Quote Originally Posted by ZMC888 View Post
According to BMW magazine: This is a bit of a hyped bold claim, especially without going to Heilongjiang province! Also not being allowed through Tibet.
ZMC888,

I can claim full responsibility for the route that our team took on our 65 day - 17,674km - journey around China. We did our best to plan a reasonable circumnavigation of China while taking in to consideration: Time, Expenses, Weather and Production Value. A few notes are below:

1) Tibet: to correct you, we did manage to ride about 3000km through Tibet. We traveled from Kargilik on the famous Highway 219 all the way to Lhasa; we even took our bikes to Mount Everest Base Camp at 5200m above sea level! However, from Lhasa we were not given permission to ride out of Eastern Tibet because of "disturbances" in the region. As many MCM members know, Eastern Tibet and Western Sichuan were closed to foreigners for much of September and October for various issues which I can discuss with you in a private message. So from Lhasa, Tibet to Shangri-la, Yunnan our bikes were on a truck.

2) Furthermore, you are correct that we did not make it to Heilongjiang and the furthest reaches of Northeastern China. There are several other provinces that we didn't visit on our journey, which is shame. Qinghai is always a place I've wanted to ride through and we totally missed this province on our journey, choosing the route through Northern Gansu instead. We also missed out on Sichuan, choosing instead to ride through Northern Yunnan from Tibet. I wish we had more time. Hopefully in the future I'll have a chance to revisit these locations.

Furthermore, this quote in the BMW Magazine that was cut slightly short, we said that we were the first to circumnavigate China and fully document it, leaving the door open for any previous riders that we were unable to find in our research who may have accomplished a similar journey. If you have any further information on this topic please bring it to our attention, it would be wonderful to share our experiences with anyone else who has attempted such a long, difficult and logistically challenging expedition.

Cheers,

Ryan Pyle
www.mkride.com