Around China in 100 Days

[bigdamo]

I'm enjoying this RR more and more. I haven't commented but I've been keeping up with it since you started. Quite an amazing trek! As others have said, I really appreciate the frankness of it.
Also you have convinced me to buy a backpacking tent. If I ever manage to go on a substantial trip I think it will come in handy!

Maux I would highly recommend at least a three season tent probably a four season tent would be better and dam good sleeping bag and mat plus stove etc etc if your going up into the mountains of NW China and I wouldn't buy it in China.

[Maux]

Maux I would highly recommend at least a three season tent probably a four season tent would be better and dam good sleeping bag and mat plus stove etc etc if your going up into the mountains of NW China and I wouldn't buy it in China.

Well I've got a nice Eureka Timberline Outfitter 6 in the states and I'd love to get it when I take a trip back soon. I've also got a nice multi-fuel stove which can run off white fuel or gas (and I *think* kerosine), which always comes in handy because specialty fuel can be hard to come by, even in the states. The stove only holds about half a liter but it could also be my "backup reserve" fuel, heheh. The Outfitter is a great tent but it's also bulky and heavy at about 18 pounds! I don't plan on camping out much, so I was thinking of a backpacking tent just in case I get stuck in the middle of nowhere or have no luck getting a room.

Also I wanted to see what you guys thought of carrying a set of copies of my passport and visa. In the event that someone needs a copy of it I think it might be handy to have a pack of spare copies. It might get around the bother of going to the police station just to make a copy.

[bigdamo]

Well I've got a nice Eureka Timberline Outfitter 6 in the states and I'd love to get it when I take a trip back soon. I've also got a nice multi-fuel stove which can run off white fuel or gas (and I *think* kerosine), which always comes in handy because specialty fuel can be hard to come by, even in the states. The stove only holds about half a liter but it could also be my "backup reserve" fuel, heheh. The Outfitter is a great tent but it's also bulky and heavy at about 18 pounds! I don't plan on camping out much, so I was thinking of a backpacking tent just in case I get stuck in the middle of nowhere or have no luck getting a room.

Also I wanted to see what you guys thought of carrying a set of copies of my passport and visa. In the event that someone needs a copy of it I think it might be handy to have a pack of spare copies. It might get around the bother of going to the police station just to make a copy.

I got a nice three season tent (2 man)from the states it is about 8 pounds and not that bulky.I can have it up in under 5 minutes.It cost me $80.00.

[cryptographicide]

This ride report is wonderful. It has all the info that I have been looking for while planning my trip around asia: what places are like, road conditions, average possible speeds, issues. This is so appreciated. I'm looking forward to the rest of the report.

[Roadrunner]

Gouli to Maduo – Day 88 - June 4th 2011


The plan:

1. drive the bike and Lulu the rest of the 80 kms to Maduo
2. get some petrol
3. drive the 60 kms back to my bike with Lulu
4. fill up my bike
5. then both drive back to Maduo.
   

We started to have problems from the very start. The clanging chain on Lulu’s bike gave up on the way up the first minor pass and the master chain link broke. Luckily, the guys we had stayed with the night before were going in the same direction and gave us one of their spare chain links, and we were moving back up the road in a matter of minutes. They darted off up a side track leading to some white tents at the foot of a mountain and we waved goodbye. We were on our own in the frigid air.



The snow from the day before had made the dirt track very muddy, and it was very hard to drive the small 100cc bike through all that. It was incredibly beautiful though, snow dusting everything. There was more wildlife along this route than the day before with wild donkeys and Tibetan Gazelles (Lulu called them the “White-ass animals” because of their distinctive white rump). This might have possibly been because we were the only motorcycle to come along this stretch that day, so they hadn’t been disturbed from the trail.











It took us over an hour and a half to drive the less than twenty kilometers to where we had left my bike and our bags the day before over the muddy tracks and dry river beds. I had been anxious about leaving our things out for anyone to come along and take, and we weren’t sure whether the bags were waterproof, so I was elated when we saw that everything was dry and where we left it. We took some food and my tools before making our way over tracks that headed in the direction described to us by our hosts.





Lulu’s bike passed 15,000 kilometres not long afterward.



A couple of hours later, after getting lost again, breaking the chain and fixing it, the chain broke for a final time and couldn’t be fixed. I sat in the dirt, trying to figure out a way to get us to Maduo.

We decided to stick together so that if we got into any more trouble, we could help each other out. I started pushing the bike, which I thought was a good idea because if we met anyone who could help us fix the bike we could fix it on the spot. After pushing it over an exhausting thirteen kilometers (I promised myself that I would stop and give myself a break after each kilometre) I heard the sweet sound of an engine behind me and found that Lulu had flagged down the only other motorist we had seen on the track that day. Warm relief swept through my aching muscles as he drove up and dismounted.





Lulu translated that he didn’t have a spare chain link, but for one hundred and fifty rmb he could drive one of us to Maduo to get one. We thought this was a bit steep and Lulu counter-offered with twenty renminbi(:D). Not possible. A thirty kilometer drive over bad roads would be at least one hundred and fifty. Low on cash, we thanked him for his time and went back to our task of getting to Maduo by ourselves, and he drove off. I was a little disappointed, but neither of us could justify spending a day’s expenses to get a measly little chain link, even in the middle of nowhere.

The dark grey clouds gathered overhead and soon drops of water started to patter on the plain. It should have been cold as I had taken off my jacket, but the exercise kept me warm. Up ahead I spotted a dark figure riding a motorcycle just as it started to hail. It was the same guy from before and after dismounting he held out his hand. On the palm of his black woolen glove lay a small, shiny silver piece of metal. He had found a nearby tent somewhere in the nothingness and was willing to let us take this chain link off his hands for fifty rmb. This piece wouldn’t be more than five Yuan in a town shop so I tried to bargain as the hail intensified. He didn’t budge, knowing we didn’t have much of an option at this point. I handed over the cash and got to fixing the bike.



The bike was as good as new again, and on the way to Maduo we had to drive for well over an hour through rivers, sopping wet mud and fetid pools of water fed by melting permafrost, which wasn’t easy but it sure beat pushing. Finally, I saw a long black flat strip running almost parallel to the track we were on and I realized it was a road. I laughed hysterically at this humble sign of civilization and comfort. I have never appreciated tarmac more in my life then right then and knelt on the rock hard surface just to make sure it wasn’t a fatigue induced hallucination.



The distance marker on the side of the road said that Maduo was fifteen kilometers away. Not far at all, I thought. In no time we would be in a warm room in dry clothes. As we drove our first kilometres on the incredibly smooth road, snow started to fall. Lightly at first, then heavier. It wasn’t the soft, dry kind of snow, it was the wet, slushy stuff and it started to make me very, very cold, particularly my hands in their not-so-waterproof gloves and my face, unprotected by a visor that would fog up from my breath if closed. I started to get very drowsy, had trouble seeing straight. I was very, very cold, but I kept going because in my confused state, I thought it best to keep going. Maduo, the destination for the past three days, was 10 minutes drive away. Just keep going. But when I couldn’t keep my eyes on the road any longer I had to stop the bike and peel my numb, seized up hands off the handlebars and walk around to get the circulation pumping through my body again. It was the 4th of June, and I had hypothermia. Lulu volunteered to drive for the last kilometers into Maduo.

To top it all off, the bike ran out of petrol beside the 1 kilometre marker and we had to push the bike the rest of the way. I actually preferred pushing at this point because it warmed me up while the snow continued to fall.
We wouldn’t make an issue with room prices. Just somewhere that was warm, dry and had a hot shower. We pushed the bike down the main street of Maduo, and took the first available room at a nice looking bingguan. We trudged through the lobby and up the stairs to our heated room, changed into the one spare shirt I brought with me, and went out for the most deserved dinner and beer of the trip.

The Xiangride-Maduo experience was amazing and left us both exhausted. It was the most intense 340 kilometres we would encounter. The incredible landscapes, the people, the wildlife, the roads, the climate, were all totally different to the China we had seen in eastern China. It was hard and it required a lot of serious decision making and by the time we got to Maduo, it certainly felt like an achievement, even if it was two days late and only on one motorcycle that had no petrol in the tank.

We would have to worry about getting my bike back on the next day. It was recovery time.

[Roadrunner]

Maduo: Bike rescue – Day 89 - 5th June 2011

I needed to find someone to take me out to get my bike. Lulu couldn’t handle another day of those roads, and neither could her bike (it already lost it’s front mud-guard and needed some welding done) so she was going to help find someone to get me there, and have a day off in Maduo.



The hotel manager told us that there was a horse festival that day, so it may be hard to find someone cheap. It took us about an hour, walking around the main street asking guys on motorcycles if they would like to make a quick buck. We found a young T*betan guy of about 20 who was interested. He was driving a Volkswagen Santana (not exactly 4WD material), but we told him to arrange a motorcycle after we got our loaned 8 litre petrol can filled up. He drove along the road out of town, locals sitting on the hillocks in preparation for the horse festival. But he just picked up a friend of his and drove past the festivities and onto the dirt/mud track heading out into the wilderness. I didn’t know where he was planning to get the motorcycle from. Surely he knew about the state of these roads and wasn’t planning to take them on with an old Santana. I tried to ask him where he was going to get the motorcycle, but that didn’t work. I resigned myself to fate and tried to enjoy the bumpy ride.
Within 10 minutes, the car got stuck in shallow mud. We managed to push it out with the help of a motorcyclist, who warned us that taking that car will be a rough time.

Another 10 kms along (about where I had repaired Lulu’s bike the day before) the kid stops to say that he will go no further. I told him that he’s not getting paid until I get my bike. He says that the roads aren’t good. “Yeah, we told you that mate, keep going”. The atmosphere in the car was getting a little tense as the suspension bottomed out a couple of times and the tracks got so deep that the underside got scratched by the hump in the middle of the track.

He stopped another Tibetan guy 20 kms down the tracks to make sure he knows where he’s going, which I find is unnecessary seeing as I was bringing my GPS with me and it had recorded the track from yesterday.

After a couple of hours driving, we got to the moraine lakebed and I asked to be dropped off at the southern end of the lake, the side closest to Maduo, as there was absolutely no way that he was getting that car to the other side. He told me that he would wait 30 minutes for me before going back because he was worried about the clouds reaching southwards from the peaks in front of us. I didn’t know how long it would take and I wasn’t so keen on taking my four bags as well as Lulu’s two through the tracks we had difficulty with yesterday. I tried to hurry.

It was at least five kms away, and going was slow at 4300 metres, carrying a 5 kg petrol can along with me. I had to stop more than a couple of times.

I finally got to my bike. It was still there after the second night in a row!! I filled it up with the petrol, stacked Lulu’s bags on the back and tied everything on. It looked bloated. It was going to be tough getting through the lake mud with so much weight over the back tyre.



Got back to where the car was after 45 minutes of leaving. He had dumped all my stuff on the moraine and left me there. Thanks buddy!



I knew exactly where to go now, and I was alot faster than the day before. The boys had gotten lost turning up the same wrong way we had turned up the day before. They raced up behind me and I gave them the bags.



We successfully got ourselves though rivers and mudholes.





Until, 200 metres from the road, the car got bogged down in freezing cold mud. I spent an hour digging around in melting permafrost mud to try and get the front wheels out because I knew it would cost me if I couldn’t get it out. The mud was the consistency of a chocolate ice cream milkshake and no matter how deep I dug or how many rocks I put under the front-wheel-drive tyres, they weren’t budging. The VW that had gone where no VW had gone before had given up.



One of the boys called their mate to see if they could haul them out. Apparently it would cost a further 200 rmb and rescue would be at least an hour away. I drove back to the hotel, dropped the bags off, and went back to collect the boys as the sun began to set and the air became frigid. I was a little concerned about the growing cold, because they didn’t have much more than monks robes on, but by the time I had gotten there they had been picked up by their friend and we agreed to meet at the hotel to sort out money.

After well over an hour of very tense conversation, we settled at 800 kuai all up, which was what our guidebook put a day’s 4WD rent at. At that point I was so exhausted after four days of the hardest motorcycle driving I had done that I could keep the fight up for only so long. Lulu was so fiery that she wasn’t much help. And it was worth it to have my bike back.

Our team was finally back in one place.

[Roadrunner]

Maduo to Qingshuihe – Day 90 - 6th June, 2011

It would have been nice to take a day off, but we were running low on cash and the foreigner-approved bingguan we were staying at was expensive. It was run by a nice policeman, which may have been the reason our young friends had been keen to keep the door to our room closed during our discussion last night. There were no cash machines in Maduo, and the next one would be in Yushu.

We had a look at our map and tried to guess how we got to Maduo, because I was quite sure that the way we took wasn’t the one marked on the map. This is my guess:



At breakfast we passed Young Monk on the main road. We said nothing but gave each other a nod.
Lulu’s bike was a bit worse for wear after its harrowing journey. We took it to the local repair shop where Lulu had an animated conversation with some of the locals about our (mostly my) unfortunate negotiating skills from the night before. Some of the older locals didn’t seem happy, and I had a suspicion that Young Monk would be getting a talking to later.



We said goodbye to Maduo and to an intense chapter on our journey after a visit to the town temple.



Northern Qinghai is nothing like the hyper-arid basin that we were driving through in southern Qinghai. We had good quality twisty mountain roads, clear blue lakes and high mountain passes with prayer flags. This is the region of China where the Yellow River and the Yangtze, the two most important rivers in China, start their long journey down to the sea.



We helped a Buddhist guy put up some prayer flags at one of the passes, where every time they flutter in the wind, the prayers written on them are sent to heaven.



We came to our highest point of the trip, the Mount Bayankela pass at 4824 metres.



And then truck salvage blocked the whole road for a good 30 minutes.



It was a day of long roads and few buildings and no petrol stations until Qingshuihe, a town even smaller than Maduo. We were worried about the dark clouds in the direction of our destination. We asked a local if it would be a problem. He said no, but we didn’t want to risk the possibly freezing cold journey up to Yushu. We would have to save it for the next day and have a nice warm sleep with electric blankets in a rectangular block of concrete without a lockable door.

[soberpete]

This ride report is wonderful. It has all the info that I have been looking for while planning my trip around asia: what places are like, road conditions, average possible speeds, issues. This is so appreciated. I'm looking forward to the rest of the report.

Two's up on cryptographicide. Roadrunner, that's a heck of a story and from trying to imagine myself in your shoes at the time, I feel exhausted!
Amazing photos and videos. It must have been an effort to stop and take them all so thanks for all the hard work.

[Roadrunner]

Qingshuihe to Yushu – Day 91

We hit our last high pass before Xiewu and started descending in altitude significantly. The bike had been spluttering and having trouble with power on inclines, but now it was much happier.

We stopped at Xiewu, not far from Yushu, where we visited a well-known gompa. The best thing about this gompa was the protector temple at the top of the hill. It was probably the most authentic of any building I had seen in China. I had a short talk with a friendly monk who was sitting at the back, who went back to reciting prayers and banging on a drum beside his head as I left.











Women are not allowed in the temple, so Lulu stayed out on the dodgy gravel hillside track that wound precariously upward. There were a few large birds of prey hanging around, so there must have been a sky burial site nearby.

Carrying on through the valley, we came across a Buddhist woman making a pilgrimage to Jokhang temple in Lhasa. She had wooden boards tied to her hands and knees, and a leather apron protecting her torso. Every few steps she would kneel down, say a prayer and then lie prostrate on the road. Lulu said it may take her 6 months to get to Lhasa. I asked where she would sleep, and she said that local villagers would probably take her in each night. It looked like a painful way to get somewhere, and showed incredible dedication.

We visited our second buddhist temple of the day. The temple itself was nice, but the silence and serenity associated with such temples was rudely interrupted by the gravel quarries in the valley below. I thought it was a shame that someone had decided to put noisy, smoky buildings right next to such a piece of heritage (later, my self righteousness took a back seat when I figured that these quarries were urgently needed for the rebuilding of Yushu, further up the valley).



We had come across the T*betan guard dogs before, but here I nearly got bitten by a particularly aggressive dog when one of the monks wasn’t watching. I always carried a rock around dogs from then.



After a monk rescued us from the crazy dog that wouldn’t stop barking at us, he showed us around the temple. Most interesting of all was the morning prayer hall, adorned with wild animal skins, gold-painted tapestries and ritual dancing costumes.






I had noticed that since we got into Qinghai, the temples had stopped asking for entry payments. I asked the monk if they get money from some kind of social welfare system, but he said that the temple only gets money from people who willingly donate, mostly Buddhists from the surrounding areas who visit the temple.

About 5 kms south of Yushu, we came to ManiShiCheng (Literally, Mani town), pretty much just a village, with a massive mound of mani stones (reputedly over 2 billion) almost dwarfing the Gyanak Mani Temple beside it.










Mani stones are rocks with the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum” (which has several different meanings, but relates to purification and enlightenment) painted or carved on them in the T*betan script. If you’re in this part of the world, it would be impossible to miss these recurring symbols. Many hillsides have white rocks arranged in the shape of the prayer.



I had been getting very low on petrol, and hoped to make it to Yushu before I ran out, but 2 kilometres from the town, I was out. I had to call Lulu and wait for her come back and drain the tank of her bike. It seemed as though she was rescuing me a lot those days.

After some rough roads in to Yushu (also known as Jyekundo), we found that there was just rubble and random concrete walls where the centre of town used to be. It had been over a year since the magnitude 6.9 quake hit, and I guess I was naive in thinking that it would be back to working order by now. I knew that it wasn’t going to be the Yushu described in our 2009 guidebook, but I was amazed at how much of a disaster zone it looked. There would be no ATMs here, let alone hotels. Just rubble and the statue of King Gesar, hero of The Epic of King Gesar, an epic reputed to be one of the longest in the world.

Fire servicemen on an ATV point us in the direction of a makeshift town with places to stay a couple of kilometres away.

It was tent city; Blue tents everywhere. On the main road they were mainly shops and we had an interesting time trying to bargain for a tent-room. And at this point, we weren’t being stingy with our bargaining to be stubborn. We really didn’t have much money at all. No more than 200 rmb. We eventually settled for an 80 rmb tent, which had electricity, but no running water, and the toilet was a tent 5 minutes away. I went to explore and it was just a wooden board with a row of four big round holes in it over a ditch.



An English movie was playing on TV in the tent-restaurant as I had beef noodles and a beer for dinner. It had been another incredible day in Qinghai.

[Roadrunner]

Yushu to Xiewu – Day 92

We hit up the internet tent-cafe after lunch to see if we could find a bank somewhere near. We were on our last 100 kuai. No luck, so we had to ask for directions, but the answers we were given were very vague and sometimes contradictory. We also wanted to find a Lifan shop afterwards for repairs and maintenance for the bikes, but couldn’t find any. Our poor bikes would need to get attention in the next major town we come to. It was time to do a bit of sightseeing.





Because of the confusion with the makeshift roads, and my GPS map being a bit out of date, we got quite confused about which road to take to the Wencheng temple, but we got there in the end.
We got back on to the G214 (a road I could follow if I wanted to keep going straight on into T*bet) through a winding gorge for 15 kilometres until we came to the turn off to the Wencheng temple. The turnoff led through a valley shrouded in prayer flags.



We drove past the temple towards snow capped mountains, following the road out the back until it turned to gravel.







At the internet cafe, Lulu had contacted another rider, Christine (known as MeowZeDong on MyChinaMoto) who was driving from Yunnan to Xinjiang and it looked like we would be crossing paths. I called her to see if we would be able to meet up and swap a few stories, but unfortunately the bike she was riding (a Galaxy XTR250L) had come to a nasty end. Luckily, she was fine but heading back to Hong Kong to get back to her job. She’s a very talented photographer and writer, so it was really disappointing to hear that.

We got to the end of the road and there was a hot spring spa, only 20 kuai each. We seriously thought about it, but we were so low on money that if we couldn’t find an ATM today, we would have to spend our remaining money on accommodation. I didn’t want to be sleeping on the bike that night.

We drove back to the Wencheng temple, which is where the Chinese princess Wencheng rested for a month in the 7th century on her way from from Xi’an to Lhasa, before her marriage to Tibetan King Songsten Gyampo. Parts of the temple date from the 8th century CE.





As we got going again it started to rain. We got back into Yushu determined to find an ATM. We followed directions from locals who said there was a bank at the government headquarters a couple of kilometres north. The headquarters was a swarm of tents and a couple of buildings overshadowed by a big fort-like temple. No points for guessing where the big-wigs had holed up in.

Lulu got very muddy because she wasn’t able to have her front mudguard fixed. She didn’t mind. We were solvent again!!



Anxiety number one resolved. We had wanted to stay in Yushu for a rest day before we came into town, but realised there really isn’t much in the way of ‘town’ left. So our sleeping-place-destination changed to Shiqu, across the border into Sichuan.

After a quick Sichuan style meal, we stopped at a shower shop. All over China, there are places dedicated to selling showers. We hadn’t had one since the first night in Maduo and after being wet, muddy and cold the high pressure showers were absolute heaven.

I put on my damp riding gear, but my muscles were glowing and warm after the shower so I didn’t mind so much. We had to get going after all.

Before long we were cold and wet again, and it started to get dark as we arrived in Xiewu, the last town before Shiqu. It was a no brainer for me. I didn’t want to be up and driving around in the cold mountains of northern Qinghai in the dark, miles from civilisation. Lulu wanted to move on, and I had to convince her that it was a bad idea. What a weird role reversal.

We stayed in a T*betan family’s lounge above their convenience store. The place was warm and homely and they were very nice, generous people and gave us free milk tea when we asked to buy some.

There were three beds and we were sharing the lounge with a Chinese truckie who was also paying, which we hadn’t expected and he kept us up for a while after we went to bed and turned the lights off, talking loudly into his phone in the other bed right next to my head. It wasn’t new, we had experienced this before, but it was more than a little irritating as I tried to drift off to sleep.