2 Wise Seamen sail the G30 and up to 3,000m

Granted it has been a while since writing since Toksum, but a great deal has happened resulting in very little time to do my ‘homework’. But here I am now, sitting in a cafe at 21:04, coffee in hand, just shy of 3,000m above sea level in Xiahe getting ready to visit Labrang Monastery at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Over the last 2 weeks Zac and I have cycled through every kind of condition from Toksum to Xiahe except snow, which we believe is a very real possibility over the next 4 days. Our bicycles have pushed our collective amateur mechanics to the test, the weather is doing its best to slow our process and illness has always been around the corner…but we are alive, the bikes are still moving and our bellies our full of Yak meat, so all is fan-daby-dozy right now.

Leaving Toksum, the morning was spent dipping down into the Turpan basin where we were approximately -50m ‘above’ sea level, which was strange and cool but there was only one way out and that was up. It wasn’t long before the G30 highway was reached to see us all the way through to just west of Lanzhou. The road was immediately surrounded by ripening vines with lush grapes (this made me think of Valentin, the French cyclist who I cycled to Kashgar with and haven’t heard from since as he is a wine master), the wind was blowing from the side causing our sweat to dry instantly  and the temperature was around 34+ degrees (hard to imagine from where we are now). It was so hot at the end of the day that we decided to camp ‘sans’ tent once again, but this time in style. We found a row of vines with our names on it, ducked under them and rolled out our sleeping mats & silk liners. I got to relax and slowly prepare dinner whilst watching Zac fix a puncture in his rear tyre that seemed to appear out of nowhere. When the sun finally set, I lay down and could see a sky blushing with stars through the vines – it was perfectly idyllic and the kind of open camping I had dreamed of. This was made even better by eating a Dove chocolate bar AFTER brushing my teeth. There is something so naughty but so right about eating chocolate after cleaning ones teeth! Dove bars – as we would soon discover – are a luxury above luxuries and one of the only western chocolate bars to have made it China, along with the odd Snickers.

Since Kashgar my diet had mainly consisted of noodles, but as we sailed along the G30 we began to find rice (the Lonely Planet on my Kindle does not offer the word for rice in Mandarin…IN CHINA, how ridiculous) and all other kinds of stir-fried goodies; tofu, beans, mushrooms, pork, beef etc… all in sauces to die for. A few climbs begun to rear their heads over Toksum, with the first being a mid-range on the difficulty scale. It was made slightly more difficult by a front puncture and a very frustrating fly buzzing around my slipstream that I simply couldn’t shake. This caused Zac to laugh and fall behind, ha. Along the climb we saw a 50/60 strong herd of wild camels proving to us that we were still very much in desert territory, and would be for some time to come. To the left of the highway the Tian Shan mountains rose mightily in the distance, behind which lay Mongolia. I could picture the chains of caravans carrying their goods across the Silk Road 2,000 years ago wary of the Mongol warriors ready to descend upon them and ransack everything they carried. The thought sent a shiver down my spine and I rather hoped they wouldn’t ransack my worldly goods, although all they would find would be a deflating sleeping mat (still!) and a very sooty stove.

The reason I said we sailed the G30 is due to the huge factor the wind played along the way. It would either ease us along our merry way, bash us violently from the side or the worst, howl directly into our faces grinding us to a halt. Fortunately the former tailwind was predominant, but it’s definitely the headwinds you remember. Once it was so hard that I was convinced the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost had just had a fiery curry night (with the Holy Ghost having had a particularly spicy Jalfrezi) and they just let us have it. With a strong headwind comes the dust in your eyes – which has been reeking havoc with my contact lenses – and the fact that you are crawling along the desert, barely getting closer to nowhere in particular even slower! On day 3 from Toksum we pushed out another 200+km day which always feels like a job well done but is never easy. We cruised our way into Hami for lunch having demolished 110km and found a shop not only selling Dove bars, but Skittles, Oh the joy! We set our sights on a big day so before our food had properly digested, we laboured on. I don’t want you to feel like we are rushing our way through China missing everything, as at this stage of the trip there is simply NOTHING to see but tarmac, shops selling cold drinks and nothing. At 135km we found a perfect irrigation channel for a much needed wash…in the nude, the only way. At 1600, and 190km cycled, we stopped for another giant meal of rice and wok-fried deliciousness. We were discussing the ease at which we would reach 200km, when as we hopped back on the bikes Zac had received an unwelcome visit from the puncture monkey. Cheeky little bugger. There is no such thing as an easy 10km! Every kilometre must be cycled just like the last, and you never know what is going to come your way. That night we open camped again, partly out of laziness of not wanting to erect our tents, partly due to the heat and partly as I wanted to catch a shooting star whilst sleeping in the open air. I didn’t, but it was beautiful nonetheless. We ate boiled eggs and Oreo’s for dinner, the perfect nutrition for hungry cyclists 🙂  The following morning our alarms went off at 0445 as per usual but I managed to persuade Zac that another hour would be beneficial, listing a whole host of wishy-washy reasons. Not much persuasion was needed and the extra hour was savoured.

Day 4 was a bitch! The wind was relentless slapping us in the face whenever we dared exceed 15km/h. Put back in our place by mother nature, we plodded on. Today, more than others, offered us a stunningly bleak landscape and many rest/service stations that turned out to be empty and not yet completed. I can’t quite describe the let down this is. When you are cycling through pure emptiness and you suddenly happen upon a sign that reads: Parking and a knife & fork cross-crossed (still the knife & fork as opposed to chopsticks, which is what you’re given and I am now the grandmaster in using) your heart skips a beat, as if you have just met the girl (or boy) you simply know you are going to spend the rest of your days with, and you cycle like crazy to reach it dreaming of chocolate, cold & fizzy drinks and perfectly sticky rice, but all you get is a giant empty building with a dead pig rotting on the side. Let down of the highest degree!

We were then 3km from Xinxinxia and the border to the next state, Gansu at 1,795m. We were so tired from our spin-class of a day – an 8 hour relentless spin-class with the instructor screaming encouraging but mean words into your ear – including 90mins of night cycling up a mountain crawling at 14km/h with all the lights we could rustle up before sleeping/collapsing 3 feet from the hard shoulder just on the other side of the barrier (that lane was not being used, don’t worry) in the gutter, literally. Night cycling is quite fun, you don’t know how fast you are going, it’s brilliantly cool and you don’t notice the bleak landscape. Again, no tent was used that night, just all the clothes we owned and tightening the sleeping bag up to the hilt. It was a surprisingly blissful sleep, very cosy indeed. We woke up and were excited at the prospect of a new state and a new challenge. This excitement soon dissipated as Xinxinxia turned out to be a petrol station and a run down truck stop and the first sign we saw read (word for word, hand on heart): Dry Baron Desert Nature Reserve – whoop-dee-fucking-doo! It’s as if they were rubbing it in by including the adjectives dry & baron . We know that already!  At least the sign was in English, and they would continue to be, mostly… This at least provided some very funny ‘Chinglish’ with signs making no sense whatsoever. The dry & baron were soon proved oh-so-right as the first few towns on my map – which is a 1:4,000,000 scale so any town is normally of significance – turned out to be nothing but unfinished petrol stations, shit. Punctures are now becoming a more regular occurrence as well, not actually punctures, more previous patches beginning to break/leak. When the new inner tube is in, or the old one patched up for the 100th time, we let it sit for 10 mins to check that the pressure holds in the tyre. If it does a jubilant shout of: ‘It’s hard! It’s remained hard!’, can be heard. A chuckle normally follows for obvious reasons, but as we all know, like all good things in life, in does not remain hard forever!

We were now not too far from Jiayuguan, the city where ‘real’ China should begin and the desert should end. Only 180km to go, a stroll in the park with normal conditions! As aforementioned, there is no easy kilometre and this stint was no exception. Suddenly, Zac received another rear puncture and we had run out of decent spares, patches and glue. We spent 3 hours trying to fix this hole in many ingenious ways, we even applied the fix-it-all masking tape. This worked for 2km before this too failed. Reality hit, a truck was needed for Zac. I was then faced with a tough decision; do I  a) get in the truck with him for 180km and have an extra night in the hotel or b) cycle this by myself continuing through a wind farm that we have been cycling through for 30km, the biggest in the world I imagine! I must not have been thinking straight as I opted for option B and watched Zac glide away in the truck, what a dunce! Fortunately the never-ending wind farm did eventually end and I took a sharp right out of the powerful headwind and into the beginning of the Hexi corridor, where for the first time in a LONG time there was actual farmed land: countless chillis drying in the sun, corn fields stretching into the distance planted with such precision that imagine Andy MacLeod himself planted them and many other vegetables. I pushed on into the night by myself as I wanted to reach Jiayuguan my midday the following day. At 2120, 80 minutes after sunset, I called it a day and open camped once more. This was my first night alone in China. Something felt wrong so I called Zac for a good old natter as if we were long lost friends separated at birth, rather than having waved him off 6 hours previously.

I awoke super early for 1 hour of morning darkness cycling and climbed up until Jiayuguan lay before me with 40km of downhill to come, with the wind up my arse! I downed my red bull, ate some cold rice, plugged into some inspirational music and of course…puncture o’clock! Poo, bum, willies! With no spare and no patches I nearly lost my temper in a big way, but as before, there is no-one to help me now but myself. I therefore pumped it up every 8km all the way into town, and the last 2km of every stint I was essentially peddling with no air in the tyre. Dangerous stuff downhill. But I made it and met my long lost compadre Zac for lunch. The next 24 hours in town were spent eating chocolate, getting an old man to fix all of our inner tubes and making it look annoyingly easy, going for a wander through an actual city – this felt very novel, we even found a bakery and had delicious cake with coffee reminding me of Germany – destroying the food market, watching Batman in English with popcorn and sweeties and visiting the impressive Jiayuguan fort. This fort marks the beginning of China, where the Hexi corridor is at its most narrow and the Great Wall of China begins. Our fist real tourist site and it was swarming with Chinese bus groups wearing matching Burberry caps. Many hours were spent laughing at them and their antics as much as learning the fascinating history of the fort and beginning to properly immerse ourselves into China!

Before leaving, naturally another coffee & cake was in order and we had an easy half day of 80km before setting up camp, allowing ourselves a relaxed camp including a nap and a brownie 🙂 Whenever we go shopping in a big town or city we tend to buy lots of sweets, chocolate and baked goods to last as a while as luxury goods. But as you can imagine, they do not last long. That’s if they are not eaten 5 minutes after being bought! The day after I was hit by another evil tummy bug that made me vomit violently along with other side effects. There is nothing I wanted to do more than set up camp at 1000, crawl inside and die peacefully, and there is no good reason why I didn’t. I wrapped up warm, as the temperature was beginning to drop, and ploughed on feeling very sorry for myself. We did have an 80 minute nap on the highway which was great but I needed more. The one saving grace was that the wind was behind  us and I somehow managed to eek out 125km. The strong over-the-counter antibiotics kicked in throughout the day, easing the pain by the end. Still, I was all wrapped up by 1820 and Zac had lovingly prepared me a breakfast bag that I ended up eating halfway through the night when my appetite returned with a vengeance having eaten very little all day. This ill day was one of the toughest of the trip, wanting it to be over from the very beginning. However, the bad must be taken with the good and a pair of big boy pants were needed (or big boy nappies!).

The bad has also come in the form of the a ridiculous cold snap 5 days ago. One day we were cycling in shorts & shirts in 25+ degrees, the next morning the condensation on our tents had frozen and it was -4 degrees. Mental Oriental, literally! Socks were on hands, pants on head, laughter was masking our pain until shouts were proving our pain. My fingers and toes began to thaw from their numbness and I had to stop cycling and release an almighty roar from the shooting pain – ow! All of this and we were only at 2,000m. We had to prepare ourselves for the road ahead which would consistently cruise at 3,500m. We therefore stopped in Wuwei to panic buy as much warm clothing as possible. This turned out to be not a lot! We didn’t find a proper camping shop for what we needed, so we made do with what we found. 2 giant pairs of gloves, a thermos flask and Zac bought an extra mediocre sleeping bag, that is all! We did eat tremendously well in town though, got our laundry done – result! – and again munched on as much chocolate as our greedy little mits could handle. If I haven’t mentioned it so far, Zac has decided to join me to Hong Kong as opposed to going east to Beijing. This is either due to my infectious & joyous company or him wanting to make sure I survive the final 24 days / 3,000km.

One major thing that needed attending in Wuwei was my chain. It has been slipping off every 10 km’s resulting in much frustration. I had to break the chain, take out a link and re-attach it. If this makes no sense to you, then you are pretty much in my shoes! I had the tool to do this, but not the faintest idea where to begin. Naturally I did botch job, which had to be done properly again the following day with our 2 heads and 4 hands needing the precision and steady hands of a world-class brain surgeon to re-attach the chain. We dominated! It felt great having a fully working chain again and this is now one of the only pieces of equipment that isn’t held together by masking tape or cable ties. It would seem that bikes do begin to crumble slightly after 13,500km and lots of little bits of maintenance are constantly needed.

Just before Lanzhou, we came off the G30 which we had been on and off since Toksum. It was an emotional moment, but one which instantly rewarded us with delicious steaming hot dumplings and tea, yes please! More of this on the back roads would be greatly appreciated. It took us a while to find the road we wanted to take us up and into the mountains, but a few dirt tracks, wrong turns and gesticulating with locals later we found it and the climbing commenced! Proper climbing now, none of this pansy-arsed slugging up hills, real snakes slithering up & into the gargantuan mountains. Our first major climb took us to altitudes of around 2,400-500m along one of the quietest roads I have ever experienced. Throughout the whole day we must have encountered no more than 100 vehicles, most importantly no trucks or buses violently honking their horns as they overtook us, which is the norm everywhere else. It was a road designed for cycling and made our jaws drop to the ground with its natural beauty. The scenery consisted of many peaks around 2,500m all with man-made terraces sliced into the mountain side for agriculture, a truly impressive sight. This part of the valley is also predominantly Muslim, so the mountain tops would often be romantically decorated with Chinese-style architecture mosques, the roof curling upwards at the edges with the unmistakeable half moon shining its beacon on the roof. I had never seen mosques quite like it, sprinkled around the landscape. When we camped on one of these terraces – a real peach of a spot! – we could hear distant calls to prayer from all corners. It felt like I was in a scene from a Discovery Channel programme. The people along the 2,400-2,500m ridge, which continued to bob up & down for 30km, were predominantly Muslim with the old men donning their skull caps, elongated wispy grey goatee beards and John Lennon style dark circular sunglasses. Each looking like they could appear on the front cover of the Chinese Lonely Planet. I envied their style, knowing I could never pull if off. The Han Chinese are trying to coerce many of the villagers to move to the big cities like Linxia, which is expanding exponentially. I do hope that the slow and peaceful village life does continue here! Finally we dropped off this stunning ridge and down into Linxia. During the descent my front rack began to wobble due to a bolt snapping, needing to be botch repaired with cable ties for the moment and Zac’s Rohloff gear system began to jam in the shifter, needing some oil to loosen it up. Hold it together bikes! The downhill was a thing of beauty, switching back countless times and dodging a few pot holes.

We stopped in Linxia for a quick noodle soup lunch – whenever we have noodles in China, we can see them preparing them freshly, stretching the dough and cutting it into long slivers to the required thickness, all done at blistering speed – then continued up the valley that would take us into the eastern reaches of Tibet and eventually onto the road that would be 3,500+m for approximately 400km. There was a road block as we left town with a very strong police presence. We weren’t going to let anything stop us, so we innocently cycled thought the blockade smiling and waving as they were shouting and waving us down. We were through and onto an eerily empty road along the river running upstream. We looked at each other smiling, then wondering why the hell the blockade was there; had there been a factory disaster? Were they about to blow up part of the road? Were some wild animals on the loose? Had their been another Buddhist protest in Xiahe? No – just 5 bus loads of local dignitaries needing the whole road to themselves with a ridiculous police convoy. As soon as the road opened again, a plethora of honking trucks and wild driving descended upon us making it tricky to enjoy the changing scenery. Luckily the traffic died down and the landscape could be enjoyed. There was a giant arch in the distance, by which I could see our first Tibetan prayer flags fluttering in the wind. I was getting very excited, as my trip to China & Tibet back in 2002 was one of the first trips that really got me into travelling. As soon as we passed through the arch, everything changed dramatically. Skull caps were immediately swapped for dark red rob clad monks, minarets for Tibetan style architecture and monasteries and the smell of burning Yak butter was lingering in the air. All these old sensations & memories from 10 years ago were flooding back and a wide smile was plastered on my face. In the morning we were cycling along a ridge at 2,500m and we were the highest thing around, in the afternoon we were climbing up a valley to an end of day height of 2,920m surrounded by peaks that must be pushing the 4,500m barrier and it’s only going to get bigger. Instead of the mountains being ridged for agriculture as they were in the morning, here the mountains are covered in swathes of thick pine trees. The change in 8 hours could not have been more different in landscape, religion and culture… at least it’s not bloody desert!

We finished the day in Xiahe and I’m finishing this blog at 0630 on 17th September enjoying a warm cup of Tibetan tea with heaps of milk and sugar about to explore the vast Labrang monastery – one of the six major Tibetan monasteries. I will be walking the 3km Kora spinning countless prayer wheels and stopping off at many tea houses for warm drinks and yak filled momos (dumplings), trying to forget about hitting the road this afternoon in the freezing weather and the high possibility of rain (it’s now 1005 on the same day and the sun is shining – GLORIOUS), continuing to climb to 3,500m. Before we reach Chengdu in 5/6 days, at the end of the very high road, we will reach a high point for the trip, higher than in Kyrgyzstan. Unexpected but exciting, almost as exciting as hitting the state of Sichuan in 2 days and devouring the famous Sichuan cuisine 🙂

So much more has happened over the last 14 days that I simply have not been able to include in this blog, such as: more bike problems, more instances that make me smile from ear to ear, the odd victory cigar, some amazing camping experiences with a hearty ‘home-cooked’ stove meal and some pretty wild truck surfing (hanging onto the back of trucks and allowing them to glide you along for a stint, very naughty but lots of fun and a good work out on the left arm!) I have been getting a few emails asking me what it feels like to be just over 3 weeks away from Hong Kong, what does it feel like and what I expect arriving in Hong Kong to feel like. These are very difficult questions, mainly because I’m trying not to allow myself to think about it and whenever I do something happens to shake me back to reality, telling me to concentrate, 3,000km to go! Suffice to say it will most likely feel incredible with emotions running high and trying to make sense of the last 6 months. No doubt I will be letting you know when I arrive. For now (cheese alert) I’m trying to live in the moment and savour these awesome moments. Time to go and send some prayers up to the heavens via these prayer wheels and put some warm food in my belly.

Love to you all and will write again from Chengdu in less than a week, hopefully being able to go into more detail about the road and the altitude, and fingers crossed I’ll see a Giant Panda 🙂

p.s. a huge congratulations to Paul & Rachael, you are now married! WHOOP!

p.s.s. our Mandarin is coming along very slowly, halting at; hello, thank you, rice, a few food types and other pleasantries. All I need to learn now is “get your filthy mits off my bike, otherwise I’ll sock you one!”. They like touching and playing with our bikes, sometimes rather roughly.

Here is a link to Zac’s blog – www.zacplusbike.com