Around China in 100 Days

[Roadrunner]

Your RR keeps getting better will be sad when it finishes.I was up near Dushanzi to Ermaoqiao part of your trip yesterday it is interesting to see that area and Xinjiang in winter with all the snow about totally different to summer.

Cheers mate. I know it's a bit of a read and I'm glad that you're enjoying it.

I'm guessing Dushanzi -> Ermaoqiao would be quite impossible this time of year. Are you still getting snow up there? That stretch is one of my favourite parts of the trip

[bigdamo]

Cheers mate. I know it's a bit of a read and I'm glad that you're enjoying it.

I'm guessing Dushanzi -> Ermaoqiao would be quite impossible this time of year. Are you still getting snow up there? That stretch is one of my favourite parts of the trip

Yes I'd say it would be closed.They have a foot or two of snow on the ground in the low lands I can't imagine what the depth is up there .I was east of there near Dongwanzhen where the S223 meets the S101.Yep still snowing.It started snowing when I was there yesterday so I turned around.Made it to the base of the Tian shans.

[lion]

Great job!Fantastic adventure!

Someday in the future I should ride follow your track,amazing!

[Roadrunner]

Jianyang to Tongliang – Day 101 - 17th June, 2011

We continued driving through the lush countryside of the Sichuan basin. It was another dreary, overcast day, with the odd light rain shower.





Lulu passed her 17,000th kilometre in the morning.



We stopped for a guy who had a flat front tyre. He could repair it, but he didn’t have a pump. I handed him the pump that I had obtained with luck near Manigango. Every time I stopped to help someone, it felt great to pass on the goodwill and help that I just could not have done without on this journey.



But he pumped it up too much and it blew out.



He didn’t have another spare, so I took him a couple of kilometres down the road to the nearest village to find one. Now that is was almost guaranteed that we would make Chongqing before our new deadline, I wasn’t worried about time so much. We still needed to be careful on the roads though.



We crossed the Sichuan province/Chongqing municipality border in the afternoon.



Less than 100 kms out from Chongqing, we stopped for the night in Tongliang. Lifan arranged a convoy of motorcyclists from the Chongqing club for the next day, a Saturday, so we had to wait outside the city so they could ride in with us.

The first guest-house took us in. They said “Yeah it’s fine, you can stay here”. We dumped all of our stuff in the rooms and went off to have a nice relaxing dinner and a beer. We had less than a day’s ride to get home. I was mindful that anything could happen and the engine could fall off in the last 10 kilometres or, more likely, one of us could get into an accident with another vehicle on the crowded roads. All that aside, we were already congratulating each other for making it around China.


Returning to the hotel content and with full stomachs, the owner told us that they called the police station to check if I was allowed to stay there and apparently I couldn’t. “You must leave”. “Ahhh! Why did you call the police station???”.

We walk across to the next hotel, “Yeah it’s fine, you can stay here”. We drag all of our stuff across the road and up six flights of stairs. 20 minutes later the owner tells us that they called the police station to check if I was allowed to stay there and apparently I couldn’t. “You must leave”. “Why didn’t you put the room under Lulu’s name? It’s not like the police are going to waltz in and break down each door to check if there were any ‘undesirables’ staying”. The level of paranoia astonished me. Lulu was sick of dragging her things around. I could leave my things there, but I would need to find my own place to stay.

This time I took my time leaving. They said I could stay there, watched us drag half a house up the stairs and then tell me I have to move again, so I made them wait and stew in the anxiety they brought on themselves. I didn’t have much goodwill towards the owners at that point. At almost midnight, on the second-to-last day of the journey my irritation at this bureaucratic and highly inconvenient law that had been building over the last three and a half months almost had me popping an aneurysm. Especially now, on the last night when I just wanted to relax as the trip wound down.

I had a beer spare and opened it, sitting at the window looking over the parking lot of the town bus station, trying to chill out before looking for a new place to stay. When foreigners are not welcome at the majority of lodging establishments, turning up to the reception desk with smile on your face can do wonders to your chance of being accepted (but it's only worthwhile if they don't call the cops). What also helps is trying to find a place that isn’t near a bus station, as they are sure to be checked by the local police (as the most likely places that a foreigner would be staying), and these places would be especially paranoid about getting fined (the fine is ￥5000 for taking a foreigner without a license to do so, or so they said).

I walked down the street I thought I had the best chance with. Stopped in at about 6 or 7 hotels and guest-houses, and they told me that “We have no room”, or “we can’t take foregners”. Even the more expensive places which had the license, couldn’t take me because they were full. I had been screwed around with for too long at the first two hotels so I had run out of options, even with the places I wouldn’t normally have taken. On top of this, I was flat broke, with no more than 50 kuai of Chinese money in my wallet.

I wandered around like a vagrant, found a couch outside a convenience store and some people to talk to while I cooled off. I figured there was no point in getting stressed out about it. I would get more tired if I walked around assuming that I was entitled to a good night’s sleep.

I followed hotel signs down a narrow street, which turned on to another narrow street, which looked promising. “The harder the hotel to access, the better chance I have of finding a place to stay” I thought. I went to the reception, obviously looking like death at past 1am, and asked the guy if he had space. He looked nervous. A room was 100 kuai. I asked if he would take 20 American dollars instead (I kept USD$40 left over from a trip to America. I thought it might come in handy at some point) and I told him that I would be out of the room at 6 in the morning. He reluctantly said it was okay, “but you must leave early”.

[Roadrunner]

Tongliang to Chongqing – Day 102 - 18th June, 2011

I was up and gone early in the morning. I walked to the hostel, with the help of my GPS because it was quite far away, and I was walking around in the dark the previous night. I waited in the room for Lulu to get up and get ready. The hostel owner threw a fit after she found me in the room and demanded that I leave. I grabbed my things and told Lulu I would wait outside.

I waited on the stairs as two police officers walked in and climbed the stairs, presumably there to check the records. I hadn’t been taking their paranoia seriously, but it seems as though the police check the records every day. Or maybe they just check the records of the establishments that call them asking if foreigners could stay.
We were to meet the convoy boys at a restaurant at Bishan at lunchtime, which wasn’t too far away, so it was a relaxed morning drive. For once, I didn’t mind the slow pace.



The guys had their bikes, about 15 of them, parked up on the footpath beside the restaurant, and gave us a hearty welcome and I was presented with more cigarettes than I could smoke in a week. After lunch we all started over the last couple of ranges to the mountain city, Chongqing. There were dirt-bikes, dual-sports, cruisers, street bikes and even a scooter.







Traveling with the convoy meant I was released from my self-imposed obligation to stick to Lulu like glue in case she has an accident or broke down. I drove ahead with the faster bikes, opening up on the mountain roads like I hadn’t done since my solo day at Huangshan in Anhui.

We all met at the Lifan factory first, where we picked up even more riders.



It was very hot and humid (Chongqing is regarded as one of the three ‘furnaces’ of China in summer) and I was quite uncomfortable in my riding jacket. There was a bit of rain as the convoy drew nearer to the Ijijie studio on Nanbin Lu, the place where we started our journey in the cold rain 102 days earlier.












We had an interview with a couple of motorcycle magazines after the photos. Half pumped with adrenalin, and half dead from exhaustion (from three weeks without rest days), I had problems answering the questions.



Then, all of a sudden, it was over. Finished. It was like coming home from a rock concert, ears ringing. Although I was thankful to be able to get home and have a shower and a few days of sleep I felt an emptiness where the intense drive to keep driving had been. I would have to wait for the sense of achievement to find its way through the haze and replace it.

[felix]

Incredible.

This sense of emptiness you describe, i feel it too realising that this is the last post in your RR. Thank you infinitely for taking us along for the ride, it's been a great read.

What does it feel like now, almost a year later, thinking back over the trip?

[Maux]

Welders eye is centralized blindness. I guess it was an old (plumber?) my dad worked with who would always look slightly away from something he was trying to see because he couldn't see anything he looked right at.

Once again, great report, thanks for the effort which must have gone into it!

[lightend]

you should really right a book about yours travels. its a very interesting read and coming to the end of the report does leave me with an emptiness (can only really be replaced with my own ride in July)
very good and well done.

[scratchndent]

This was nothing short of amazing, I have been glued to the computer for 3 days reading and drooling over the beautiful pictures. I like the others that have mentioned it, I really like your writing style. Its all in there, the good, the bad, the ugly and the confusion of a foreigner travelling desolate places. I am doing the preparations for a trip with my brother when he comes from the states and I am using your, and others stories for ride preparation and getting all the paperwork in order as I see you had to use it several times. Thanks for the time spent posting up on here, I have learned alot and will put it to good use on my upcoming trek. Great inspiration, both of you!!!!

[Roadrunner]

Incredible.

This sense of emptiness you describe, i feel it too realising that this is the last post in your RR. Thank you infinitely for taking us along for the ride, it's been a great read.

What does it feel like now, almost a year later, thinking back over the trip?

Thanks for taking the time to read it

Thinking back over the trip, It almost feels as though we never did it. After a couple of months of acclimatization back in Chongqing, the reality of what it was melted away and now the experience feels like a half-remembered dream. Writing and looking at photos helps keep things fresh for a while though, but that can't replace the experience of being out there.

Once we had a few day's rest and some time apart, Lulu and I couldn't help laughing at the stupid things we got upset about with each other.



There were a couple of times where things almost got too much for either of us and we thought about separating. The most important thing I realise now, is that we stuck together and finished together like we said we would. It wasn't easy, but we were each made to think in a different way, and do things we wouldn't normally have done if we had each done the trip solo, an effect I hadn't thought of before I started.

Our most memorable experience was the ~250 kilometres that took 3 days between Xiangride and Maduo (in Qinghai) when we got lost, ran out of petrol, crashed, broke down, battled rain, hail, snow, stayed with a Tibetan Yak herder family (who gave us some of their petrol and invaluable information about the road) and were extremely lucky to come out the other end. I might never have an experience like that again in my life. It taught me that there's a fine line between a feeling of gung-ho adventurousness and black desperation, and walking that edge is both exhilarating and very dangerous.

It goes without saying that it was an incredible, life-changing experience; completely unexplainable. I got a really eye-opening, holistic idea from the ground up about what China really is by meeting different people living their own unique lifestyles, seeing the diversity of the landscape, living in different climates at different altitudes, all on two wheels with nothing but what was in our saddlebags, fuel tanks and the stuff between our ears to keep us going. The vulnerability of motorcycle driving exposes us all to the world, and it gives us so much in return.

In terms of the fundraising, my overblown expectation that we could raise USD$20,000 was a little optimistic (just a little bit) and brought it's own problems when we realised we couldn't take cash donations from the Chinese public. I think the most positive thing about this aspect of the trip is that our problems with fundraising have been mentioned in most, if not all, of the media coverage we have been getting since we came back. I initially thought this was a bad thing (reflecting badly on our charity) but I think it has encouraged a few people to do charitable activities, and shown how to do them better.


Lulu liked it so much that she'll be doing a 20,000 km Chongqing -> London ride in May this year. I keep telling her she's crazy, but she just smiles. She knows what she wants.

She has spent the last couple of months in Chongqing looking for sponsors and preparing for her trip.



http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzU0NzQ0ODI0.html

I've recently been working in Kunming and southern Yunnan, and the boss gave me a couple of days to get around by bike from Chongqing. Winter in Chongqing is perpetual twilight and it is possible to not see the sun for weeks at a time. The bike trip to sunny Yunnan was exactly what the doctor ordered for the winter blues. Most of all, it got me out on the road again, getting my freedom fix after being stuck inside for too long.

Solo riding is a very different experience, in good ways and bad. I have discovered that I REALLY enjoy morning riding, and have been up before dawn most days.





I hope to get a ride report done soon, but I'm a bit busy with work at the moment, so it could be a couple of months away.


The journey is the reward