do was ship the bike to Urumqi. Sending the bike was tedious and annoying but not difficult by China standards. I looked into sending it by truck, my first quote was 4000元. That guy got a huge "No thanks". I checked out some of the larger, national chains. Their cheapest price was 2300元。 So, I cruised on down to my local train station and asked China Rail Express. I said my bike is 230cc. They said, oh that's an oversize bike, the rate is extra. The weight of the bike is determined from the engine size. They said sending a 230cc bike (1cc=1kg, according to them) would be 1700元 + insurance. Insurance was 1元 for every 100元 that the bike costs. So, if you want 20000元 insurance, it costs 200元。They didn't want it wrapped or packaged or crated. They said the top box could be shipped but it and it's contents are not insurable. The shipping time would be about 6-10 days. I just roll the bike into the station, they do the rest. The bike can't have fuel or a battery on it. All Cool Baby.
So I return ten days before I am to pick it up in Urumqi and give them the bike. However, this time, I tell them that this bike is a 125cc bike. The engine size isn't printed anywhere on the bike, except in tiny letters over the exhaust pipe. It says JH-200GY. Those numbers are mostly meaningless, right. But 125cc is a pretty standard size and no one questions it. For that little bit of cheating, I saved 500元。 The fuel needed to be syphoned and the battery had to be removed. There wasn't a bit of fuel left but the old fat guy who was ordering all the other younger guys around needed to make a point, so I had to buy a cheap towel and put it in and take it out a few times to show that it indeed was dry inside. Tedious but not difficult. This is a picture of me, a small distance from the door of the station (more safety) showing the old man, who is standing in the door, that it is indeed dry. http://i.imgur.com/pIyb8aK.jpg
I also sent our helmets, the tent, and my body armour with the bike as a separate package.
Here is a gif or our packing and all the things we took with us. Save for the tent and sleeping bags, this is all we took with us. http://i.imgur.com/Qpkg1eg.gif
08-12-2015, 01:34 AM
bikerdoc
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai) Prep
No photos? If you're using hosting and linking your photos from 'onedrive' the photos don't seem to be viewable...
Try uploading using the <insert image> button at the top of the 'Quick Reply' window to post the individual photos to the thread directly. You can control the placement of the photos by the usual text format options of where you place the cursor within the 'Quick Reply' window frame as you attach and upload each photo. You can even drag & drop a photo within the 'Quick Reply' window frame if you prefer the photo to appear in a specific location or order etc interspersed with text.
08-12-2015, 04:33 AM
cryptographicide
Lhasa
Alright, the photos should be fixed. They are visible for me now if I'm logged into onedrive or not in both chrome and IE. If it still doesn't work, then I'll start hosting them using MCM.
We left on June 28th, and took the daily train to Xian from Yantai. Then we stayed overnight in Xian and got on the early train to Lhasa. It was great being able to take the train. The slow increase of elevation made acclimatization easy and being able to see the country is so important for me when I travel. Just hopping from one place to another by plane takes away so much from experiencing a place. What lies behind that mountain? Are there animals? How do the people live outside of the city. It's one of the reasons that I prefer to travel by road. On a train you get to see all that. The railroad to T!b3t starts at Xining. You transfer to a diesel train and then start toward Qinghai lake. By the time you get to Qinghai, the elevation is high enough that you no longer see trees. Also, the yaks are everywhere. Hills of short, tough looking green grass roll into the horizon. Occasionally, a mountain can be seen far off. As you progress into T!b3t, these mountains get closer and more often covered in snow. Small streams like to line the hills. Again, not a tree to be seen. The clouds in T!b3t seem closer than they do elsewhere. Imagine yourself three kilometers into the sky and staring at the clouds. Flying a kite might peel off a thin wisp for you. It took 36 hours from Xian to get to Lhasa. The city of Lhasa is settled into a valley, much lower than the surrounding plateau. Potala Palace stands on a small mountain in the middle of the valley and can be seen from miles away. Because we didn't have the bike during this part of the trip, I'll just post a few pictures with some explanation and move on the the motorcycling part of the trip.
A Nomads supper, tsampa (barley flour and yak butter, on plate), and shaptrak (raw ground yak meat, in steel bowl). Shaptrak has a really interesting taste. I'm assuming it tastes really close to raw ground beef. This dish was sweetened with honey and had some vinegar and hot peppers thrown in.
This is Namsto Lake, about 250 kms from Lhasa. It's a 5 hour drive, we went for a day trip as part of the tour.
Our trip to Lhasa was good. It was really short, we only stayed 3 days. But I feel as though I saw lots of culture, not just the touristy stuff. We saw a local house and met a few families as part of the tour. I picked the ear of the guide until there wasn't a question that I already didn't know the answer to. I asked her about everything, weddings, recreation, family life, funerals. I stayed clear of some of the more political topics, though.
If I had to do it again, I'm not sure that I would do it by motorcycle. T!b3t is huge. And, for the most part, it's all the same. It would be like driving through 2000km of Wyoming. Now, Wyoming is nice, but straight roads and unchanging scenery make the roads feel that much longer.
08-12-2015, 05:04 AM
bikerdoc
Re: Lhasa
Unfortunately, it seems the photos still not displaying...
08-12-2015, 09:49 AM
MJH
Re: Lhasa
Technical difficulties...
08-17-2015, 09:24 AM
cryptographicide
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Screw Onedrive, frig-off microsoft. Everything has been changed to Imgur.
From Lhasa, we took the train to Urumqi, stopping briefly in Xining to change trains. Each train was a sleeper, and each was around 24 hours long. When we got to Xining we had to pick up the battery for the motorcycle. This is the ending to a fairly long series of events that started when they made me remove the battery from the bike when I sent it by train. So,I needed to get the battery to Urumqi separate from the bike. The solution would have been obvious had I known I couldn't take the battery with the bike. Just stop the bike before the station, remove the battery and hide it in the top box. It would be sent with the bike and everyone would be happy. But by the time I realized I needed to remove the battery, it was too late and I was already inside the shipping office. My next solution was to take it with on me on the train. This just shows my inexperience in dealing with Chinese“safety” efforts. If a wet battery isn't allowed in the bike, it probably won't be allowed through passenger security. So, two hours before our train is scheduled to leave, I am standing at the security desk trying to convince them to let me take the battery on board the train. I remain calm and polite, and explain the situation to the security personnel. “No, I cannot just buy a new battery in Urumqi,all the parts on that bike are very rare and difficult to find. Even in Yantai, it is impossible to buy this battery.”, “No, I cannot kuaidi this to a friend in Urumqi because I have no friends in Urumqi.”. In the end, they were really helpful and arranged for the battery to be kuaidi'd to the Urumqi station security guard office.The manager of that office was called and the whole thing arranged. I was super grateful and really happy that it was handled before my train had to leave. A lesson to those sending bikes by train, send the battery before hand.
So, arriving at Urumqi, we needed to find the man who had my battery and meet him. We called him and arranged to meet at Security Inspection gate 3, which just happened to be immediately next to the China Rail Express office. After getting the package, we got the bike. I handed over my paperwork, proved my identity, paid the ten days storage fee (90元)and the bike was rolled out shortly. Then I asked where the other package was. The package with my helmets and tent and armour was nowhere in the warehouse. I was even allowed to look through the entire warehouse. I basically grabbed and squeezed every bag in the place and found nothing. So, we left, having been told that they would call me when they found it. They had quite a bit of incentive; the tent was insured for 1500元.It's a north face backpacking tent and I insured it at replacement value. The next problem was that the tank had no gas in it at all. I asked a small group of drivers waiting to help passengers deliver their packages about the nearest gas station and they gave me some frightful news. Urumqi has banned motorcycles from filling up at allgas stations within the cities. No Jerrycans, no tea pots. No exceptions. So, one of them let me siphon from his tank in exchange that I fill it up. My tank, usually a 50元fill, cost 200元.Oh well, not the worst price to pay for bootlegged gas. As the taxi driver was handing me the hose and motioning for me to put my mouth on it I smiled and taught him a better trick. I stuck the hose all the way into the tank and put my thumb over the end. Then, I pulled the hose, now totally filled with gas, out of the tank and started filling up the water bottle we were using to fill up my bike. This got a thumbs up from the taxi driver and a few “hao bang”s from the small crowd that had gathered. By the time I filled up the bottle ten times, the crowd could not have been called small. There were probably thirty people watching the two laowai's steal gas from a black cab. The fact it was happening across the street from a security checkpoint made me pretty nervous. So we quickly packed up our bike with all the gear and rode, helmet less, to our hostel. Two hours later, we had to return to the station to pick up our helmets and other gear. They had eventually found the second package.
The next morning, we tried to get an early start, but trying to get the saddle bags to side under the seat meant taking off the top box, which was no designed to be easily removed. It took about an hour to tear everything apart and get it together again. We left the hostel around 10 am. Our first stop was the Urumqi Bazaar, which was a crowded place. Filled mostly with Uighurs. The streets were packed with cars, the sidewalks packed with people. And no where to park a bike. We drove around the bazaar and a skinny guy in a tight shirt waved at us and called out “HA LOU”.This, I usually take as a terrible sign. But the manner and smirk that this guy was wearing reminded me of a friend I had in Canada.This guy strutted and yelled like a rooster. His chest stuck out and he bellowed in Uighur, obviously promoting his shop. The resemblance to my friend was enough for me to ask if I could park my bike in front of his restaurant. He happily agreed. It took a few minutes to lock everything up and get the cover on the bike. We went inside his restaurant and had some lamb friend rice. It was greasy and had little taste besides that of boiled mutton. The rooster-restaurant owner isn't in the gif, he must have been strutting around inside while I took the video.
I kept a close eye on the bike. It looked so out of place. A big bike, covered in a silver sheet. A man stood next to the bike, on his phone, telling his friend in Chinese, characteristics of the bike. I could overhear part of the converstion. “It's a dirtbike”, “Its big, lots of bags.”“Looks expensive” In my head, this meant that someone was on his way with a truck and waiting for my wife and I to leave the bike unattended. I imagined we had about twenty minutes before the bike was in any actual danger. After lunch, we went for a quick walk around the bazaar, which was not noteworthy. We bought some dried cherry tomatoes and some raisins. But the stress of imagining three guys grab our bike and put it into a truck made us hurry back to the bike and move onto our next destination. On our way to it, the Xinjiang Museum, we got stopped by a police officer. We were waiting at a traffic light and he waved at us to pull over. The he explained to us that Urumqi has a complete ban on motorcycles and that we must leave the city immediately. We said that we were just on our way out of the city. He let us go. It happened again at the next intersection. This time, the officer was not polite and needed to yell at us to get off the motorcycle. I got off and palmed my key.Then he needed to check all our documents before letting us off with the same warning. “Leave the city immediately.” From that point on, when I started to approach a major intersection, I made sure I was hidden behind a truck or bus, or that I was not riding along the edge of the road, but totally surrounded in traffic. This discouraged at least three more cops from pulling me over. I guess, I found out why there was no motorcycle parking at the bazaar. Getting to the museum turned out to be impossible. They were building an overpass that ran above the street that museum was located. This meant, that street was totally closed. By all accounts, the museum was open, but we tried for an hour to find it's entrance. Then, we gave up and tried to find a butterfly valley. It was outside of town and the travel sites said it was ok. When we go to the address, all we found was a military training area. I was getting pissed at Urumqi at this point. So, we went the long way, around a quiet ring road. It spat us out, well outside the city.
I wasn't comfortable taking the Gaosu, so we opted for the National Highway. It was rough going. Keeping up 60km/h was tough and the road was insanely busy. We eventually got to a traffic jam. Trucks were all stopped and nobody was coming from the opposite direction. I actually stopped too before realizing that this isn't Canada, and if I could squeeze past, then I could go. So, I rolled ahead. The traffic jam wasn't caused by an accident, a checkstop, road construction, or nothing. It was caused by people, coming from one direction, trying to pass a waiting car and blocking the lanes of the people coming the opposite direction. I passed all of them by driving in the ditch briefly. The road for the rest of the day was brilliant. We stopped of fuel well outside of Urumqi. Bikes were allowed into the station at all. We needed to park the bike well away from the station and use tea pots to haul gas about 100m. Driving along, we passed fields and fields of wind turbines. It wasn't surprising because the wind was steady and hard and lasted for hours everyday. It would start around 11am and continue until a few hours past sunset.
Next, we started looking for a place called South Pasture. It was marked on Baidu Maps as the correct name and I verified it's location before I left on the trip, but when I got there, it didn't seem to exist. So, we kept driving about 30 km into the desert. I was aiming at a gap in the mountains where it looked like there might be a pass. It seemed to dead end into a valley. It was here where we made our camp for the night.
We had a few hours to relax, write in the journal a bit, and have a small dinner on snack food. Dried yams, some crackers and meat sticks that tasted like raw peanuts. I ended up passing out well before dark. I woke up a few hours later, as it started to cool, and started to get into the sleeping bag when I heard it. It was a loud, harsh, high pitched bark. It sounded like the angriest poodle you can imagine. It was definitely a wild animal and it had definitely noticed us. Andrea was up immediately.
“What was that?”
“I don't know.”
We listened for a few more minutes. The barking got louder. It would make it's shrill,disquieting bark, then wait ten second before barking again. Each time louder, each time closer.
“Is it a wolf?”
“It sounds too small to be a wolf. Maybe a coyote.”
“Does it know we're here?”
“Oh, yeah. It knows were here.”
At this point, it was so close that we could hear an echo after the initial bark. Where before, we could only hear the echos. I eventually started being able to get some thinking in.
“Assuming this is a coyote, if it were going to attack us, it probably wouldn't be making noise. It's not going to attack us. An attack would be quiet. It's just trying to scare us. It'll bark for a while, then it'll be quiet.The barking means that it doesn't think there is anything in this area bigger than it that would be attracted by the noise.”
This was enough to comfort me. So I slipped back into sleep. Andrea is far more worrisome and woke me up a little while later.
“It smelled my foot.”
“What?”
“I heard footsteps walking around. Then I felt it's nose brush my foot through the tent.”
“Oh.”
Then I went back to sleep. I don't know how much Andrea did or didn't sleep that night. I woke up around sunrise, totally ready for a long day.
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Nice pics and great ride report! Thanks for sharing!
08-18-2015, 01:38 AM
bikerdoc
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
+1 echoing ZMC888's thoughts.
Just a quick note, not sure if you are aware, motorcycles no longer need to display a front licence plate. I discovered this last year round October when I plated my new BMW GS. I was politely informed that "no motorcycles don't need a front plate any more, only the rear bike licence plate". It looks like you have a dealer advertising plate or some such attached to the LHS fork leg down-tube?
In regards to a top-box and the inability to remove it without a lot of wrenching, I have many ADLO boxes in the garage several of which are spare and a few are in white. All are fairly large and made from better than average grade plastic etc. All come with a base plate which means that using the supplied key and pressing a button then box 'quick releases from the base plate in a few seconds. See photos of the ADLO 981 and related base plate fitted to the luggage rack in this thread.
If you might be interested I could sell you one and courier it down to a point on your journey (e.g. hotel) etc. PM me if you might be interested.
08-19-2015, 07:59 AM
cryptographicide
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
We woke up and got moving around 8. It was cooler than I thought it would be, but even in the morning, I could feel the heat starting up. We got on the road and passed a number of windmills being built. They seemed to be going up way faster than I would have expected. A whole line of trucks loaded with the parts of a complete windmill would wait in a line and a crane would take one at a time. Half a km away, another team was laying the foundation for the next days erection. The main highway was about 30 mins from our campsite. We were a long ways a way and, although one car passed our tent during the night, we didn't see a soul. As I was driving, I started to hear a squeaking coming from the rear wheel. I thought it might be the bearings, but it went away when I added a little grease to the chain. Our first stop was brunch at a little restaurant in a town called Salt Lake City. We ordered about twice as much food as we thought we would need and packed the leftovers into our to-go containers. Those ended up being a life saver. Also, because we kept our portion sizes small, I ended up loosing a bunch of weight on the trip. I highly recommend bringing some plastic containers to put left-overs in. I also noticed that the side bags had started drooping. One was melting on the exhaust pipe and the other was touching the tire occasionally as we drove along. This was easily fixed by attaching a rope to them and stretching it over the top box so that the side bags wouldn't droop. The secondary road that Salt Lake City was on was great. Quiet, new, totally perfect asphalt. It wound peacefully through villages and irrigated farmlands before joining the Gaosu and entering a pass into the Turpan depression. We lost about 1500m of altitude and whatever coolness that the morning had left when we descended into the depression.
When we emerged from the pass, I had to go through my first toll booth on a Gaosu. They didn't say a word, just waved me through and let me on. Then the cop at the speed check stop waved me through.
Note about Gaosus in Xinjiang province. For the Gaosu inbetween Urumqi and Hami, there are signs that say no motorcycles. But the entrances and exits do not have tollbooths. The tollbooths are on the highway every 150 kms or so. Motorcycles were just waved through. We also met some long distance bicyclists who said the same thing. The speed limit minimums were 60km/h. In Xinjiang, the other traffic had no problem with a motorcycle going 80km/h and often treated us like regular traffic.
The Turpan depression is flat and hot. Temperature in the sun was around 45-48 degrees Celsius. It felt like you were standing in a huge blow dryer all the time. It's windy too. All the wind comes from the West and goes East. At some points the wind was going the same speed as the bike. It was a really crazy experience to hear the engine and tires without the sound of wind rushing past your helmet. I opened the visor and took off my sunglasses and couldn't feel the air on my face. It was a super strange experience. The cross wind does sneak up on you. There are pretty accurate signs however. When the road turns or when the wind changes direction to go around a mountain...there is usually a sign indicating a side wind. Other times a wind sock will be put up next to the road for people who don't trust signs. We were experiencing some serious saddle soreness at this point. The heat of course, makes it worse. I'm no stranger to the iron butt, but my wife isn't. And even with the significantly wider seats, this bike is still a dirtbike and still really uncomfortable on long trips. We needed to stop for about 10 mins every 45 mins.
Getting into Turpan was nice. We stopped at a gas station, got to fill the bike up without a teapot, then we got some free ice water and they gave us a seat right under the a/c. I saw some oil on the shelf and bought it...which was a mistake. When you buy oil that is 17 yuan a liter, it may not noticeably harm your engine, but it will give you the worries. I'd much rather pay 50 yuan for a bottle for stuff that has a shell logo on it any day. After the awesome, friendly gas station, we went across the street to a car repair shop. I asked if I could change the oil, they said of course and helped me out. Then I got them to put on a piece of iron to stop the bag from melting on the exhaust pipe. Then, I asked them to help me add grease to the front and back bearings and check that there wasn't a rock in them. In all, they helped me for about an hour and they wanted 30 yuan for that work. All the time, super friendly guys. I was really getting to like Uighur people. (We Grr)
Finishing up at the shop, it was about 3:00 o'clock and we wanted to see something interesting. So we stopped on the side of the road and checked the map. The museum was nearby and open till 5 and free. A man walked up and gave us a "hi". Hi is usually a much better greeting than "HA LOU" because it signifies that the person who said it knows more than one word in English. This guy actually spoke English really well. He explained that he has a few bikes, his favorite being a Yamaha 600 street bike. I asked about his other bikes and he dodged the question. His job was "archaeologist" at one of the ruins. This was odd because he also explained that this job was part time work. With his level of English, it seemed plausible. Then he asked us out for lunch, this made Andrea really worried. She's read a ton of horror stories about people who trick you into having a big dinner and then sticking you with a bill that would be considered exorbitant in America. So we declined and the Uighur guy responded by saying that he wasn't a Taliban. We thanked him for his time and said goodbye. He was really friendly, but something about him didn't let me trust him. Perhaps we could have seen the real side of people had we had dinner with him, perhaps everything would have been amazing. Or maybe the we would have lost the bike and all our belongings. I'll never know. Part of me regrets that we took the safe road. Part of me says, "Don't worry about it."
Next stop was Turpan Museum. It was free, air conditioned and kept our interest for about 3 hours. It had a great exhibit on Turpan history and a unique exhibit on Turpan dinosaurs. Totally different stuff from what most of us would consider to be the regular North American dinosaurs. These were big elephant looking things with shovels growing out of the lower jaw. Crosses between rhinos, bears, and horses. Just some strange stuff. On the top floor was a big mummy exhibit. Because of the extreme heat and absolute lack of humidity and moisture in the region, year round, basically every body put into the ground becomes a mummy. A few of the mummies in the museum were buried with k@nahb!s. There were about ten mummies total. From normal people like business men to priests and I think there was some royalty. It was definitely interesting.
We had leftovers for supper and went off to find a place to camp. We found one outside of the city in a new development district. It was near a man-made lake, next to some trees. The wind really picked up around 6 pm, as we were making camp. It's tough to put up a tent in 60 km/h wind. One of us had to sit on the upwind side of the tent while the other did all the work. It was mostly quiet around the park. A few people walked by while we were setting up, but no one came to check us out. This becomes relevant the next time we tried to camp. In the lake, a few families were letting their kids splash around in the greenish brown stagnant water. I didn't go near it but they seemed to be loving it. I finished my journal and jumped into the tent to go to sleep.
The tent was boiling. It must have been 45'C in the tent. The ground felt like it was 50-60'C. I jumped out the tent immediately. It was twilight and the air was getting cooler. The wind was dying down too. We waited till 11 pm and sat in the tent in our underwear, sweating. The ground just didn't cool down. The tent remained insanely hot all night. At the break of dawn, around 7am, I woke up totally naked and half outside the tent sweating my balls off. I'm glad no one was walking around that early. We packed up and vowed never to camp in Turpan again. So we looked for a hotel at 7 am. Turpan is under the influence of the much hated "no foreigners in hotels with 2 or 1 stars" rule. Which meant the cheapest available room was 180yuan. After the fifth hotel refused us because we were foreigners, we found a hostel and stayed with them. This hostel was awesome and I totally recommend it. The name is Dap International Youth Hostel. There were 6 English speakers staying there. The owners spoke excellent English and were extremely friendly and accommodating. The motorcycle was stored indoors and out of the sun. I can't recommend this hostel enough. So, we left all our gear there and had a shower to wash that terrible night of sweat off.
Then we headed to check out the sights. We started by taking the back roads. Past irrigated vineyards and shepherds. All the houses were made of mud and dirt. There was barely any wood used. Brick buildings full of holes were everywhere and used to dry fresh grapes into delicious sweet wine.
I imagine, in that intense dry heat that it took about 30 minutes to completely turn the biggest juiciest grape into a shriveled little raisin. It was insanely hot. Eventually, I got sick of the shitty back roads that were full of pot holes and, knowing there was a Gaosu just 5 kms north, took a short cut and started driving 80 km/h again. We drove east of town to the flaming mountain, which is written about in Xiyouji (Journey to the West). It's a great attraction for kids. You pull of to the side of the road, part with 60 yuan per person, and then look at sculptures of the Monkey King. We simply enjoyed the sight of the flaming mountain from the road as we drove by.
Behind the flaming mountain was a glorious road that wound through a sandy gorge with a river at the bottom. At the end of the road was the "Bezeklik (Bez-a-click) ten thousand Buddha caves" Small caves with paintings of Buddha's all over them. The paintings were mostly covered in mud and hard to make out, and anything of note was stolen or destroyed by a "German foreigner" who was doing "archaeological" work in the area in the early 1900's. The contents of the caves were taken to Berlin where they were totally destroyed during the world wars. There were about 5 caves open, all of them were disappointing and it cost about 40 yuan a person to get in.
Next stop was about 10 kms away. We stopped for lunch in a Uighur farming village. We found a crowded restaurant serving fresh naan bread and lamb kebabs. I was so excited and the food was amazing. The lamb was as fresh as can be. Next door, you could see the butcher taking a cleaver to an animal and hauling the meat over to the restaurant. It was grilled in typical shaokao style. The grease from the meat, as it cooked, was rubbed on the naan bread and both were salted and grilled a little more. We found a table in the back. It was dirty and dark and totally stuffed with local Uighurs. The reaction to us as strangers and foreigners was really strange. We were ignored. Like we weren't even there. Every once in a while, the whole restaurant would, almost in unison, look up at us for a while. Then we would notice and they would go back to their conversation. We were clearly completely out of place, but nobody was going out of their way to draw attention to us. It felt cold and unwelcoming, but a relief from the usual Han reaction of swarming, staring, shouting "HA LOU" and smiling eagerly. I went up to the grill and tried to order some lamb kebabs, but no one spoke mandarin. Instead of trying to understand me, they just ignored me. I was standing right beside the grill trying to get the cooks attention, but he deliberately avoided eye contact. It felt like he just wanted me to leave. A friendly Han fella stepped in and took my order in Mandarin and then translated it into Uighur for the cook. Who, now that the language barrier had been breeched, was more than happy to cook the food and take my money. It was interesting to see how "fear of the foreigner" manifests itself in a culture that is so different from Han Chinese culture.
Further away from Turpan, the irrigation became lesson common. Fields seemed younger and villages were more spread out. We ran into a police checkpoint. The officers looked very concerned when we rolled up and the younger ones got really excited. The man in charge stood up, asked politely for our Chinese ID cards and I asked if he meant our passports. He laughed and said, "Dang Ran". I handed over the passports and followed him into his little air conditioned trailer to help him decode the passport that lacked Chinese characters. "This is the passport number. Here is my first name. Here is my last name." I love air conditioning. In 5 minutes we were on the road again. He didn't want to see the bikes registration, or my license, or anything except our passports.
The next stop was Tuyok Valley. It is a river flowing through a shallow valley that is home to a very old village. The village is still alive and well. To walk around, they ask for 30 yuan per person. Pay the money, walk around to your hearts content. It was really interesting. Most of the houses were all made of mud. Beds were often seen outside. Because it never rains and indoors can can insanely hot, most people sleep outside on large wooden raised beds. Having spent the previous night on the ground...it seemed like a completely obvious solution.
We were sweating like crazy. At this point, I had drank 4 liters of water since I woke up and I hadn't peed. I would drink a 500ml bottle of water, then I would sweat for ten minutes. I would be dry in about two minutes and incredibly thirsty again. I felt constantly dehydrated and drinking more water just made me sweat more. We walked around, got a little lost and had to trek past a sign that said "do not pass this sign" to get back into the village.
We only spent about half an hour at the valley, but it was the middle of the day and by the end of it, both of us wanted to get back to the hostel and rest. We were about 50 kms away from Turpan, so that's a little less than an hour of driving. Get on the bike, head north through the valley, which was a fantastic little ride through twisties with hardly any traffic. We get on the Gaosu and fly back to the city.
About half-way back, Andrea begins to feel really tired. We pull over and talk about it. I tell her to take a few minutes and rest in the shade of a bridge. I say, we have about 20 minutes till the hostel, which isn't precisely true. So we get back on the bike and after a few minutes, she begins to feel weak again. So she thinks to herself, "I'll just hold on. It's only 20 more minutes." A few moments pass... she continues thinking, "Oh, really dizzy." She feels numb like a brain freeze but without the debilitating pain. Then, though her eyes are open, a cloud of darkness is all she sees. So she closes her eyes. I feel her helmet touch mine. Then I feel her helmet resting on mine. I've had passengers fall asleep on the back of the bike before. It's dangerous as hell. So, I give her helmet a little knock with mine. This pushes her back into the seat and she slumps against the top box. I feel her starting to shift over to the right side. Oh Shit. She is about to fall off the bike. We're going 80 km/h. I let go of the throttle and reach my right arm around to grab her and hold on to the top box, pinching her between my arm and my back. As I do this, I grab the clutch and use the foot brake to slow down. I can feel her breathing is wrong. Not shallow and steady like someone sleeping. But deep, heavy and labored as if she just stopped running. Stopped, I somehow get off the bike while holding her up. I have no idea how I managed that maneuver. It seems impossible no matter how I try and remember it. Her body is totally limp She is out cold. I slide her off the bike and she starts to come around and she sits down cross-legged on the gravel and bits of tar near the side of the highway.
"Where are we? What's going on?"
"It's ok, you're fine. Were stopped on the side of the highway. You just fainted."
She sat there staring at me. The realization that we were on the side of the highway and sitting in the shade of a motorcycle slowing floated to the surface of her face. It was like she was waking up, but not in her bed, or in a tent. She clearly had heat stroke. It was about 2pm, the hottest part of the day. We were in direct sun and couldn't get out of it. And I needed at least 30 more minutes of driving to get her into shade. So, we rested a bit and kept driving. She wrapped her arms around me and clasped them around my belly. That way, if she slipped again, I just had to reach down and I could hold her on the bike by holding her hands together. Every once in a while, I'd tap her hands and she responded by squeezing a little tighter. This signified all is well. In her head, she kept herself awake by singing O Canada, alternating between French and English versions. Damn her for being so cool and bilingual. We stopped and rested about every 5 kms until getting back to the hostel. Then she passed out for the rest of the afternoon. I took that opportunity to make friends with the other English speaking people in the Hostel. We decided to try some Turpan wine. There were tons of grapes and grapes mean wine. So I bought three bottles of cheap local wine and one bottle of the 60 yuan stuff. Cheap wine was 15 yuan, or about $2.75 CAD, expensive stuff was $12 CAD. Turpan wine is unique. You can taste the dryness of the region in the grapes. They taste raisiny. Of all the things in Turpan, I think I enjoyed the wine the most. I've never had a dry wine that didn't taste bitter. It was sweet, like most cheap wines are, but dry. Dry like someone had sucked all the water out of it, yet it was normal wine consistency. Truly a special taste. The afternoon quickly became night and slightly cooler. Supper was some naan bread with chucks of lamb baked into it. Something else that is dry and delicious. Then I drank 2 L of water before bed to stave off the oncoming hangover. It didn't work.
At 8am, Andrea was ready to go and it was really cloudy. We set off for Jiao he Ruins, which is the ruin of an ancient city. The city existed upon a small river island. All of the walls were made of packed mud. We walked around, the clouds keeping the serious heat off of us. Andrea is far more interested in archaeological stuff. She made sure we saw all the walls and dirt of everything. And that we got pictures of almost all it. Clearly, she felt much better.
We had lunch at a nice looking Uighur restaurant. It was a huge plate of Dapanji, (big plate-o-chicken). We asked if it could feed one person or two. He said. Usually three people. Andrea and I finished it off, completely. We were so stuffed.
Next we went to the Karez canal museum. This was another tourist trap feeling place, but I found it really interesting. At the time, I was a little dissappointed, but looking back, I'm glad I didn't give it a miss. The irrigation water in Turpan comes from the mountain range to the north. This range is a long ways away and has significantly greater altitude. Transporting the water on the surface would result in so much evaporation that it would be useless. So, they dug tunnels underground that fed oasis in the desert. 30% of water used in Turpan today comes from these kerez tunnels. They dig the tunnels by digging holes into the clay. Then, they just connect the holes underground. It's amazing that many of these tunnels were finished a thousand years ago, during the era of Marco Polo.
Some random pictures from around the hostel. Ft. A friendly dog named "Haodou" and our panda named "Pannada" (潘拿大)
The name of the panda is clever because my Chinese name is (潘)ChenSen and Canada is Jia(拿大).
Next, we needed to buy a new memory card for Andrea's DSLR. Then we retired early to the hostel.
08-19-2015, 09:26 AM
zhu
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Great trip and great report. Nice tip about the bike size on the train btw.
With regards to changing oil, I just buy the oil at a bike shop ( Castrol 15/40 if I can get it) and let the guy change it. They just charge for the oil so why get your hands dirty I reckon. I do keep an eye on the guys tools though and if he starts to approach with a 12" crescent I get out my own socket.
Nice ride and glad to see the heatstroke episode ended well.
08-19-2015, 12:19 PM
TexasAggie
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Excellent ride report. I am jealous of your language skills in Mandarin. 11 years here married to a local and I still suck at Mandarin. Looks like you guys had the experience of a lifetime. Well done.
08-19-2015, 01:36 PM
cryptographicide
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
@zhu. I usually do the same thing. Near by my house, I had a great place that I went to. They had a good selection of good quality oil. They were fast and cheap. They always threw in a free wash too. Last time I went, they tried to use an imperial wrench on my metric bolt. I lost my shit and told the manager that I'd never come back. Luckily, a shop a block away offers the same service. Both of my local shops are car focused. The bike shops WILL NOT give me service. Even an oil change is too difficult. Coming with this experience to life on the road lead me to search for car repair places before I looked for bike shops. This ended up being a mistake in Turpan. We actually passed a huge Japanese brand dealership with Japanese style business model. They had a big entrance for repairs and service. It looked like I was at home. I kicked myself because ten minutes before I had just chinky-rigged a rusty metal bar onto the back of my bike. That's the trouble with finding places when you're on the road. You just never know what the city/town has until you live there or spend enough time to weed out the gold from the shit.
08-19-2015, 02:53 PM
zhu
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Yeah you can never be sure what is around the corner or over the next hill. I carry three kg of tools with me and I'm always looking at what I can get rid of, but I used every single one of those tools at some point. Err except my tyre levers on the last trip, the only puncture I got was outside a bike shop with a fridge full of ice coffee and a comfy chair... So I just let the guy have at it. Still don't think I will be leaving the levers at home.
08-20-2015, 12:40 AM
cryptographicide
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
It's all Gaosu from Turpan to Hami. You don't gain any elevation either, so it's all just hot. Really hot. The sun beats on you, and the wind, normally cooling, when it blows, blows hot as hell. When you move at the same speed as the wind, the sweat pools above your eyes. The engine sheds heat between your legs, unable to get wind past the cooling fins or through the radiator. When you don't ride with the wind, it tries to tear you from the road. The rocks are surreal and dead. We made stops every 50 km's or so, to go to the bathroom or relieve our asses. The best bathroom spots were animal overpasses. Designed to handle the water that would occur during flash floods, these tunnels were easily large enough for an animal to sneak through. Squatting in one was comfortable and semi-private. Usually, it wasn't too tough to sneak down into one from the highway. Leaving Xinjiang, the security on the Gaosu become much more strict.
The first fuel stop we made, I got to fill up at the pump. Then I figured out why "safety" means using a teapot. I was tired and staring off into space while the attendant filled up the tank. She shoved the nozzle into the tank and squeezed the trigger, locking it in place. Then she too starred off into space, as if my tank held 50-100L. Two seconds later gas was flying everywhere. It covered our bags, the seat. I looked at her with clear resonant disdain. Then she said the Chinese phrase that I hate the most, "不好意思“。It means "a bad meaning". People say this to me when they mean, "I'm sorry", or "I can't help you", or "Oh, well.". What it really means is, "I've lost face because of you, so leave now, and save me some face." The next gas station we used the teapots. But they were full of dust because we were the first customers and they had been left out all night. So I take the teapots in and try to explain that they need to be washed. An young man agreed that gas stations should be able to provide clean teapots and if the teapots are dirty, the customer shouldn't have to pay for it. So he washed the teapots for me. From Turpan to Hami is about a little less than 370 km's.
We got into Hami around 4pm. I went around the ring road and tried to take an exit from the Gaosu, but some silly monkey dumped a few truck loads of sand on the exit ramp. Whatever, that shit doesn't stop a dirtbike. Had to find a bank to get some cash. Baidu Ditu makes that really easy. Then we needed some snack food. This meant, we wanted a real supermarket. Not a chaoshi that sells some beer and chips. The way we found this was stopping on the side of the road and waiting till we found a reasonably intelligent person walking by, staring at us. Then I asked them where the nearest chaoshi was. "NO, not little tiny chaoshi, a real big chaoshi." This gathered a puzzled look, but the meaning was understood and I got the name of the well known underground place that sold an actual selection of food. The name was all I needed to plug into the map app and found it in 5 mins. I waited beside the bike while Andrea went in and bought stuff. It seemed easier to do this than to unpack all the stuff, lock it all down, and cover it with the tarp. I waited for over an hour before Andrea called and explained that she went out the wrong exit and the security guard wouldn't let her back into the store so she could cross to the other side and leave by the correct exit. The security guard said that the water she just bought and had the receipt for could be clear explosives and it was simply not possible to reenter. So, she had to walk about two km's around the building to find me. This task is not something Andrea is designed for. I navigate...Andrea makes sure I don't punch idiots who get in my way. I'm also not allowed to scream at idiots. When she got back, she was in tears. In the mean time I had the time to meet a cute little old Uighur man who insisted that I need to buy a Uighur style hat. He was particularly insistent that it should be a similar pattern to his little cap.
From there, we drove to a place called the melon garden. We drove 20km's out of town to the garden just as it was about to close. This meant that the guard was no where to be found. We checked-out the greenhouse. This place was cool. They grow melons for different purposes and breed some to be sweet. Some to be small enough for one person to eat in one sitting. Some need to be able to grow without irrigation or in intense sunlight. Each melon plant grows straight up and is hung about seven feet above the roots. The melons hand heavily from this vine. Thousands of plants all hanging there interbreeding with each other. We only had a few minutes before the park closed. From there, we took some back roads and looked for a fallowed field for a campsite. We found one. It was off the main road, but beside and in sight of a tiny, dusty road. We stopped and ate supper. It was crackers and some spicy red bean dip. I wrote in my journal and Andrea set up the tent. A nearby shepherd was bringing his sheep from the pasture as the sunset turned to twilight.
Just typing this next part makes me get angry.
A man in a red Hyundai Tiburon pulls over and leads his friend into the field to talk to us. He is clearly a Han guy, his friend is Uighur. He tells us he is a local resident. I ask if he owns the fallowed field. He says no. Then he says we can't sleep here, we need to register first. The Uighur friend has an expression on his face that says, "This is a waste of time. Lets just leave these guys." But the Han is oblivious to that social cue. So, we pack everything up and are about to ride away. We should have just rode away but he convinces me to stay. He says maybe the police will allow us to register and then continue to sleep here. We wait ten more minutes. It's totally pitch black out.
Then the police show up. Not one car. About six cars altogether. Two vans with lights flashing. All of a sudden about twenty Uighur men are standing around. A tall Uighur uniformed officer comes out and wants to see our passports. I'm calm and relaxed. Andrea is nervous, but holding together. The police decide that there is no problem. They offer me a cigarette. I decline. We are, obviously not allowed to camp. Not just in an unused field, but anywhere. There is no place in Hami that someone can go to pitch a tent. I'm not surprised. They tell me that we need to return to their police office and register then we can find a hotel. They tell me that both Andrea and I will ride in the van and some other guy will drive my bike. I politely tell them that idea is unacceptable. I drive my bike and Andrea can ride in the van.
In the van, the two police officers are very kind and try to make Andrea a little more relaxed. They ask questions. One of the officers practices his English a little. Inside the station, they take our passports again and begin filling out paperwork. The tall uniformed cop asks me to have a seat instead of standing. At first I refuse but Andrea reminds me that we should listen to what they say. So, I sit. We get our passports back. It's well after midnight.
Andrea and I have been going since dawn. We're tired and on edge. It's clear that the officers all feel bad for the situation. The officer who has a few words of English comes in and says to us, "Welcome to Hami". Andrea is overcome with irony and it shows on her face in the form of a hushed exhale. I smile awkwardly. The meaning behind our reactions was regretfully clear. Next, the tall cop brings us a melon. We refuse three times. The fourth time, he simply puts it in my lap. Next, he asks if we want to get some food. I decline that as well. He let us refuse that one. Next, is the trouble of finding a hotel room.
The officer with a little English volunteers to help us find a cheap room in town. Andrea and I get on the bike, and he leads us to into the city. We stop next to a skuzzy little convenience store. It's all locked up for the night. The cop calls a number and a big fat man comes from the back and unlocks the door. He takes me behind the building, through a dark parking lot, up two flights of stairs and into a little hobbit room with two wood platforms that didn't have any form of mattresses. For this room, he wants 100 yuan. I tell him the most I will pay is 50 yuan. We do not come to an agreement. There was just no way I wanted to leave the bike in a totally dark parking lot. So, back on the road and the cops find another hotel. This one has a posted room rate of 150 yuan, but the cops get the price down to 100 yuan for me. I check out the room and find out why the room rate dropped so easily. The mattress is covered in bed bug eggs. There were no actual bugs or dead bugs and the floors were stone. It was about 1:30 in the morning. I agreed to the room and we said goodbye to the cops. Then we brought our stuff into the room and set it on the desk and furniture raised off the floor. We fell asleep on our air mattress on the floor. Not once did we see a bug. It was just the eggs in the bed.
Through the whole situation, everybody was calm and rational. The cops were friendly and very helpful. I'm fairly certain that they thought the whole situation a waste of time, but a required waste of time. The law is the law. The Uighur police officers saw that the law was carried out in a courteous and hospitible manner. The motivation for why the Han called the police is still unclear. He was just randomly driving along, when he saw two foreigners standing next to a tent in a field during sunset. Something about that situation made him think that the best possible thing he could do is to call the police. He did not own the field, nor did he know the person who owned the field. All I know is he was really happy when the police all showed up. He was like a little puppy, dancing around in circles and waging his curly little tail.
We didn't wait around in the morning. We had a quick breakfast of snack food and we left. We made good time on the Gaosu, since we were still in Xinjiang. We stopped every 50 km or so for a quick break and a few times we made it as far as 80km in between stops. At one point, we were stopped and Andrea gave me a kiss. A semi-truck passing by gave us a pull on his airhorn to tell us how excited he felt. We ate our Hami melon on the side of the road. This was a unique spot where the fence on the side of the road had a gate that was left open. So we pulled through and enjoyed the less windy shadeless area 100m from the road. Then we took a sniff. Just upwind of us we a huge pile of rotting melons. Some asshole had taken the liberty to dump an entire truckload of melons and garbage. The nice thing about the heavy wind is, if you take a few steps to the side, the wind carries the smell away. The melon was great. Sweet, juicy. Tasted just like a cantaloupe but shaped like a football.
After entering Gansu, the our path diverted to the south. We left the Gaosu and got on a much poorer rood. We road was flat and straight but the pavement rolled and heaved. The road was busy with truckers and tons of tourist buses. All with a constant and oppressive side wind. On the satelite map you can see the lines in the gravel and dirt caused by wind. It looks like it was made by rivers that flow across the land. But, the lines are from windy pushing rocks in one direction, all day, everyday. We stopped at a town and grabbed some lunch. We ordered chao mein. (炒面) It came in a very unusual way. The noodles were not long, but instead chopped short and shaped like macaroni. I loved it. This dish was great.
Outside the restaurant, Andrea and I looked around. It was hot. Probably above 40'C. We decided to screw the idea of camping. Our experience the previous night had left us with an especially resentful taste in our mouths. It would be a hotel for us. But hotels in Dunhuang are expensive. Dunhuang is a tourist town. Foreigner rules are in full force and cheap hotels were impossible to find. So, we stayed in a hostel again. Dap hostel in Turpan had given us a business card of her friends hostel in Dunhuang. So, we called them first. It ended up being a really similar set-up. They gave us a great secure spot for the bike. There was lots of shade. It was around 100 yuan for us to stay the night. We called and made reservations.
The ride into Dunhuang became a little more green and shaded as we got closer. It's a really nice city that is built around a river. We saw significantly less Uighur influence but that is no surprise since it's in Gansu. The first thing the hostel owner did for us was try to buy tickets to Mogao Caves. These are very important Buddhist caves with a lot of really impressive fresco's. I knew Andrea was really excited about seeing them because she had been talking about them since the first day we began planning the trip. The hostel owner was totally surprised that in the two days we would be staying in Dunhuang, all the English tickets were booked. We asked about Chinese language tours and she said, those are booked too. So, we didn't get to see Mogao caves. Nobody cried.
After getting settled into the hostel, we decided to check out the nearby sand dune visitor center. It was a well put together tourist spot. A ticket could be used more than one day. They just scanned your finger print and linked your print to your ticket so other people couldn't use it. Riding the camels cost a hundred yuan and the ride was long enough that you were just getting bored of the experience when you had to get off. The dunes were pretty and we enjoyed everything there despite the fact that we had to share it with thousands of other tourists. I think the park cost 120 yuan each, but our student ID's gave us half price.
When we returned to the Hostel, we sat down for a dinner of snacks and writing in my journal. The owners invited us to their party and explained that this was the hotels first anniversary. We enjoyed a little hot pot and a few warm beers.
The next morning, I needed an oil change. I passed a place near the hostel that rented quads. I ended up going to a shop that sold oil by the drum. He had some cheap looking motorcycle oil that he wanted to sell me for 80 yuan. I paid 35 for it. I think he was trying to play the foreigners-will-pay-any-price-you-say game. He had the tools to change the oil, but from looking at his work, I'm guessing he had only changed the oil on his own bike. He ended up pouring oil all over the dirt in front of his shop. This made the family who owned the store next to his laugh at him. He smiled sheepishly in response. I asked if he had any grease for the chain. He said no. So, I went back to the quad shop and asked them. The shop is on the other side of a small, concrete ditch that was filled with fast flowing irrigation water. It was cool to see such an abundance of water in a place as hot and dry as Dunhuang. I parked the bike near the water and ask if the shop has any oil for my chain. I mistakenly left out the Chinese word that seperates grease (huangyou) from oil (you). Dude stands up and reluctantly grabs an old nearly empty bottle of oil. He leans over, pours a stream of used oil all over my chain, sprocket, and axle. The oil drips all over the ground and rear suspension arm. My mouth is open in disgust. Then, he takes the now empty bottle and chucks it carelessly into the irrigation ditch. ...yeah. I'm sitting here trying to think of a way to describe how I felt. It's more than just disgust. It's a realization that this behavior is acceptable and typical in China. It didn't occur to him that I was upset at him for doing that. He didn't think about it. The clean, blue water in the irrigation canal, water that is so precious and important to a community surrounded by dunes, gravel, and desert, is exactly the best place to put a used motor oil container. That mentality, as demented and ridiculous and it sounds, is so typical that it didn't occur to this man that I was standing in front of him with my mouth gaping trying to hide my reaction to his behavior. BAH!
Next we road 80 km to the south. These 80 km were, for some reason, some of the longest in the entire trip. I'm not sure why. Possibly, the heat, this wind. But I know that everything hurt, everything was annoying, and I needed at least 5 breaks to finish them. At one of the breaks, Andrea put her small camera on the saddle bags but forgot to put it in her purse when we started moving. She found it missing about 10 km s later. So, we had to back track. I found the spot we stopped, then a few meters away, we found the camera.
We were headed to an area in the desert that, in the time of the silk road, was very important. This was a section of the great wall, one of the sections furthest from Beijing. Yumen was one of the most western outposts on the great wall. The tiny guard facility and some sections of the wall are still extant today. They are not the stone versions of the wall that you see near Beijing or the clay brick versions near Jiayumen. These walls were only about 2 meters high, and not wide enough to walk on. They were made of layers of packed much and reeds. But insanely old. A lot of the wall has been eroded by wind, but it isn't as damaged as you would think.
We traveled about 40 km back to Dunhuang when Andrea stops me and tells me her little camera is missing again. She is really annoyed at herself and hatefully searches through all the places it could be. I see how much she is beating herself up, so I reserve my "How can you lose a camera twice on the same road?" look and instead use the "It's ok. We have four other perfectly good camera's." look. At this point in the day, I'm already tired. It's the heat of the day. Andrea is the same and were worried about another fainting incident. We decide to give up on the camera. I mean, if it wants to be lost so bad, let it be lost. So, we go to the next destination. 20 km outside of Dunhuang, we visit the western ten thousand Buddha caves. An arrogant and completely ridiculous man was unable to explain to us that we could only buy tickets to the cave immediately before a tour was about to begin. He simply and enthusiastically said, come back in thirteen and a half minutes. We walked into the valley and I did something that made all the Chinese people stare with wide-eyed shock. I removed my shirt, soaked it in a small stream with clear water, and put it back on. It was the most refreshing thing I could possibly have done and I loved it. I shivered and coo-ed with chilly delight. The dozen or so Chinese people who saw me do it completely forgot to close their mouths. We returned to the ticket seller, who had been replaced by a kind and intelligent woman who took our money and apologized for not being able to give an English tour. She said she was studying but hadn't finished memorizing the script. The western thousand buddha caves were small and few and, like bezeklik, mostly destroyed. I suggest you give it a miss, unless you are looking for a stream to soak your shirt in. We stopped for water and made it to the museum about two minutes after it closed. We were told it was too late. I literally begged them to let me and they did. I'm not too proud.
From there, we had a quick bowl of noodles from a shop owned by a talkative Uighur man. I asked for Chaomian, hoping for the same awesome dish from the day before. He said that he didn't have Chaomian because it was too hot to Chao anything. This is understandable so I asked for cold noodles. After bringing two plates, he sat down next to us and began talking about motorcycles. He pointed out his brand new suzuki bike. It was one of those 125cc, drum brake, 5-spoke plastic rim deals. I asked if he ever takes it off-road. He didn't answer the question, but instead asked if I want to drive my dirtbike on the dunes. I said, "No, It's too heavy and it has the wrong tires for ..." (I don't know the words in Chinese for sand, dunes, or desert) He insisted that my dual-purpose bike, totally loaded down with luggage, is the perfect bike for the sand dunes. I continued to disagree. Next, he whips out his phone and shows me a video of a redbull competition in death valley. I explain that these are different bikes with special tires and death valley's dirt is harder and easier to drive on. He insists that my motorcycle is the perfect bike for sand dunes. I explain that I wouldn't be able to go fast enough and I would probably fall off the bike. He insists that my motorcycle is the perfect bike for sand dunes. Now, I try to have a deep respect for mentally challenged people and always try to avoid ostracizing those with mental difficulties. I wanted to eat my noodles and chat with my wife, but there was a pleasant and friendly who man was stopping me from doing that. I didn't want to tell him to leave me alone. I didn't want to insult him. My solution was to ignore him. This didn't work. He continued to show me pictures and videos of motorcycles and motorcycling that he thought was interesting. I said nothing except <slurp>.
Back at the hostel, we did some laundry and relaxed a bit before hitting the hay.
I woke up early, but didn't quite get a grip on the day. You know when you hear the alarm, sit up and think, "Ok, lets go." Then you fall back down and pass out for an hour or two. I guess, when you're tired, you're tired. It was really nice not traveling with deadlines or a fixed schedule. If I needed a rest, I got a rest. I eventually started packing and doing bike maintenance. The chain needed tightening because a couple of rings had fallen off. I guess it is a solid fact that Chinese chains, even if grease and well maintained only last 4000km. Quickly, the bike was packed and we were off.
Getting onto the main road, we saw a fairly large group of motorcycle touring guys. They all had big bikes. I couldn't tell the make, but they were prepared for long trips. Everybody was wearing reflective jackets and pants. Later on, a little ways down the highway, we saw another group of Chinese guys riding cheap 125 cc Chinese red tank bikes...You all know the ones I mean. They had those soft green side bags that are designed for carrying parcels. From Dunhuang, going south, the only option is the Gaosu. We simply rode past the toll gate on the entrance. They waved happily as we drove past. There were other vehicles on the road that were clearly not allowed. We saw a Sanlunche going about 40km/h. At least our bike was above the minimum speed. Our first leg, we made 100km before we needed a break.
Lunch break was in a small town called Guazhou. Andrea was craving vegetables and it was a good call. We had a plate of pickled cabbage and some fried rice. I came back from ordering and paying for the meal and could smell Pannada burning on the exhaust pipe where Andrea had leant him. He wasn't damaged much. We sat in some cheap yellow plastic patio furniture under a little tent. It was shady and outside. The day hadn't become unbearably hot yet. I wiggled a bit in my seat and heard a snap before I went tumbling to the ground. I totally destroyed their plastic chair. The waitress came out and assured us that it wasn't a problem. Then I, more carefully this time, sat in another chair at the table.
From Guazhou, we made our way to Yulin Grottos. The road to Yulin was some of the more interested and drivable roads in that area. What I mean is that it wasn't perfectly flat and straight. Yulin Grottoes were in a shallow gorge. There were lots of trees for shade. At the ticket office, we asked about student tickets, but the ticket seller was unable to clearly communicate that there is no student price for and English tour. She scurried out of her booth and found the English tour guide. We chose to get the tour in English for an extra 15 yuan a person. Yulin was quiet and cheap, compared to other attractions. 7 Caves were open to us. These 7 were more impressive to us than all the other grottoes that we had seen combined. There was a daoist cave, which was particularly interesting. The art was very different from the other buddhist caves. There were motifs common in Ming and Qing dynasty paintings. The colours were also more vibrant and contrasting. They used deep blue and reds to contrast the images. The big attraction was a 24m Buddha Maitreya. It was completely plated in gold and built withing a great cave. We walked in the cave and saw a small buddha sitting there. "Oh, thats nice." Then we looked to the side of the little Buddha and saw a 10 foot high foot. Your eyes slowly trace their way to the top where they find the Buddhas head about 80 feet above you.
Back on the Gaosu, I noticed that people started treating me differently. At this point, there was a secondary highway to the side of the Gaosu. But the road was terrible with potholes and rolling pavement. Some parts the pavement would end and be replaced with terrible gravel. This road was packed with trucks trying to avoid the tolls but keep their speed. They would crash over the road at 60km/h. I tried to stay on the highway, but after a few belligerent drivers, I began to feel the secondary road might be safer. One driver on a white Haval SUV. (To those who are considering buying a Haval SUV, please don't. All Haval drivers are complete assholes. I see a Haval now and I think, "That prick is a cheap cunt, I hope his teeth fall out and his family leaves him because he is so pathetic".) This Haval pulls up beside me, slowing to match my speed, and follows in my blind spot for a while. He checks out the bike, sees that we are foreigners and decides he needs to intervene. So, he gets in front of us and begins to slow down. I go around him. He does it again, pulling in front of us and motioning to pull over. I do a quick check with my clutch hand. Nope, all the straps and ties seem in order. He is not a police officer, nor is it anyone of any official significance. It is just a jerk in a Chinese brand SUV. I pass him again. He tries to pass me. This time I slow down to 30km/h and keep driving straight. He matches my speed and continues to play this strange game of leap frog. It takes a few more leaps for him to get sick of driving so slow and realize it's not worth it. He eventually floors it and rides away. After this, I take the first exit off the Gaosu. The secondary highway however is so terrible. I couldn't keep a speed higher than 50km/h. Andrea was starting to get whiplash from the bumps and I knew the bike and luggage was taking a beating. We continue for a few hours until it starts to get around 6 pm. The sun was getting lower and we needed a campsite. So, I drive along, looking for promising side roads. I find one that runs under the highspeed rail line. This takes me to grazing grounds. Lots of shepherds are walking around with sheep through really tall grass. Ok, this looks pretty good. I find a tiny trail off the road and check out the grass. The ground is strange. It's hard and crispy on the surface, but immediately under the surface it's soft and spongy. Driving the bike in this is like driving over a crispy pillow-top mattress.
We drove through the tall grass till we were out of sight of everything. No one coming down the road could see us. We were out of sight of everything. Even the bike couldn't be seen. You would have to walk over top of us to see us. So, we tucked our shirts into our pants and our pants into our socks and sat down in the crispy dirt next to the beetles, worms, and ticks. We waited for darkness. A cloud started rolling past and it looked really dark. We hadn't seen a hint of rain since we started our trip. The wind was blowing this cloud toward the mountains. It was gaining altitude and loosing heat, the closer the clouds got to the mountains, the more they looked like rain. Almost every cloud eventually had a little thunderstorm tantrum and dumped a bit of rain before clearing the first few peaks and heading into the range. It was strange watching a queue of clouds line up and take a leak. If I had been the cartographer, I'd have called that place Urinal Mountain. I'm watching the clouds and snacking on a bag of things called "strange taste Chongqing horse nuts" when we hear the baying of a flock of sheep. It's ok, they would have to be literally on top of us to see us. Then we hear she shepherd yelling. He's closer than we thought. "Ya! Ya! Yaa-ha-ha-ha!" He is getting closer. We listen for another fifteen minutes. Slowly, he continues getting closer. Eventually, we hear his bell ringing. Then a sheep walks past us. Oh crap. I stand up and he is about 5 meters away. I say "Nihao". He responds with a word I don't know. He doesn't speak a single word of mandarin. I explain that we are just snacking and resting in the grass. My speech is completely non-sense to his ears. So, our communication quickly degrades into gesturing. I motion that we are just leaving. He motions that we should follow him and his sheep. I don't want to. I doubt he is going to call the police. But, I can't tell his intentions and, honestly, after the last time we tried to camp, I wasn't in the mood to trust any Chinese people. The completely language barrier only aggravated the situation. So, we got on the still totally packed-up bike and drove off. There was about 30 minutes of usable light left.
I drove through some fields before finding another grassy spot near a brook. This spot had better ground. It was far less bumpy and more comfortable. It also wasn't that hot. Comfortable in the low twenties, so room temperature. The only trouble was the mosquito's, who were finding breeding very efficient thanks to the brook and the low lying stagnant water that surrounded it. As we pulled up, a cloud overhead decided to spill it's load a little early and began to drizzle on us. The tent went up quick and we hid inside for the rest of the night. Nobody bothered us for the rest of the night.
One driver on a white Haval SUV. (To those who are considering buying a Haval SUV, please don't. All Haval drivers are complete assholes. I see a Haval now and I think, "That prick is a cheap cunt, I hope his teeth fall out and his family leaves him because he is so pathetic".) This Haval pulls up beside me, slowing to match my speed, and follows in my blind spot for a while. He checks out the bike, sees that we are foreigners and decides he needs to intervene. So, he gets in front of us and begins to slow down. I go around him. He does it again, pulling in front of us and motioning to pull over. I do a quick check with my clutch hand. Nope, all the straps and ties seem in order. He is not a police officer, nor is it anyone of any official significance. It is just a jerk in a Chinese brand SUV. I pass him again. He tries to pass me. This time I slow down to 30km/h and keep driving straight. He matches my speed and continues to play this strange game of leap frog. It takes a few more leaps for him to get sick of driving so slow and realize it's not worth it. He eventually floors it and rides away
Great RR well done and thanks for posting.
Just got back myself from a ride over west from Longkou, had the same shit with Cars/SUV on the expressway checking you out taking pictures , I just let it go for a short time then I just pull over and stop hoping their car will stop as well ? then we would see what all the fuss is about.
Now when I am on my CF 650 TR I just open her up and piss them off because their shit SUV can't keep up with me.
Not sure what game the dicks head are playing but it's all the part of living here in China I reckon
We were up at the first sign of twilight. Both Andrea and I were worried that some shepherds would show up and make trouble. We were on the bike in half and hour and I tried to find the highway. I had GPS on my phone and it could tell me where I was, but I couldn't get signal, so no satellite maps. We drove around a maze of fields and cart trails, trying to find the road. I knew that there was a road a km north of us, so I drove north and got stopped when the road turned into a muddy trap. I also knew the road curved towards the south, so we headed east, trying to get to it. This time we were stopped by a large lake. I saw a mosque to the south and since you build mosques near people and people often build their houses near roads, the mosque may be near a road. On the way, we had to go down a little ravine. I missed my gear going up the other side, the bike bogged out and stalled, then slid backward into a deep pond. The front tire was still on the road, but the back was totally submerged and I was standing knee deep in swamp. The great thing about a 250cc bike is, even full loaded, I can lift it. So, I lift it back on the road and drive away with wet boots. We get back on the road and, after about two hours lost in the maze, continue on. From sheep-camp to Yumen was about 100 km.
The road was great. It was still super early and no one was around. The road was new, and wound through farms and fields. We saw sunflowers and canola. Everything was green and alive. This is something that we hadn't seen in a while. In Yumen, we find a baozi restaurant for breakfast, a store to stock up on water and snacks, a place to wash the mud off the bike, and a gas station all right next to each other. So, we hit each establishment in order, doing all the running around we needed to do in one quick shot. The car wash people let me wash the bike myself. I don't trust the waterproofing for the particularly sensitive EFI stuff to a pressure washer. So, I always tell the dude with the washer wand that I know which parts can't get wet. It usually works. Also, the car wash is often free.
After Yumen, however, the road went to shit. Alternating gravel and pocked pavement. Just terrible stuff. I got sick of it quickly and decided to try and sneak on the Gaosu by entering through a broken section of fence. Getting past the fence was easy. Then I had to ride up the embankment. I got Andrea to jump off, then I had to sit right in front of the steep section, gun the bike and pop the clutch. I overestimated the juice I would need and ended up popping the tire up in the air. I lost my balance and fell on my ass, but the bike made it on the highway. The maneuver would have been a complete success had I not busted off the mirror and bent the brake lever forward. I was wearing the armour, so no pain. Just shame.
Once on the Gaosu, Jiayuguan came swiftly and comfortably and we had no trouble at any point. We got to Jiayuguan just before noon. Jiayuguan is the official end of the great wall, although we had totally just seen the really old sections in Dunhuang. It might be the last major fort of the great wall. There is a cool fort there, but we got the feeling it was a tourist trap and only drove around it. We went to check out the overhanging great wall. There was an entrance where you had to pay money, but there was also a section that you could climb on the wall without paying. We just drove around, had a little look and continued on.
I needed another oil change. (every 1000km, no oil filter on this bike) and I needed a new mirror and brake lever. We typed "摩托车修“ into baidu maps and it lead us to a mechanic. He was a real problem solver. The brake level was replaced in a minute, the oil changed, and he just epoxied the mirror back in place. We had lunch while it set. His wife was really friendly and bought us some bananas. When people in China get me really angry, I try to remember the nice bananas and people who go out of their way to be kind.
We were planning on backtracking a little bit and heading into the mountains along what could have been an amazing road south of the boring flat desert Gaosu. This road wound through the mountains. I saw twisties on the map. Even if it was a significant amount of gravel, I was excited about taking this road. So, we go along and before we start climbing, I have to head 30 km straight into the wind. The bike doesn't want to keep up 80km/h now. It is limited to 60km/h. I'm concerned but write it off as due to the headwind. Then we start to climb into the hills . The pavement ends almost immediately, but the gravel isn't too loose and I can keep 50km/h safely. That should be ok. We keep climbing. The bike begins to lose power, like a lot of power. I slow to 30km/h. The road is steep and gravel. This I can handle, I just go slow. It is about 300 km to Zhangye by this road, but we should be able to make it with a hard day of riding. We keep climbing, the bike being really weak and slow. Then we get to the pass and I realize how high we were. It was 3500m and the temperature at 2 pm felt like 10 degrees. We were planning on camping nearby but our sleeping bags are rated for 10 degrees and if it dropped another ten degrees overnight, we would be having a tough time. That, combined with the poor performance from the bike, the not so great road conditions, I decided to save some time and take the Gaosu. So we turned around at the pass and headed back down until the air got a little warmer.
When we spotted the area that would make a good campsite, I made Andrea walk, and drove the bike through a creek bed until we were higher up the hill and away from the road. We made camp in a mountain meadow, far out of sight of the nearest road. It was one of my favorite camping spots on the trip. Finally, Andrea was able to relax.
Great Report! I also have similar feelings about trying to look at the good folks you meet on the way and let those that that I do not think deserve to share oxygen with me leave my mind. I am not always successful! Then I remember my statistics and engineering from many years ago. The real issue is the size of the pool. If you have 10% asshats in the USA, you must remember that means that there are 30 million asshats in the country. In China, the percentage is the same but there are 1.4 billion people, that means there are 140 million asshats in the same footprint.
That being said, I often forget my own knowledge in the heat of stupid and shit for brains people. Good to see that you have a good handle on your situation!
the more people I meet, the more I like my dogs.....
08-29-2015, 05:44 PM
ChinaV
Re: Jiayuguan
Really enjoying this! :popcorn:
A great ride report with all the usual frustrations and wonder that only China can offer.
THANK YOU!
08-29-2015, 09:51 PM
cryptographicide
Zhangye
Zhangye July 17
Odometer: 4561 (+323)
I am the Spectacle!
The night in the hills was cold. We have sleeping bags that zip together and so we could spoon to conserve warmth. We developed a system where we were switch sides at the same time. Every hour or so, one of us would wake up and roll over and the other would follow suit. Regardless, our feet were ice in the morning. It still blows my mind that we went from sweating and being worried about heat stroke to nearly getting hypothermia in the matter of a few days. After the previous night of stress and semi-sleeplessness, we decided to sleep in. Neither of us wanted to leave the tent until the sun shone on it. So, we slept in.
We made quick work of the Gaosu and had no problems. Our first attempt to get on was blocked by a fat security woman who objected so enthusiastically that she spat. We simply drove ten kms down the road and tried the next entrance where we succeeded. The power problems from the night before went away in the morning. It could have been the headwind and steep climb but I also think it may have been a glitch in the EFI system that went away with a power cycle.
On the road, I saw the most jaw dropping vehicle sharing the highway with us. It was an honest to goodness Schlumberger truck. It was a shiny, stunning Western Star with a frac pump on the deck. This truck is a familiar sight in our hometown where the primary industry is oil. The truck stood out on the Gaosu. Immediately ahead of the Schlumberger truck was a regular Chinese tractor trailer with Shandong plates. The driver saw our plates and gave us a wave. I saw these events as a great sign and was very excited about the day.
The kms to Danxia park were uneventful. We got there, used our student id's to get half price tickets. We needed to wear our backpacks because I can't lock them to the bike very easily. I was also wearing my armour. And this park was packed. It's pretty easy for people who live in China to imagine was crowds of Chinese tourists look like. This place had a good crop of very typical specimen. They were yelling and cawing, pointing, waving and taking selfies in the most reliable way. When they saw a 6'2" foreigner wearing boots, knee guards, and admittedly "shuai" body armour, they couldn't help but forget we are people, who despite our strange attire, have paid admission just like everyone else. It seemed like we had a thousand people who had to have our picture taken. Everyone needed to tell me how handsome I looked and how beautiful Andrea was. Those outside of China might not relate to how annoying this situation was. Please understand, the first time you pose for a picture, its kinda fun. The 50th time that day you can't bring yourself to say yes. Week after week of that incessant attention and you wish you could put on a squinty eyed mask and just be invisible. I took off the armour and wrapped it in the backpack. That alone made the rest of the afternoon much more enjoyable.
Afterwards, we used Meituan to find a cheap hotel. We found a 88 yuan room with good secure parking and air conditioning. Did some laundry in the sink and went out for dumpling soup and beer.
08-31-2015, 03:58 PM
cryptographicide
Flower Ocean and Blue Rock City
Flower Ocean and Blue Rock City - July 18
Odometer: 4868 (307km)
I woke up early, ready to get a full day in. I did my Chinese flashcards. These got done almost everyday of the trip. I was pretty proud about how diligent I remained with them. I also tightened the chain again, found some grease for the chain, bought some water and snacks. I woke Andrea up and 8:30 and she demanded more sleep. It hadn't occurred to me that the pace we were keeping was getting to her. She thought that getting a hotel meant we could sleep in a relax. She used the argument that we should get as much time out of the room as we could. I consented and we continued to relax.
The first section of road was green and really quite beautiful. But it was busy and was plagued with strange little dump trucks. They drove in three vehicle caravans at about 50km/h. The locals were familiar with them and didn't slow down or look past them when they passed them. If I saw a caravan of mini dump trucks coming, I started to assume that someone would be lane splitting with them as I past. I was never disappointed. The road was crowded. It was bumper to bumper and traffic was set at a unwavering 70 km/h. I found out I could keep 80 km/h if I stayed on the shoulder and passed everyone on the wild side. This seemed like a fantastic idea until some fool didn't see me and tried to make a right hand turn just as I was about to pass him. He slowed down instantly and gave me almost no time to stop. I avoided it by getting in front of him, but the whole situation was a fantastic reminder of why motorcycles shouldn't break the rules. Bad Brent! Never Again!
The fields were predominately corn here and corn harvesters were seen everywhere on the road. They would drive along, keeping about 50 km/h. There seemed to be a ton of them that hang around toll gates. These combines were tiny, only a bit bigger than a large van. They were definitely tiny compared to N.American corn harvesters. The road was heading towards the mountains and as we got closer, the corn changed to canola. The yellow flowers were really blooming. Chinese families stopped on the side of the road and started walking through the fields. The husbands all had DSLR cameras and took pictures of their wives and children holding scarves blowing the wind. Admittedly, it was a great picture.
When we got to the mountains, I realized why it was so busy on the highway. It was the weekend and everyone and their dog was headed to have a picnic in the hills. There also appeared to be some festival. When we got near the picnic areas, I had to drive in the ditch to get past the traffic. It started to threaten rain, so we got all geared up with rain gear. I had bought these 25 yuan booties that covered your shoes. I love them and still do. It was such a cheap, simple solution to getting wet feet. As we were putting on the rain slicks, a super friendly Han guy came over and handed us 4 apples. I pocketed them and thanks him. He said, he was just being friendly and wanted to make sure we felt welcome. Wow. I wish that kind of random hospitality happened more often. I will be certain to remember to hand out apples to people who are suiting up for a more grueling part of their lives.
It did start to rain, but only a sprinkle. It would get on my visor and fill my vision with little dots but those dots would never bead-up and roll off. I was constantly wiping my visor and my hands got damp pretty quick. We got passed by a few bikes with long-haul tour rigging: Two Zongshen RX-9's both with the special aluminum cases, a Yamaha sport bike with hard bags, and a few others. The slope of the road was slowing me down and the Chinese riders rode aggressively and unsafely. They were totally comfortable lane splitting and weaving on a curvy road that was still jam packed with cars. This was mind boggling and I wasn't interested in joining them. I still stopped and asked them a few simple questions. They didn't seem at all interested in talking with me, so after finding out they were heading in a different direction, we separated.
The mountain climbed to 3500 m then descended about 500 m into a plateau that was filled with yak, sheep, t!b3tan architecture and lots of nomadic homes. The people were totally t!b3tan and they lived it. Most people lived in tents right next to their herd of sheep and yak. Many folks raised bees and sold the honey on the side of the road. As with all places on the plateau, there were no trees here. Also, it was cold. It's amazing was altitude does to the climate. This plateau lasted about 40 km before climbing another pass at 3500m. Then the road descended into a fantastically picturesque valley filled with canola. The mountains in the background, the blue sky, the flowers, and the bright sun made for more amazing pictures. Andrea and I didn't stop because we didn't want to be so cliche. But, you know, I wish we had spent a little while taking silly pictures.
We did stop and buy some honey at one of the tents on the side of the road. This couple had several bee-hives and sold both unpasteurized and pasteurized honey.
We had early supper in 花海 (huahai, flower ocean) in a town called 青石 (qingshi, blue stone). We parked outside and saw there was no one inside. There wasn't anyone eating in any of the restaurants. We walked in an four pre-teen boys swarmed us and helped us sit down and get comfortable. It was an awkward frenzy of untrained well-meaning waiters. We felt like snow white, being helped by all the multitudes of forest animals. The mom came in and shoo-ed them away. She gave us the menus and we found out why no one was eating. It was amazingly expensive. We settled on some gaijiao which was a dish I had independently invented during University. It consisted of meat and vegetables in gravy-goop dumped upon a bed of rice. Mine was a cumin based dish and I enjoyed it a lot.
We began climbing the big mountain to the south at 5:30. I knew that we needed a place to sleep soon. It would be dark in two hours. We climbed for forever. These were steep switchbacks and the traffic was packed. Happily, I can report that I've found the level of difficultly that a road must attain before the typical Chinese driver will realize he may no longer drive recklessly and behave himself. It's a 12 degree road with switchbacks every 300 m where about half the vehicles are fully loaded trucks. Driving carefully and driving without stupidity are not the same thing. I was approaching a switchback when I saw a semi-truck coming downhill from the other direction. I have driving transports before, so I know that in a switchback, he is going to need the entire road. I hold back and wait for him. The guy behind me doesn't understand why I am so stupid. Stupid waiguoren stopped in the road. He passes me and gets himself right at the apex of the switchback before he realizes the trailer is going to run him over. So he starts to back up, but there is already a fool parked behind him. I laugh and go around all of them. Nobody passed me for a long time after that. A car might be more comfortable and you can cover more km's, but had I been in a car, I would have been parked there and countless other places on our trip.
The road wound up and up before going through a tunnel and beginning it's winding journey down. We drove another 50 or so kms before we found a decent campsite. It was underneath a bridge in a little a valley. It was at about 2000m and at dusk it was already getting chilly. The traffic couldn't see us and we had a decent view. Also, the height of the bridge made it so the noise was ignorable. This campsite was comfortable, disregarding the cold, and we were pretty relaxed. We weren't too worried about getting caught.
During the night we spent under the bridge, we heard something like the squawk that a cop car makes when he wants you to terrify you. Both Andrea and I startled awake and remained motionless. It's totally black. I would have expected to see some red and blue if it were cops. Cops in China seldom turn off their red and blue lights. We waited for another sound to happen. We didn't hear any voices nor any foot steps. Nothing happened. After a few minutes I left the matter to rest and fell back to sleep. I think Andrea worried awake for a while longer and eventually returned to sleep. In the morning we discovered the disturbance.
My phone's low-battery alarm sounded. The phone was right behind my head and was connected to the charging battery but the battery wasn't on. I found it in the morning and saw that I hadn't responded to the alert. I changed the sound to a dove cooing. That is so much less jarring that a police car squawk. We had to wear all the warm clothes and rain gear to keep warm in the morning. The first stop was a little restaurant owned by a Hui family. Ethnically Han, but religiously Islamic. They wanted to serve us some beef noodles. I saw that beef noodles were over 20 yuan but fried rice was 8 yuan. Usually these dishes are the same price. So, I told him I wanted fried rice. He said that we would have to wait 15 minutes for the rice to finish cooking. He seemed reluctant and his facial expression suggested that we should just have beef noodles. I said we didn't want beef noodles. So, we waited for rice. It turns out that 15 minutes is actually 45 minutes. But, you know, warming up inside wasn't so bad. We also had some hard and thick baked bread and honey while we waited. This was great filling stuff and by the time the rice arrive, we just took out our to-go containers and packed it up for lunch.
As we got closer to Xining, the road got busier. About 40 km outside of the city, we got to a traffic jam. I scooted through it. The first side of the jam was already about 5 km long. We drove through the ditch, used side streets, it was fun. But, I got thinking, what could possibly cause this kind of jam. The answer: nothing. The closer we got to the center, the more road the cars took up. A single lane road eventually consisted of four lanes of traffic with no room for cars in the opposite direction to pass. The same was true for the opposite direction. Imagine thousands of cars parked on a highway facing each other. I had literally no conceivable means of untangling that mess, but on the bike, I eventually passed right by it.
Getting into Xining we met with out friend and co-worker Isabelle. She was waiting in Xining to take the train to Lhasa. While we were doing our trip, she was doing an almost identical trip in the opposite direction. But without a bike, of course. The visit was fun. We got to swap stories and tips about what to do and where to go. Our plans changed a little bit. We decided to add some locations while travelling around Gannan Prefecture, a t1b3tan area in South Gansu. Then, because we couldn't find an affordable hotel, left Xining and headed to East.
The road out of Xining was well maintained but busy. We turned off onto a totally destroyed gravel road. The first few km was a dirt road with giant heaves and waves that made driving really slow. Then we were stopped by a guy on the road. He said something about dirt and rocks and pointed at the hill. Clearly this was a landslide area. I said we would only wait for a few minutes, so we did. A blue bike arrives shortly after with a well dressed local. A hoe at the top of the mountain was pushing rocks down the mountain onto the road...for whatever reason. I asked the road stop guy but he seemed confused.
"Why are the rocks falling? What are you making here?"
"uhh", He looked at me like my question made no sense. This is most likely because I have no idea how to ask the question I just asked and probably asked it completely incorrectly. So, I don't know the reason for this silliness.
Then a bus came. It rounded the corner blowing it's air horn. It didn't stop, but just kept on driving through. There is simply no way that the hoe at the top of the mountain had time to stop rock from falling, taking into account the time it takes for the rocks to reach the bottom, before that bus was directly in the rocks path. Like, that was dumb. While we drove past, we kept a pretty good eye on rocks falling down, but no came at us.
The roads was pretty rough in the valley, but when it exited the valley, everything was awesome. Perfect roads, amazing hills covered in rural farmland. The hills were red. There were flowers and trees. This ride was a highlight of the trip. I made sure I took some video and lots of pictures.
At the village, we had to park the bike with a police man and walk through the village. This was fine. The police man was really relaxed and friendly. At the house of the DL, we found a tall brick wall and closed doors. I guess that house was closed. But, it had all been replaced with new everything. The interesting thing was the village itself. Hongya is about 40 houses on the top of a mountain that overlooks some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. We walked around and saw three old men who made sure to scowl at us and a family of five pigs. The old men clearly did not approve of all the attention their famous village received. It felt disheartening to get such unwelcoming looks, but it reminds you that being a tourist is an intrusive activity and your presence is not always warmly accepted.
We continued riding into the valley. After a few failed roads, we found a campsite down into the valley. It was really sheltered and protected by trees and shrubs. I felt really secluded but Andrea was still nervous. We had some snacks. I wrote in my journal and we went to sleep when the sun went down.
This morning started early. At 6 am, I was more than happy to sleep in a little bit but Andrea was worried about getting caught by the early rising farmers. We were on the road and quickly put 50 km behind us. The first leg of the day was awesome. Quiet roads in the morning sun casting soft shadows on my shoulder. There was a chill but not freezing. After grueling days, the mornings become the best riding. It's not too hot and the traffic is totally manageable.
Our first stop was a little road side baozi shop with delicious soggy baozi for 7 yuan a steamer. A cement truck stopped outside and the driver grabbed a little plastic bag of baozi to go.
The road got a little busier after Pingan, but it was still nice to drive. We turned off the national highway. Our goal today was Bingling Grottoes, now, the guide book says you can't make it Bingling except by taking a ferry across a lake and down a river. The ferry costs 150 km. But, Baidu maps seemed to think that there was a road to the Grottoes. So, I went to find it. About 60 km after leaving the national road, it started to get really nasty. The pavement started doing that awesome thing; where it alternates between terrible gravel and halfway acceptable tarmac. Pick up speed on the pavement and then grab the brakes when it turns to gravel around the next corner. It remains wavy pock marked gravel for 100m before the pavement comes back. That pavement might last 300m. And so it alternates. Nasty nasty stuff.
We needed another oil change, and stopped at a busy little shop. The mechanic was working on a project with three other patrons standing around. I wasn't sure whether these guys were waiting to get their bikes fixed or if they were just hanging out. I asked for an oil change and to add grease to my chain. My oil was changed first. Everyone excitedly gathered around and watched. I made sure that all the oil was drained. Then the new oil was added. I walked around to the other side of the bike to hand him the money. Meanwhile, he changed sides of the bike and grabbed the used oil pan. While I was looking down to get out my wallet, he took a ladle of used motor oil and dumped it all over my chain and rims. He even made sure to cover my axles and bearings in used oil! How thoughtful of him.
With about 60 km left before the temple, the road changed completely. Before, where it was a large road that wound through valleys and generally kept a straight line, it became a high mountain road, curving and twisting languidly through the mountains, villages and steppes. The road was in terrible condition at first, but as it become more remote and the number of heavy trucks decreased, the road become amazing. This 30 km was really great riding. No car traffic at all, views everywhere. The countryside was breathtaking. Every 5 minutes Andrea and I would need to stop and take a look around.
The last ten km of road was gravel and some seriously bumpy stuff at that. But 10 km is not too much pain. We got to the parking lot of the place that had no road access and found two other vehicles. Two Chinese made sedans. We locked down the gear and started exploring the grottoes. There were about 200 grottoes carved into the shallow recesses of a cliff. Bingling has statues and fewer paintings. This is not a tourist trap and really worth visiting, especially if you are on a bike. Take the time and go out of the way to see this place. It was an amazing day of riding and a really remarkable destination. Two major highlights were a 24m Buddha Maitreya and a large statue of reclining Buddha.
We ate some 10 yuan cold noodles and I had 4 bottles of ice water. I was really feeling the head and starting to feel weak. The ice water put a stop to that. Next, I went to the river and had a bath. Strip down to my undies and jump in the river, which was far from warm. Hop out and soup up from head to foot. There were some people on the other bank and could probably see what I was doing but didn't seem to care. After covering myself with soap, I hopped back in and rinsed off. It's the rinsing off that is the most difficult. I jumped back out and dried off before putting on clean clothes and heading back to the bike.
We found a place to camp nearby in a small valley where someone had being doing some excavating. They had made four walls of dirt ten feet high with a small opening in it. It was a perfect little courtyard for us. You couldn't see us from outside the walls unless you walked around and did some serious exploring. Some black birds kept us company as we relaxed in the evening twilight and set-up camp. Andrea was surprisingly comfortable and relaxed here and our sleep was excellent.
Did you entry the Bingling caves from the north over the mountains and not by way of the main entrance?
Yeah, thats exactly what I did. The gravel back entrance can be reached via a paved road. It's about ten km. The road is marked in Chinese but not English and it doesn't show up exactly where Baidu Maps says it does. it's about a km off. You come down a hill and on the third switchback (?maybe?), instead of taking the next switch back you follow a gravel road into the hills on the other side. I saw a Chinese brand sedan take the road, it's not tough to do but coming from Lanzhou, the ferry is a better use of your time. On a bike trip however, you're gonna wanna see this stuff.
I think that it's common knowledge on a bike trip, that one shouldn't be rushed. Nothing makes a trip less pleasant than deadlines. On this trip, if we wanted to sleep in another hour...we got to. This morning, we slept in another hour.
We had to backtrack through those thirty km of awesome twisties. Just as the pavement started to go to shit, we changed roads and headed south on a tiny cement track that was too skinny for trucks or transports. Only small cars and bikes could fit. There weren't any traffic besides an Imam heading for prayer and a few farmers. The cement track wound through twisties and switchbacks like a dream. This little road climaxed in a series of switchbacks into a great canyon that reminded me of Zion Canyon in Utah. I was so thrilled.
After the canyon, we joined the main road again. It was busy and racked by heavy transports until it took on moonish characteristics. Ya'll know how it goes. So, we cruised along, barely able to keep 50 km/h. We stopped in a village that had some stores and restaurants. There we grabbed some water. I filled up the water bottles and downed a few bottles. Then handed the empties back to the owner, who didn't understand why we didn't just throw them on the ground where they belong. So, she took them from us and threw them on the ground...oh well. We did our due diligence. She has the right to litter her own town, but I don't. Then, I hear Him. He has become a sort of prototype of mine. When I see this sort of person, I immediately start adding other stereotyped qualities to my assumptions about who this new person might be. The stereotypes are based off a prototype Chinese person that I keep in my head. My prototype drove past me in this town. He was medium height, medium weight and had no distinguishing features besides beady eyes that were only capable of staring blankly and directly forward. His face had a stupid glazed look to it. He was driving a mianbaoche, a white cheap little van. When he entered the area of the village where logical people would slow down, he maintained speed and held down the horn. He only let go of the horn when he left the village. At no time did he slow down. He held that horn for close to a minute while he drove over a km. I remember being shocked, but looking back, I shouldn't have even noticed.
The road eventually did even out and the craters went away. This is the only time in the trip where Baidu Maps steered us wrong by more than 100m. The map told us to cross the river and keep going on the other side for about ten km. We showed up on a road without traffic and found that the road drove off the cliff and into a river. About 50 m away was a bridge to the other side. Another bridge had been built and the road we were on just dead ended into the cliff. So, we backtracked ten km and we were set. That's it. The worst map issue of the trip. Without Baidu Maps, the hassles and problems would have been endless. When I woke up in the morning, I would input the destination into Baidu Maps. Then it would grab some data and it would tell me the fastest, easiest, shortest, or cheapest route to where we wanted to go. And it was never wrong. The only time it didn't work was if data wasn't available. But, all the maps were offline and even if I had no data, I could just look at the map and figure it out. That actually happened a few minutes up the road from the bridge. We got to a village where the road forked. One branch went downward into a tunnel and the other seemed to keep climbing in the mountains. I couldn't get a reading on my phone so I guessed based on which branch had more tire marks. I ended up being right. When we exited the tunnel, I picked up signal and baidu maps happily chirped at me telling I was on the right track. Seriously, learn the characters you need to use this app and never touch google or bing or mapquest while you are in China. The whole country is offline capable. Every destination is already programmed in and includes accurate prices, opening hours, and telephone numbers. Also, you can sync starred destinations from your mobile to your computer. So plan your trip, then sync your phone and have access to all the planning information while you're on the trip.
From outside the tunnel, we entered a wide valley suitable for growing wheat. It was harvesting season, so the fields were being swathed and sheaves of wheat were being stooked in the most unusually intricate way. Then the wheat would be spread out on the road so that cars would have to run over them. I thought this was weird but it was pretty easy to figure out what these farmers were up to. They were cheating. Instead of flailing the wheat, they were letting cars drive over them. Instead of winnowing the wheat, they would just use throw the wheat up in the air and the chaff would blow away. Then they would sweep up the kernels of wheat. The only thing less sanitary would be to let cows and horses walk all over the wheat instead of flailing it. But, because there were horses and cows on the road and I drove through their shit, it wasn't actually much better. Oh well, you probably won't be able to tell you're eating bits of horse shit in your flour because of how much bleach they use.
We stopped at a little store that had a Jialing sign above the store saying they repair bikes.
I ask if they had Jialing parts.
They said, "Oh, of course".
Do they have new bearings for my front and back axles?
"No, no no, not for that bike."
"Ok, do you have a spark plug."
"No."
"Ah, how about a new mirror"?
"We don't carry mirrors."
"What do you have"?
"A new chain."
"Good bye"
From this valley, we moved into the Huangnan (Southern Yellow) T!b3tan Autonomous Prefecture. This means high altitude and yaks. The architecture changed as the altitude increased. We cleared a pass and then descended slightly onto the plateau. From there, it was a short ride into Tongren. Tongren is a city with more Han influence than T!b3tan. We had a hard time finding a decent hotel for less that 250 yuan. We found one inside the bus terminal for 120. It had two queen beds and a separate living room. It did have a squatty, but honestly, I don't mind them anymore. I find that the job gets done far faster and with much less effort.
We went off to check out some temples. Our first stop was a temple famous for it's painters. The monks are very practiced in making Thanka paintings. We didn't see any painters, but we did get to see a great statue of Avolakateshvera, the Buddha of Compassion with 11 heads, 1000 eyes and 1000 arms. This is one of my favorite Buddhist images and I find it strangely inspiring. The idea is that Avolakateshvera uses her many appendages to help individuals struggling in the trials of reincarnation to achieve enlightenment. To me, she embodies a sort of strength and endurance that is required to maintain compassion towards people. We met a cute couple who instead of asking us for a picture asked us pleasant questions about our travels. They treated us like fellow travelers instead of an attraction. We talked with them for a bit. They asked if we wanted to split a cab back to town but we explained that we had a bike. Then it started to pour. I had a jacket on but Andrea was soak by the time we got back to the bike. In the rain, we weren't really interested in seeing more temples. We had kinda been through so many temples we weren't interested in them anymore.
We returned to the hotel and Andrea passed out. I drank a few warm beers and listened to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy being read by Steven Fry before joining her.
09-03-2015, 04:11 AM
zhu
Re: BingLing Grottoes
Had to laugh at the "jialing shop with no parts"
As far as wheel bearings go , once I change them the first time I make a note of the size (usually 6303) then you can buy them at any hardware store. Because you know you will be changing them again ad infinitum...
You know you can get those panda mascots in keyring size right?