Around China in 100 Days

[Roadrunner]

Thanks, BD. Glad to know they are still rolling. Are they under your protective wing? Are they posting in some other forum?

cheers

One thousand apologies for my slackness. We're in Golmud, Qinghai, at the moment on a short 200km day in from the 303 provincial highway. Last night we stopped in the last guest house on the road to Golmud, which was a bit lucky.

We've done over 15,000 kilometres so far and haven't had any major issues apart from the battles between our over-stubborn personalities. The back tyre on my bike has been protesting lately for the weight of my bags on the back of the bike, but with a bit of a pump up every now and again, it's running fine.

I've got some serious updating to do here, but we've been finding it hard to grab a decent spot of internet time in the last couple of weeks, so I thought it would be best to save it until I get back to Chongqing so I can do a proper job of it.

I'm not posting on any other sites (If MyChinaMoto doesn't have it, wont be on any other forums) but sub-par blogging can be found at www.aroundchina.org. I'm only up to Day 45 there (and not likely to go much further in the next two weeks) and this is our day 84. I didn't really want to redirect people to my site, as I have received so much information from MCM over the past year or so. However, as the fatigue has really started to set in and right now, finding a local internet cafe comes a distant last after food, sleep, and getting back to Chongqing before my boss comes to hunt me down. The posts will be up as soon as I get back to Chongqing.

Lulu's an internet machine and has many more photos up on her blog than I do on my site - http://blog.sina.com.cn/sgxg1976. The captions are all in Chinese though.


We're leaving Golmud tomorrow morning and will try to find a shortcut to Yushu that's not a gravel road. The roads in Qinghai so far are an encouraging sign, but we may have to drive halfway to Xining on the G109 before we find a road we can do more than 20 km/h on. After Yushu we'll be heading into Sichuan through Serxu (石渠县) and onto the Sihuan-Tibet highway towards Chengdu.

A couple of photos:

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Heading up to a 3500 metre pass in the Tian Shan mountains in Xinjiang on the G217. Our first experience of driving through snow.

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Lost on the G314 after Jiayuguan and night driving through water under a railway bridge. Looking for a place to stay after dusk, we missed the gravel detour that all the trucks take and had to find another way to the nearest town.

Thanks for the support guys. It's really appreciated.