The Great Ride of China- Attempting to ride through every province in China

[Bucko]

Hello My China Moto members!

I just wanted let everyone know about a trip my girlfriend Amy and I have just recently set out on a little over a week ago that we are calling The Great Ride of China.

On July 19th, we left from Beijing on a CFMOTO 650TR to travel in a counter-clockwise direction, up towards Harbin, across through inner mongolia, towards Xinjiang, into Tibet, up north towards Qinghai (the east of Tibet is closed to foreigners) and then down and around the southern provinces. We're looking covering around 25k-30k kilometers on the trip and it should take us a little over 4 months.

At the moment, we've covered about 2000km and gone through 5 provinces as we arrived in Harbin yesterday, our eastern most point on the trip. Tomorrow we'll be turning north west towards Inner Mongolia and the Russian border before moving west. Really looking forward to the grass plains of inner mongolia!

If there are any riders here in the Dongbei area and you haven't ridden much around Liaoning, I highly recommend it. The roads are probably the nicest I've seen in China so far, and much of the time they were lined with sunflowers which made the air extremely fresh smelling! (A nice change from Beijing smog). Two routes I would recommend in particular are the G305 that cuts across the Dalian peninsula and then the 319 east out of Dalian which winds around the Yalu river and borders North Korea for a good bit of time. It eventually meets up the G201 which parallels the expressway and is really spectacular riding including some great mountain twisties.

I'll be trying to post updates here, but time is scarce of course, so it'll probably be closer to every 2 weeks. We do try and post pretty regularly on our weibo and other social accounts (weibo is @骑行中国爱心之旅）and we also have a website www.thegreatrideofchina.com. We are having some page load issues at the moment so please excuse any lag while we get that figured out! On the site though we have pictures updated regularly, a GPS track that we update daily as well as trip stats such as mileage, days, provinces, etc.

Finally, if there are any riders out there who we may happen to cross paths with, would be great to try and meet up on the road!


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Got hit with quite a bit of rain, but not enough to dampen the spirits!
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A sobering reminder to not take the twisties too fast
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Another motorcycle traveler from Guizhou with a 摩托迷 group
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View of North Korea near Dandong
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[Lao Jia Hou]

I just wanted let everyone know about a trip my girlfriend Amy and I have just recently set out on a little over a week ago that we are calling The Great Ride of China.

Best of luck to you - looking forward to your updates!

If there are any riders here in the Dongbei area and you haven't ridden much around Liaoning, I highly recommend it. The roads are probably the nicest I've seen in China so far, and much of the time they were lined with sunflowers which made the air extremely fresh smelling! (A nice change from Beijing smog). Two routes I would recommend in particular are the G305 that cuts across the Dalian peninsula and then the 319 east out of Dalian which winds around the Yalu river and borders North Korea for a good bit of time. It eventually meets up the G201 which parallels the expressway and is really spectacular riding including some great mountain twisties.

Totally agree with this. The peninsula is very nice, and the NK border ride is interesting, as are some of the routes North through Liaoning. Jilin & central Heilongjiang (i.e., around Harbin, not so nice).

View of North Korea near Dandong
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Are those the empty "display houses" that were built about 10 years ago, just outside Dandong by the Great Wall? My trip along the border route made me uncomfortable more than once, accentuated when a Chinese border guard warned us not to stop in certain locations, as the NK border guards have been known to take random pot shots across the river. Nevertheless, a great experience that I try to encourage other riders to enjoy.

Again, best wishes on your great journey!

[Bucko]

Glad to hear others have enjoyed this ride! Those houses were ones we saw on one of the boat rides "into" North Korea. Apparently they are barracks for the navy around there.

We actually had no problems with security or anything like that on our road. Maybe things have lightened up a bit recently for whatever reason. When we went on the boat too one of the other passengers brought along a carton of cigarettes to throw on to shore to some of the local NK military personnel. So maybe the cigarettes are working to pacify them!

[bikerdoc]

Read about these exploits and coming RR a week ago on CFMotoClub. There is additional coverage about this also on CFMotoClub as well as Motofans

Looking forward to another group of riders giving both themselves, the 650TR, and Ch!na a good workout.

'scribed...

[Bucko]

Thanks bikerdoc! and thanks for following along

[futianshenzhen]

Good luck on the ride Bucko, sounds sick! I'm also working my way round all the provinces, albeit much more slowly, by the end of the year I should only have Tibet and Taiwan left to do. I'm especially looking forward to hearing about your Tibetan experience and would love any tips and advice you may have on permits etc. happy riding!

[bikerdoc]

Bucko, just thought that you might be interested to know that it is possible to alter the angle of the screen several cm's to direct the wind blast up and over ones helmet thereby avoiding getting ones helmet visor (or eyes) covered by all and sundry road grime et al. I prefer riding where possible with visor open so long as I have a screen directing the air flow over my helmet.

What I did on my 650TR was to replace the standard 6mm Allen headed coach bolts that secure the screen with much longer coach bolts and some rubber sleeve 'inserts' that act as buffers between the underside of the screen and the top side of the fairing. I had to mill out the four holes on the screen that the bolts fit through, as the angles of the bolts secured to the fairing had to be taken into consideration. Had to replace all bolts with bolts of different lengths for the top of the screen versus those on the bottom of the screen, just to adjust the angle of the screen to the rider. Resulting in the top edge of the screen raised by around 4-5cm.

This provides a nice gap between the screen and the top side of the dash display, so I'm planning to add a universal GPS/Mobile phone holder at that point as I have done on my other rides. This allows me to have my device protected by the screen from the elements, and is more line of sight when used as a GPS. I'm not a fan of the other alternative mounting methods e.g. RAM mounts etc. since these often expose the device to the elements (principally, rain) and often require more lateral movement of riders head to view the device, meaning significant change to field of view.

Works well. Have made several other mods too (louder horns etc.)

[Bucko]

Hey bikerdoc,

Thanks for the mod suggestions. Wish we had had some time before starting out to get them sorted as I too like riding with my visor open. Not sure if I'd be able to manage to explain what I'd like to do to a mechanic along the way so as to be able to borrow his tools, but might be worth a try! Would love to try and get a louder horn as well but it seems to be a bit tough while we're on the road. Actually had a problem where the screw on the horn came loose and so stopped functioning. I thought the horn was shot but a local mechanic along the way stuck his screwdriver in the side and managed to tighten it back up.

[Bucko]

Hi All,

Just wanted to give a quick update on our progress so far on the ride. Unfortunately we are somewhat limited in how often we can post updates, but we've been trying to stay pretty regular on facebook (facebook.com/thegreatrideofchina) as well as weibo (@骑行中国爱心之旅）. And of course we have our own blog on our website.

We have currently made to our 8th province, Shaanxi, taking a day off in Xi'an. We've just surpassed 6,000km on the trip which puts us 20% through with our goal.

Overall the past 2 weeks have been pretty spectacular, in particular Inner Mongolia. We changed our original route which was to start going west from Harbin and diverted north up towards Manzhouli next to the Russian border. Very happy we did as the scenery was beautiful, and the roads, for the most part, were very high quality. Afterwards we went south, avoiding Route 303 as we were told that the condition made it impossible to go much faster than 20km/h. We visited Pingyao County before making our way to Xi'an.

Here's a summary of some of the posts:

First accident and closed roads

20km of construction at Inner Mongolian border

Beautiful plains of inner mongolia and stay at a Yurt camp

Flooded camp

Pingyao Visit

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Hope you enjoy the posts! And if anyone has any road suggestions as we start making our way west through Gansu (towards Jiayuguan) and into Xinjiang, please let us know!

[Bucko]

Well, it's been quite a while now since the last update on our ride here on mychinamoto but a lot has happened since the last update which left us at Xi'an.

We've now ridden through 11 provinces (1/3 of the way done!) and have passed 10,000km.

We are currently in Xinjiang province, at our most western point in Kashgar.

We visited the western end of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan

Hiked the sand dunes in Dunhuang and visited the ancient Buddha grottoes (Some beautiful desert roads on the approach to the city)

We went to one of the lowest points in earth in the Turpan Depression getting stuck in a massive sandstorm while visiting the monument at Aiding Lake

Went up a gorgeous mountain climb south of Urumqi but required 100km of riding on unpaved road climbing up to 4,600m (highest point of the trip so far).

Taking some days off now in Kashgar while we wait for our Tibet tour guide and permits. Had to go on a pretty eventful visa run to Kyrgyzstan though while we waited!

Just some quick road and riding tips:

The guys at the CFMOTO (and also Shineray) shop in Urumqi are top notch. Best of the trip so far and highly recommend if you're there and having any troubles.

Both approach roads to Dunhuang make for some beautiful riding. Empty, flat stretches of desert highway lined the whole way with melon stands

There is a lakeside road at Bositeng Lake in Xinjiang that is really nice as well but a bit windy.

The route between Turpan and Urumqi has an area that is susceptible to extremely high winds and they have a pretty famous wind farm there. Check before leaving what the wind speeds are because on good days you have to drive at 60-80km, meaning bad days are almost unrideable.

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