Dushanzi to Ermaoqiao – Day 67

In the morning I found that my back tyre was flat. Thankfully, we were on a street with a couple of bike shops, so I wheeled it over to the nearest one. A nice Uighur guy greeted me and fixed it for me patching up the inner and pulling a dozen thin slivers of metal from the tyre while his young Han Chinese neighbour watched curiously. I also got a spare inner tube just in case. He was a nice guy and I tried to pay him more the fair price, because I knew he was giving me a low price, but he refused.

We asked people where the next town, petrol station, or accommodation was on the G217. No-one knew because no-one seemed to take that road. All they knew was that foreigners couldn’t go there. We decided to give it a go anyway because it would cost us about 2 days extra ride to go up to the northwest part of Xinjiang,Ili, to the furthest of the three roads crossing the Tian Shan.





On the road out of town we came across a not-so-friendly sign. Now we knew why everyone was saying that no foreigners could go on this road. The sign was dated at 2006, so after 5 years the real reason for restricting access (a large military base was in the area, or so we were told) might not be present. If they really wanted to restrict the area, there would surely be a checkpoint. If there was, we would ask them if we could pass. If not, then this sign shouldn’t be taken too seriously.





After about 70 kilometres from Kuitun, most of it beautiful twisty asphalt, we did come up to a checkpoint, its barrier blocking the road. Lulu asked if we could drive through, with me in my ski mask pretending to be Chinese. The guy was quite reluctant to let us through, and probably wouldn’t have if it was just me trying to convince him, but Lulu tried her level best and before long, he relented. I breathed a sigh of relief. He warned us that there are many problems with the snow at the passes and that we probably wouldn’t be able to get through.

Not too far along, the beautiful asphalt started breaking up and soon we were driving on gravel again. I was a little disappointed. My obsession with getting kilometres under our wheels often had me at loggerheads with the road conditions. The valley itself was spectacular. Huge weathered cliffs rising hundreds of metres into the clear blue sky, birds of prey circling and in the distance snow white peaks.

We stopped for a break and shortly after a white ute with four or five guys inside, pulled up. They looked like military. One of the guys got out and was talking into his phone for about 10 minutes, every now and again uttering the word “Waiguoren”. He hung up and started talking with Lulu, mentioning that there was a lot of snow up ahead, and that we may not get through. Satisfied, he got back in the ute and they drove off. I breathed another sigh of relief. I guess he called his boss to make sure it’s ok that a foreigner could drive this road, so I was much less anxious about getting pulled up by heavies in camo gear toting AK-47s and escorted back the way we came.

We were about to move on when a group of five bikers pulled over. They were from Usu (30 kms from Kuitun), home of Xinijiang’s finest beer (IMHO) out for a day ride. We had a convoy! They were faster than us though, and we split up quickly.





The air started to get very cold up past the snowline, about 3000 metres above sea level. Recent snows coated the road and I tried to drive in the tracks of the 4WDs where the wheels could get to the surface of the road. I learnt that it’s best to ‘ski’ in this situation, putting my legs out in a static position and ‘skiiing’ to stabilise the bike in case the front wheel got slipped or got thrown into the snow banks on either side of the ditch. When I hadn’t seen Lulu in my rear mirrors for a while, I turned around (after getting my bike up and over the central snow bank in the middle of the road) to look for her. She had dropped her bike twice and couldn’t get it up the second time.



We met our riding team near the top of the pass. It was late and the snow was getting harder and harder to drive through, so they were heading back to Wusu. They were a great bunch and told us that the next town is 12 kms from the top of the pass.



We both tried out hand at snow driving once again, but Lulu couldn’t manage it with her bike, so I drove both bikes most of the way up to the pass, which just happened to be a tunnel through the top ridge. It looked as though there were some ongoing road works (as there were poles erected as if to prepare for making a covered roadway at the worst points in the snow), and that this road would be an easy drive one day.





Lulu set off through the tunnel first as I was still catching my breath from the exertion of driving, dropping and picking up the bikes at this altitude (around 3500 metres). I wanted to get Lulu exiting the tunnel on the helmet camera, so I rushed through the rutted tunnel too fast, going over a couple of bumps a little too hard, bottoming out the rear suspension with a full load.



I came out the other side, to an amazing landscape, with a flat back tyre. Lulu’s back sprocket also needed looking at. I was livid and exhausted and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. Also, I hadn’t yet bought the right tools to change the back tyre (due to laziness and more of the laissez-faire attitude to bike tools), so we had to figure out how to get to the next town with both bikes.



I sorted the problem with Lulu’s tyre, and figured that after give the tyre a pump, enough air was staying in the tube to get some distance before it needed pumping up (something that I have since been told is called ‘foreshadowing’).

By the time we had sorted out our problems, the sun had set behind the ridge we just passed under and it was starting to get colder, but our motivation for rushing through this amazing scenery seemed like a waste. It was quite possibly the most beautiful place in the whole trip.



Night had fallen by the time we were driving below the snowline again. We passed construction crews working on the new roads who couldn’t believe we had come through the pass. We couldn’t believe they lived in tents for long periods in such cold weather, and we were probably there on a good day.

We were lucky that the only guesthouse in Ermaoqiao, a 10 building hamlet, had opened a week before. It’s usually closed during the colder months, but as it gets warmer, tourists from Kuqa come here to enjoy the natural beauty of the place. The owner originally came from Hunan, but lives in Ermaoqiao for the tourist season.
We had gone much slower than we expected. We had done 130 kilometres over 10 hours, but at this stage it was definitely quality over quantity.