Milton & Motokai Ride The Silk Road 2012 (Changsha to Ürümqi)

[Motofan]

Beautiful scenery, these pixs get better and better.

[fons]

how much is the shipping from urumuqi to Shanghai?

[bigdamo]

How good is NW China.Keep it coming.

[milton]

After the incredibly scenic but rough going through Qilianshan, we exited Qilianshan and headed towards Jiayuguan 嘉峪关 around 6:30 pm. It was not too late but still 200 km away from our destination. In the first half of the remaining ride we were mostly on tarmac, but then the pavement ended with 130 km still to go. We took a short cut trying to shave 40 km off the trip by taking a gravel road along the train track owned by the coal mining company. The train track was well designed for the train going through quite a few tunnels dug into the rocky hills, but our road beside the track was mainly for coal carrying trucks, clearly constructed as an afterthought. We rode mostly in parallel with the track but without tunnels to ease our way through tough hills. So frequently we had to go up and down close to the track, but over and around those hills where the beautiful train-only tunnels cut through.

It was a brutal 90 km ride. The scenery was still quite nice but did not seem to impress us much as we were a bit “scenic out” after the incredible Qilianshan.





Notice the train track to the right:




I bet you don't see the train track here, which is tucked away comfortably in a tunnel inside the hill:



The going was slow. Around 9:00 pm, we were still trapped on that miserable coal mine's access road. Then Motokai’s engine started to cut off sporadically, which was quite scary as we were in the middle of nowhere. The problem was quickly diagnosed and attributed to a faulty switch on the kickstand, which was shaken loose due to the terrible road condition.

Motokai wiping something off his face (I don’t think tears were involved. However, it was getting late and we were exhausted expecting many more night hours to travel into the dark, which just as easily might induce involuntary tears):



We arrived at Jiayuguan very late that night around mid-night. It was an action/scenery-packed very long day.

[milton]

how much is the shipping from urumuqi to Shanghai?

It was close to 1800 RMB. Getting the bikes onto the train in Urumqi is another long story. We will get to that later.

[fons]

i just checked Deppon. The road transporter. They quoted 1000 kuai for the shipment from Urumuqi to Shanghai. Plus 300 kuai packing fee, so it's still cheaper than the train. But it's much slower than train i guess.
I have used them to ship back my jh600 from Lhasa to SH last time. They did pretty good job.

[Lao Jia Hou]

Fantastic ride report guys - and great pics and videos! Wonderful adventure. But I'm still waiting for the "Motokai-mystery-maiden."

[MotoKai]

Fantastic ride report guys - and great pics and videos! Wonderful adventure. But I'm still waiting for the "Motokai-mystery-maiden."

Here she comes....the girl LJH and others have been waiting for. At the end of Video-4, you'll see this beautiful Uhigur girl who welcomed us into Ürümqi with some wonderful yangrou, nan, and noodles. But I should mention that her dad was always close by - pacing in the background with a towel around his neck and keeping a close on on Milton!



Video-4 is the final chapter of our Silk Road Ride.

This takes us from Jiayuguan to Ürümqi: Slabbing thru the desert to Hami, then crisscrossing a range of Tian Shan called the Barkol Mountains with lots more stretches of off-road (Hami to Barkol to Turpan). Including riding at an altitude of -94m in a desert basin - China's lowest spot and the 3rd lowest on earth!). And finally passing back though the mountains one last time to Urumqi.

[Lao Jia Hou]

Great video! Nice scenery, good music, pretty girls ... and a cool-looking seat cover! Thanks.

BTW, I can't really make it out ... is the police officer, at the very end, asking you the #1 question? How much?

[milton]

Day 12: Jiayuguan 嘉峪关 to Kumul or Hami 哈密

The sight of Jiayuguan costs 45 rmb to visit so we did not enter as a matter of principle. After passing it by, we did get a glimpse of it from the outside, which actually gave a better view than from the inside in my opinion. The end of Great Wall of China:




The city of Jiayuguan is brand new. It must be part of the recent huge government effort in developing the “west” or 西部大开发. It’s not a city if without an impressive “people square”. Jiayuguan’s People Square, shot taken from our hotel room:



From Jiayuguan to Kumul 哈密 was all expressway G30. It was quite windy with many windmill farms lining the highway:





Fairly soon we entered into Xinjiang from Gansu.

In Xinjiang pinyin doesn’t work very well, as towns and cities have Uyghur or local names, which originally were translated into Chinese by sound. Their pinyin equivalents bear little resemblance to their original sound. For example, locals respond to our questions about Turpan a lot better if we just call it Turpan, versus its pinyin counterpart tu-lu-fan 吐鲁番, which is quite different from Turpan in sound. If you look at the word tu-lu-fan carefully, the last syllable fan 番 has nothing to do with sound, but a derogatory description, calling the location “remote and barbaric”. (This is also why, in Chinese, American Indian is called 红番, “red-skinned barbarian”.)

Riding on Expressway G30 was pretty much what we did that day. I was a bit bored by it, hoping the city of Kumul can bring a bit more fun. I definitely don’t want to miss Kumul mellon, the famous fruit 哈密瓜, named after the city.
I wasn’t disappointed by the Kumul mellon, which was indeed sweet as honey and delicious:



When in Xinjiang, one must do lamb kebabs 羊肉串 (From now on, we do lamb kebabs every night):





Wherever Motokai goes, it is a sight in and of itself. A birthday crowd wants laowai Motokai to grace their party:




Day 13: Kumul 哈密 to Barkul 巴里坤

There were 2 different ways to get to Urumqi, the more popular and faster expressway on the south and the smaller S303 on the north, separated by Tianshan 天山。 There were also 2 access roads to reach north of Tianshan, S303 and S203. S203 is smaller and more scenic according to a passersby. Needless to say we chose the road less traveled by, the S203, which turned out to be yet another rough road with jagged gravel the size of tennis balls.



Not sure what this is, but our gut wrenching trail was made of the same rubbles:



Fortunately we reached the real road S303 shortly. The Tianshan was on the south and we made a few visits to some of the offshoots, which led straight to the high mountains:





We had delicious lamb dish for lunch. If you don’t like lamb, your food choices are quite limited:



We took an offshoot of S303 to explore. This is what we found, a recently excavated site of ancient tribes:



The surrounding areas were just so quiet, peaceful and beautiful. Motokai took the following shot to demonstrate how much I enjoyed the scenery: