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

[milton]

Xinjiang is a vast place and has a few mountain ranges up there with the best in the world. The only good thing about Urumqi is the road out.Unfortunately you only saw a small part of Xinjiang and the Tian shan mountain range it gets better as you head further west(Tian shan range travels 2500Klms and a couple of countries) actually the whole of Xinjiang does.

As I said in one of my posts that one really can't go wrong in those parts of China. Motokai and I should have contacted you before we set out though.

Too many places to visit too little time.

[bigdamo]

Too many places to visit too little time.

To true.

[tombaxers]

Great report guys, thanks for this. Looking forward to the next installment and the next video. I wouldn't mind getting some tips off you both before I head out that way on the 29th.

Love the dancing old boys at the end of the 1st vid. That's the kind things that make it all worthwhile!

[MotoKai]

Thanks Tom. As you are eagerly awaiting the JB pickup date, feel free to give me and Milton a shout. We'd be happy to meet up with you for a beer.
And regarding the RR, Milton brought us up to Xincheng (in Gansu), so here are a few more photos to see, as I get busy loading the next video installment.

We found ourselves running on empty more often then we liked as gas stations became fewer & fewer the more west we rode.
On this occasion we were almost desperate enough to buy gas from one of those guys that sells it from his home/store by the "jin",
but we decided to push the "flashing gas light" a bit further until we found a station.


Milton Enjoying (yet another) nice surprise - The amazing mountains south of Lintao.


More of VERY GREEN Gansu, which neither of us expected.

[milton]

Milton Enjoying (yet another) nice surprise - The amazing mountains south of Lintao.

Between Lintao and Xingchengxiang, there hide several state/province parks in a brief section of S311. The beautiful rock formation may be part of an extension of Qinling mountain range 秦岭。 It was quite unexpected that after riding through vast areas of very green terraced fields all of a sudden we were greeted with this:


 

[MotoKai]

Video-2 is now online!

Silk Road Ride Video-2: This video captures more of Milton and Motokai's riding thru Gansu. Including the very green and mountainous S311 which Milton just mentioned, into Xinchengxiang as well as thru the Hui and Ti-bitan Villages, and finally arriving at the Ti-bitan Monastery of Labrang in Xiahe.



As previously mentioned, if anyone has difficulty seeing the video behind the ****wall, just PM me.

From Wiki:
Labrang Monastery (Ti-bitan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་ Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: 拉卜楞寺 Pinyin: lābǔlèng sì) is one of the six great monasteries of the Geluk (Yellow Hat) school of Ti-bitan Buddhism. Its formal name is: Gandan Shaydrup Dargay Tashi Gyaysu Khyilway Ling (dGe ldan bshad sgrub dar rgyas bkra shis gyas su 'khyil ba'i gling), commonly known as Labrang Tashi Khyil, or simply Labrang.

Labrang is located in Xiahe County in Gansu province, in the traditional Ti-bitan area of Amdo. Labrang Monastery is home to the largest number of monks outside of T-ibit Autonomous Region. Xiahe is located about 4 hours from the city of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu.
In the early part of the 20th century, Labrang was by far the largest and most influential monastery in Amdo. It is located on the Sangchu or Xiahe River a tributary of the Huang He or Yellow River. Labrang Monastery is located in the town of Xiahe, which belongs to the Gannan Ti-bitan Autonomous Prefecture.

[euphonius]

Gotta agree: the toothless dancing dudes with home-rolled newsprint cigarettes at the end of Roll 1 are priceless. Buy a veepeeyen just to see this, or use Motokai's offered countermeasures.

Amazing. Dying with envy here, all things considered.

cheers

[Motofan]

I enjoyed the video and pixs. Thanks to the OP for posting.

[tombaxers]

Thanks Tom. As you are eagerly awaiting the JB pickup date, feel free to give me and Milton a shout. We'd be happy to meet up with you for a beer.

Great editing work on the 2nd video as well and you have definitely earnt yourselves a beer or two in return for some route feedback. You guys about this weekend or next week?

[milton]

Gotta agree: the toothless dancing dudes with home-rolled newsprint cigarettes at the end of Roll 1 are priceless. Buy a veepeeyen just to see this, or use Motokai's offered countermeasures.

This is how that priceless vid came about: Motokai’s boots were not as waterproof as advertised on Taobao. So after getting rained on for a while that day, they were dripping wet. Motokai initially was simply trying to shake off some of the rain water from his boots in front of those toothless dudes, which was mistaken as a laowai dancing and was soon reciprocated. Then laowai Motokai joined in, which encouraged them more. The whole sequence lasted a while and the rest is history.

Later on Motokai concocted a waterproofing scheme for his boots using two plastic bags. That did not look too comfortable but worked. Had he done that earlier, there would have had no dancing old Gansu boys.



BTW, bottom boot is one of my dry comfortable Oxtar rubbing it in.