Dalongchi to Kuqa – Day 70

Our friend left early (I’m terrible with new names). He asked us to call him and have dinner with him that night when we got to Kuqa. He drives to Bayin Buluke twice a week for business, spending three days a week in Kuqa with his family. A true veteran of rough mountain roads with his appropriate steed.



It was a crisp, cool early mountain morning emerging from the ger into this beautiful valley nestled in the mountains.



We had a relaxed morning, not rushing because we knew we would get to Kuqa, 130 kms away. And we wouldn’t want to rush this anyway. It was the best driving yet.

Dalongchi (大龙池) is a popular local tourist destination in the high season, when it’s a bit warmer and I could see
why.





We set out on the persistent gravel roads, fording a couple of small streams, with high winds gusting through the gorge and dust flying in all directions. Lulu was managing the gravel remarkably well. My opinion was that she was more comfortable on the rough roads than city driving. Her country road driving was certainly much better than her city driving. I was still a bit concerned about getting another flat, thinking that my tyre still had metal slivers in it, so tried to make it easy on the back tyre over the bumps.

After about 40kms of gravel we got out of the gorge and onto asphalt into a geologically fascinating landscape. It looked as though the ground had been thrust up in places so that there were 45 degree inclines shorn off to show layers of rock millions of years old.





We stopped at the self-named ‘Grand canyon of China’. After the amazing scenery of the past couple of days, paying for a ticket to enter a tourist area that wasn’t so spectacular seemed like a waste of 40rmb. It was still a mini adventure though, and the tourism centre assured us that this was a ‘top 10 scenic beauty of China’. However, Lulu said that there were plenty of places with that accolade, and she had never heard of this place.



After a couple of hours hiking around the gullies of this canyon, we kept driving until the mountains gave way to flat desert. We looked back at the Tian Shan, and reflected on the first real experience of adventure motorcycle riding we had had so far.



Crossing the last band of hills before reaching Kuqa.



Lulu had tried to call our mate from Dalongchi, but his phone was out of service so we couldn’t contact him. Sadly, this would be our only opportunity to accept an authentic Uighur dinner invitation.

When we arrived in Kuqa we started looking for a friend from the Xinjiang motorcycle forum who offered to take us through the post that Lulu had diligently updated. The regional forums were her only way of communicating with motorcyclists from the areas that we would pass through, as motofans had deleted her posts and banned her after the problems in Guangdong. As we wound through the streets, the army presence was rather noticeable, with dark-green canopied trucks driving through main roads and personnel here and there on the streets. Maybe this was some kind of precautionary measure in case one of Osama’s friends decided to cause some trouble.
We met up with our host and drove with him to a restaurant for dinner with his family, who were all very happy to see us, and customarily wouldn’t let us pay our share of the bill.

Soon after, we found a guest-house nearby, followed by a Kuqa welcome party which involved several beers, more food and a couple of games of pool. They invited us to stay in Kuqa for an extra day so we could tour around Kuqa and go to KTV with the guys in the evening.