New Dell laptop just arrived

I'm unwrapping it live on http://twitter.com/2wheels

Chinese flashcards

I've created a little webpage which displays Chinese character flashcards. It began as a project to help me with my own Chinese character learning, but if anyone else finds it useful too, so much the better.

Birmingham public libraries

Taking a brief break from the cycling, I was looking for a map showing the location of all the public libraries in Birmingham, and couldn't find one.

So I made one. Here it is:

Map showing location of public libraries in Birmingham.

Any feedback and suggestions for how I could improve the map would be welcome.

Jiang Zemin and his Three Represents

Poster in Anhui province, China.

Text reads: Study the "Three Represents". Put into practice the "Three Represents".

(Pinyin: Xue2xi2 san3 ge dai4biao3 . Shi2jian4 san3 ge dai4biao3.)

Jiangxi

"In Wuyuan," my middle school conversationalist informs me as I slurp fried rice noodles for dinner, "many people say that the sky is blue and the water is clear."

This information may once have been true, but is surely at least 50 years out of date. Nowadays, as any fule kno, nowhere in eastern China is the sky blue or the water clear.

The day's main event was a flying visit to Jiangwan. The houses in the all other villages on the road were low, old, dark and pre-modern, but in Jiangwan, everything is tall, new, and freshly-painted. Everything is in straight lines and the people are dressed smartly. The reason for this is announced on a banner at the far end of the village: "Welcome the tourists both at home and abroad to come to visit Jiangwan, the ancestral home of the President Jiang Zemin".

There is a tarted-up high street that you can walk down, if you want (though this will cost you 50 yuan), and buy Jiang Zemin themed keyrings. About 25 girly guides are hanging around the entrance, waiting to show people round. This morning there were no paying customers. Perhaps when JZM goes up to the big Jiangwan in the sky they'll do better business. I doubt it though. Jiang is never going to be a folk hero like Mao, for all his Three Represents.

It's a pretty valley with rice crops in various stages of planting, growing and harvesting. All around are sharp, sheer wooded mountains; in the fields, t-shirts and hats on sticks scare away the birds. Huge water-buffalo wallow in streams.

A man ploughs his field with buffalo, shouting commands as he turns his single furrow. What does the buffalo think? Does he understand the point of ploughing? Why does he consent to walk up and down all day? Does he think that human beings have some pretty strange ways of having a good time?

There are praying mantises and bats, dead on the road, and little bright green snakes. I wonder: if there are this many dead snakes, how many live ones must there be out there? Later, I see a biggish one, grey brown, limping off the road at the sight of me, if snakes can be said to limp.

Cycling to Huangshan in Anhui, China

From my diary, Sunday 11th September 2005

Laoban tells me he gets 25 yuan per jin (1) of hickory nuts. That's what he charged me for bed and dinner. His son studies in Beijing, he says. The villagers line up to wave to me in the morning, mums and dads encouraging their toddlers to say "bye-bye".

Climbed all morning up to the Lu Ling Guan pass, between Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. An old gate-house fort stands guard at the top - as you move toward the provincial border all civilisation fades away and the land gives way to wild forest. The banner over the highway says "Chinese history and culture city. The Shexian county is welcome you."

Bananas and moon-cakes for breakfast, the bananas pretty standard but the moon-cakes unusual, stuffed with orange jelly. Perhaps it was they that got me thinking about Sir Edmund Hillary. A less modest scaler of the Earth's highest peak might have called himself Mountainary.

And then for some reason I couldn't get Bronislaw Malinowski out of my mind - yes, he who missed his stop at Warsaw Central and got off instead at the Toblerone Islands (or was it Chateaubriand?). And then along came good old Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, another anthropologist, who decided to settle the long-running dispute between the structuralists (who wanted to build a better mousetrap), and the functionalists (who thought there was no point unless it caught better mice). He declared that in future everyone could call themselves structural functionalists (but not functional structuralists) - until a bunch of denim-clad Frenchmen led by Claude "Levis" Strauss showed up and started making a fuss, for reasons no-one could properly understand, about Tristram Shandy (or was it Tropicana?).

But this is by the by.

Up at the pass it was cool and the air in the high villages smelt buttery, but the road dropped quickly into Anhui and soon it was warm again. I left the nut-growers behind me; now I am back in rice country, with aubergines and peppers growing in the gardens. Further on there was maize, too, and cotton. The rice harvest was underway, stalks of rice laid out on the road to be threshed by the traffic, of which there is virtually none. Sheaves of beans drying at the roadside.

Tried to camp out tonight, but eastern China follows the "3 Unders" policy: everything is either under concrete, under cultivation, or under water. (This is a little-known precursor of Jiang Zemin's "3 Represents" policy, which in essence states that everybody falls into one of three categories, and the Party represents all of them, so be quiet and get on with your jobs, while we get on with governing you."

In Shexian town there's a huge PSB (2) building with a banner that says "Mankind are harmonious with Nature. She Xian County are mixed with Beautifulness", and there's more on this theme a little further down the road: "Warmly welcome the 34th Miss Intercontinental to She Xian. Well-known town. Civilisation. Charm. Signed by: She Xian Committee of the Communist Party of China, and The People's Government of She Xian County." A picture of a beaming Miss Intercontinental, Miss Peru, and Miss Columbia, accompanies.

Out of town, past the the toll station, this: "She Xian County, the capital of Ancient Hui Zhou, greet the Beauties all over the world with a smile".

Oddly, no-one in She Xian smiled at me. What can this mean?

Anyway, I wind up here in Tunxi, the relatively unlovely town which serves as the railway depot for travellers to Huangshan Mountain. Grander hotels in town are trying to re-brand the place Huangshan City - they think it sounds better. It does. I book into a tiny hotel room in the middle of the bus station, brothel and sex shop zone. Definitely Tunxi.

--

Notes

(1) 1 jin = 0.5 kg

(2) PSB = Public Security Bureau (gong an ju) = Police

Zhejiang province, China

New roads in Zhejiang (diary reprise)

Saturday 10th September 2005. Jiakou, Zhejiang, China

Starting to rediscover what distance really means in China. No longer is Huangshan just a day's drive away on the expressway, or Beijing an easy overnight on the soft sleeper express. Coming face-to-face with China's mammoth road-building programme, some of which, nearly-complete but not yet open to traffic, provided perfect riding, at least until I came to an unbridged chasm and had to slip and slide down a fifty-foot embankment to get back on the old road.

Of course, once they are open, these wonders in concrete and asphalt are deemed too smooth and stylish for mere bicycles, who have to pick their way along rotting old village roads, which roll up and down every hill available; the new motorways are miraculously flat even in the hilliest terrain.

Beekeeping is big business round here. One truck came past me stacked high with wooden bee-hives - and with hundreds of tired-looking bees struggling in its wake to keep up.

A boy at the side of the road, holding a huge snake by the neck. I suppose a snake is all neck, really. Unless you start at the other end, in which case it's really tail all the way.

On top of the buzzing of bees, the hills are alive with the sound of nut-huskers. That's what everyone around here who isn't keeping bees does: husks nuts. Hickory nuts, in fact, I discover. (Forget bamboo-stripping, that's yesterday's game.) You rake them out on terraces to dry, you soak them (I may have got the order wrong here), you feed them into some kind of shelling machine, you load them onto trucks. The roads run red with washed out nut-husk juices.

There are a lot of dogs round here but no-one seems to have told them about chasing bicycles yet. It is, surely, only a matter of time before they catch on to the fun that their doggy cousins around the world are having.

I'm sitting in laoban's TV room because he's too busy to check me in to his grotty mosquito-pit upstairs. He's doing something noisy, I expect that means nut-husking. The TV is playing "The Hills are alive with the sound of music" and "Doe a deer".

Aha! Laoban has just re-appeared, bearing glad tidings, no less. He has upgraded me to a much nicer - and apparently mosquito-free - room in a separate house across the road, with my own personal roll-down garage door.

Wander round a rather lost-looking supermarket (in this tiny one-street village), playing hide-and-seek with my appointed follower-around on the second floor.

Mrs Laoban cooks me yu xiang qiezi(1) with lashings of rice. Marvellous stuff.

Note

(1) "Fish-flavoured" aubergine. This is the best thing you can do to an aubergine, and it doesn't taste of fish.

Mr Bean at the Da Jiu Dian (diary reprise)

Friday 9th September 2005. Changle, Zhejiang, China.

All along road people, old grandmothers especially, are stripping bamboo with beaked hatchets, tying up bundles of bamboo leaves, stacking and sorting canes, feeding them through metal stripping machines, loading them onto little trucks which disappear under their loads.

Some people are making good money out this, to judge by whole villages being rebuilt with huge gaudy Disneyland houses, pink Corinthian columns supporting gothic castle turrets on the roofs.

Later I pass a sign to Anji - "The Hometown of Bamboo". Irridescent blue and black butterflies in the bamboo forests.

This little village, Changle, doesn't seem to have hit the bamboo big-time yet, though it has at least two places to stay. At the first, I meet a very enthusiastic guest, singing the praises of the place. The laoban(1), though, is more downbeat about the idea of my staying. So I head across the road to the Long Feng Da Jiu Dian, where I find a room upstairs in a 5-bed dormitory.

Prowl round town, hunting my essentials: juzi(2), bananas, biscuits. Dinner downstairs at the Da Jiu Dian, spinach and tomato with rice. Mr Bean's steak tartare sketch is on the TV. Outside, the karaoke/disco is really thumping, someone hooting into the microphone with more gusto than talent. Good for him, I don't even have gusto.

Man tells me: "you know, you look really like a laowai(3)." I don't think he believed I am a real laowai. (Here in Changle!)

Notes

(1) Boss, owner, man-in-charge, person in authority, man with key.

(2) Tangerines, clementines

(3) Foreigner, especially westerner

On the way to Huzhou (diary reprise)

8th September 2005. Huzhou, Zhejiang, China

On the TV, Beijing beat Shanghai on aggregate, after extra time, last night.

Breakfast: bananas in room.

At Pingwang, a bridge takes the G318 over the Grand Canal. Last year I turned south here, towards Jiaxing and Hangzhou. This time I follow a small road to Hengshan and from there to Miaogang. This must be the only quiet road in eastern China. I can even hear the birds and cicadas.

Along the south bank of Taihu, duck farms with flotillas of white ducks, bright sun, clean air, no traffic, beautiful riding. Fresh smell of marshes coming off the wide, shallow lake, which stretches weedy and reedy to the horizon. A convoy of small boats chug along in line, collecting lake weed. Crab-fishermen mending their nets along the shore. At a little restaurant at lunchtime they offer me freshwater crayfish, which share a tank with a pair of sad-looking condemned fish. I go for my usual, fanqie chao dan(1). A mother ba-ing(2) her baby on the steps.

Tableau: peasants in straw hats cutting reeds and grass with scythes. What we pay our visa fees for.

Road runs along levee, with the lake on right, and garden plots full of cabbages and onions below on left. Warblers and egrets all along the shore. Rice fields glow green and then gold in evening light.

Outside zhaodaisuo(3) is a street of point-and-shoot fry-em-up stalls, you name it, they've got it - from bags of jumping frogs (live) to pig nostrils (dead). Up the road is a throw-the-hoop-over-something-ghastly game. There is no shortage of customers; the lucky ones don't win anything. The more unfortunate have to take some astonishing tat home: miniature hands made of plastic, and little china figurines that make garden gnomes look classy. The only prizes worth winning - mobile phones - are actually impossible to win because they are too big for the hoops.

Cricket: first day of final Ashes test. England wobbling at 115/3 at lunch.

Notes

(1) Fried egg and tomato.

(2) Potty training, without potty.

(3) Guesthouse, hotel

Leaving Shanghai (diary reprise)

7th September 2005. Jin Ze, China.

Sit for a Russian-style farewell with Aliona. Leaving hurts; I feel tight-throated. Ride the way I seem to know well now, past Hong Qiao airport, out onto the Huqingping Gonglu / G318. "Develop highway and vigorously develop Shanghai" encourages a sign above the road.

In Jin Ze, not only do they remember me from last year, they still have my registration sheet on the desk. They ask where my beard has gone. Noodles with a fried egg in a Lanzhou Noodle joint. Fat orange sun sinks in the haze and a tiny sliver of dark yellow crescent moon appears. Hotel room floor is concrete red splattered with yellow splattered with grey.

Tooth-brushing

Zhutang, Yunnan province, China. 11th January 2006.

Laoban at hotel is a nice bloke with one arm. He shares the vice of many by wanting to engage me in conversation while I am brushing my teeth and my mouth is full of foam and bristles.

From the diary...

The first in what I hope may become a series of snippets from my diary.

12th January 2006. Shang Yun, Yunnan province, China

Funny little hotel room: two-tone walls, green and dirt, and a rotting arm-chair. But you don't expect much for 10 yuan. The laoban tried to get me to take a 20 yuan room on the grounds that I am "too tall" for a 10 yuan room. I think this is not in fact the case; time will tell.

The Wind in the West

You may have seen Jonathan Watts writing in The Guardian yesterday about the Three Gorges of the Sky.

Here's his opening paragraph:

"In the vast natural wind tunnel that is Dabancheng, the gales that roar between the snow-capped mountain ridges get so strong that trains have been gusted off railway tracks and lorries overturned."

This takes me back 2-and-a-bit years to when I was trying to cycle through that vast natural wind tunnel, on days 158, 159, and 160. On day 158, in particular, coming out of Turpan, the wind was so bad that in six-and-a-half hours on a flat road I only made 47 km - and that was before the wind really started blowing. Once it really kicked up, making any sort of forward progress at all became impossible. I had to lie low in a culvert under the road and sit it out.

Someone told me at a petrol station that trains were blown off the tracks in that sort of wind; I wasn't sure whether he was exaggerating. Apparently, though, it's true. Either that, or Jonathan Watts got his information from the same bloke I did.

By way of a post-script...

It will please many of you, I think, to learn that Asmund is not only alive, but apparently also well.

(That link will take you to a page on Rob Thomson's blog - which I heartily recommend. He has some stories to tell.)

Ed

Now that's what I call breakfast


--
All photos and text copyright Edward Genochio 2006

Hotel sign, Dunhuang, Gansu province, China


--
All photos and text copyright Edward Genochio 2006

Camels on the lake shore, Xinjiang, China.


--
All photos and text copyright Edward Genochio 2006

Central market, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
All photos and text copyright Edward Genochio 2006

Carrying pole, Guizhou, China.
All photos and text copyright Edward Genochio 2006

Petrol Station, Guangxi province, China.
Copyright (C) Edward Genochio 2006

Musician, Guangxi province, China

Vietnam Sunset

Bicycle Bounces Back into Belgium

21,542 km from Shanghai, or 42,000 km from Exeter, my bicycle carries me back to Belgium, 29 years and a month or two after having been born there. It's a long way round to getting nowhere.

It has rained a lot in Europe recently, as you have probably noticed.

Ukraine

The hot news is:

1. It's hot.
2. I'm in Lvov (aka Lviv), Ukraine, where it is hot.
3. It's hot.

Apologies for lack of blog since China. Will make up for it one day, I promise.

Hot news from Kazakhstan

Chaps, I'm in Uralsk.

 

Asmund will fill you in on the details, I expect.

 

Edward

Shymkent

Shymkent. Hot. Cycling. 14,288 km since Shanghai.

 

Hope you enjoy the new minimalist blogging style.

Edward

Kazakhstan

I apologise for the absence of any photos in the previous post.

Here is some clover, which made a nice soft bed for the night on the way to Almaty.

Almaty calling

Almaty, Kazakhstan.

 

Internet access here ain't what it is in China (where every second building has an internet cafe in the basement or the attic). Updates might not happen for a while.

 

We need Asmund back. It's going to take a concerted campaign to make him feel loved again, but with enough emails I think we can do it.

Please write to Asmund and say that you miss him and want him back on the 2wheels blog. The setting is perfect. I'm in Almaty, nobody knows where I'm going from here, and there may be no news from me for weeks on end. Asmund would be perfectly in his element, free to speculate wildly about any number of potential catastrophes.

 

I hesitate to publish his email address directly, but perhaps this will help:

 

xxxx_xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx

 

The first word is the short form of Asmund's preferred form of transport. It is four letters long and rhymes with hike.

Then there is an underscore (_).

 

The second word is Asmund's first name, which rhymes with Hasmund and is six letters long.

 

Then there is an @ sign.

 

The third word is a well-known email service owned by Microsoft that has nothing to do with frigid females.

 

Then there is a dot.

 

The last word is three letters long and if you write it backwards looks like this: moc.

 

Please write to Asmund and tell him we need him.

 

Until next time,

 

Edward

Day 272 - Cycling from Khorgos (China) to the Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan

Start: Khorgos (Huoerguosi), Xinjiang, China
End: Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan
Distance: 155 km
Time: 7'34"
Avg: 20.5 k/h
Max: 38 k/h
Total: 13,438 km
Total riding days: 175
Riding hours: 0930 - 2110 (Chinese time)

So, farewell then, China.

Across the border, the smell of low-octane petrol says: welcome back to the USSR.

Day 271 - Clock-watching in Khorgos

0 km etc.

In 14 hours time they will let me over the border, inshallah. Yesterday I haggled with the borderfolk for a long time. It really wouldn't be such a bad thing to let an honest man into Kazakhstan 2 days before his visa officially starts, would it?

You must wait here, said the borderman. Khorgos (Huoerguosi, the Chinese call it) is a lovely place, said the borderman. Time will fly here, said the borderman.

I am watching the time flying by, on the tips of growing grass.

Meanwhile, there is always the blossom.

Day 270 - Cycling from Sailimu Lake to Khorgos

Start: Hillside above Sailimu Hu, Xinjiang, China
End: Khorgos (Huoerguosi), Xinjiang, China
Distance: 90 km
Time: 3'50"
Avg: 23.7 k/h
Max: 48 k/h
Total: 13,283 km
Total riding days: 174
Riding hours: 0930 - 1930

Braked down the hillside from the world's most booooootiful campspot to the main road and went down down down an extraordinary green valley (how long it has been since things have been green and lush) full of Kazakhs chasing livestock around on horseback (the Kazakhs, not the livestock), and selling honey and honey-flavoured kvas, back into the hotlands, the flatlands, the really rather drablands of the Xinjiang semi-desert.

(No, I haven't shaved. That's Andrea, a German cyclist heading for Kyrgyzstan.)

An update, of sorts

Sorry, all very quiet here on 2wheels recently, I know. I have been pedalling furiously in a vaguely westerly direction.

I am now sitting in an internet cafe in a place whose name I do not know, not far from the Kazakh border.

More than that I cannot currently tell you. But when I can, you will be the first to know, I promise you.

Hang on in there.

Edward

Cycling around Sailimu Lake - Day 269

Start: Sailimu Lake (east end), Xinjiang, China
End: Sailimu Lake (west end), Xinjiang, China
Distance: 25 km
Time: 1'28"
Avg: 17.1 k/h
Max: 46.5 k/h
Total: 13,192 km
Total riding days: 173
Riding hours: 1905 - 2110

For me this has been the most beautiful spot in all of China. They save the best to last.

Green and white mountains, crystal waters, flowers everywhere, sunsets the size of... something pretty big.

Cycling from a sand dune to a lake: somewhere beyond Jing He to Sailimu Hu (day 268)

Start: Sand dune, 20 km beyond Jing He, Xinjiang, China
End: Sailimu Lake, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 116 km
Time: 8'27"
Avg: 13.7 k/h
Max: 36 k/h
Total: 13,167 km
Total riding days: 172
Riding hours: 0845 - 2030

Who's been leaving tracks in my desert campsite?





Oh, just a little beetle.

Things were a bit moister 116 km later, with the sun setting over the supposedly salty but in fact fresh enough to swim and cook in Sailimu Lake.

Cycling across the northwestern Xinjiang steppe (day 267)

Start: Somewhere outside, Xinjiang, China
End: Sand-dune, beyond Jing He , Xinjiang, China
Distance: 125 km
Time: 8'27"
Avg: 19.9 k/h
Max: 35.5 k/h
Total: 13,051 km
Total riding days: 171
Riding hours: 0905 - 2145

No photos today. Diary a bit sparse too. Must have cycled a bit. Head down, that sort of thing.

Day 266 - Cycling from Kuitun to somewhere in the Xinjiang steppe

Start: Before Kuitun, Xinjiang, China
End: Somewhere after Kuitun, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 120 km
Time: 6'37"
Avg: 18.1 k/h
Max: 40 k/h
Total: 12,926 km
Total riding days: 170
Riding hours: 0920 - 2030

Sad news about one of PG's distant cousins:

Nice highways they build out here.

Squatting technique still needs some work.

Day 265 - Cycling Wutaigong to somewhere before Kuitun

Start: Near Wutaigong, Xinjiang, China
End: Near Kuitun, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 122 km
Time: 5'28"
Avg: 22.4 k/h
Max: 36.5 k/h
Total: 12,806 km
Total riding days: 169
Riding hours: 0945 - 2015

Fast, flat, easy cycling, powered by plenty of 5-mao ice creams.

Mao himself, meanwhile, has become a petrol pump attendant.

Cycling from Urumqi to near Wutaigong (Day 264)

Start: Urumqi, Xinjiang, China
End: Wutaigong, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 98 km
Time: 5'01"
Avg: 19.6 k/h
Max: 34.5 k/h
Total: 12,584 km
Total riding days: 168
Riding hours: 1130 - 2130

I now have a Kazakh visa.

These people don't.

Days 261, 262, 263: visa hunting in Urumqi

0 km etc.

Went to find a visa at the Kazakh consulate, except that it isn't the Kazakh Consulate, it is the Passport-Visa service of Kazakhstan railways Urumqi representative office, and don't you forget it.

A good time was had by all.

Technical hitch

OK Houston, Abergavenny, Bury-St-Edmunds, etc., we have a problem.

 

I can't access my blogging software from this part of China.

 

My cynical mind says that this is because I am in Xinjiang now, which is inhabited by people who don't think they are part of China. The Chinese government, which just wants to be loved, makes a special effort to prevent people in Xinjiang connecting with the outside world, believing that, deprived of the opportunity to love anybody else, the locals will love the Chinese government instead.

 

All of which explains (a) why I am feeling angry, and (b) why I can't give you the usual 2wheels photofest.

 

Laziness on my part accounts for the absence of the dull bits - mileage stats, etc.

 

So, instead, a quick summary: lots of desert, a few mountains, no pikas.

 

I am now in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, which I could call East Turkestan, but that would probably have the local Boys in Blue (formerly the Boys in Green) (plainclothes branch) round quicker than you can say "Independence for Uyghurs Now!"

 

The much-trumpeted auto-email-blog-update-notifier thing seems to be on the blink too. Sorry. Will see what I can do. Probably nothing, since I can't access the HS2HTCACM (Highly Sensitive 2wheels High Tech Command And Control Module).

 

I met a cyclist the other day who knows Ruth/Yellow Gloves! Do you think someone could tell Asmund/Pink Gloves ?

 

Until the revolution,

 

Edward

Biking Dabancheng to Urumqi (day 260)

Start: Dabancheng, Xinjiang, China
End: Urumqi (Wulumuqi), Xinjiang, China
Distance: 81 km
Time: 4'36"
Avg: 17.7 k/h
Max: 38.5 k/h
Total: 12,585 km
Total riding days: 167
Riding hours: 0640 - 1240

The wind turned.

And so did the windmills.

Underused word of the week: Receptacle.

Petrol station of the week: this one.

Dangly job of the week.

Cycling from the desert to Dabancheng (day 159)

Start: Culvert under G312 beyond Turpan, Xinjiang, China
End: Truckstop beyond Dabancheng, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 64 km
Time: 8'38"
Avg: 7.4 k/h
Max: 16.6 k/h
Total: 12,504 km
Total riding days: 166
Riding hours: 0640 - 2045

Another day, another hurricane.

But a nice little gorge to ride up, a break from the desert, at least.

Oh, yes, that's the Daban City peasant trade market. 2 serfs for my villein, anyone?

It shouldn't happen to a bike...

Bike-battling out of Turpan into the desert (day 158)

Start: Turpan, Xinjiang, China
End: Culvert under the G312, west of Turpan, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 47 km
Time: 6'20"
Avg: 7.3 k/h
Max: 23.2 k/h
Total: 12,439 km
Total riding days: 165
Riding hours: 0955 - 2145

Looked out of the window and it looked promising. Turpan, baking yesterday under a 45 degree sun (OK, the sun itself might have been a bit hotter, but you get the picture), was today cool and cloudy. I was privileged to feel the tickle of a dozen raindrops on my nose - Kashgar gets about 16 mm of rain a year, so this was something pretty special.

And then the wind started to blow.

I spent most of the day hiding in a hole in the desert. I reckon the wind was up around 80 or 90 km/h. Moving was impossible, holding the bike upright without being blown backwards was a struggle.

This man, Serge Girard (left), had it easy. He was going downwind. Running from Paris to Tokyo, 75 km a day, admittedly, but downwind, eh? No wonder his beard doesn't grow properly.

Ah well, at least the sun set nicely.

A bed for the night. Those are my toes.

Day 257 - Into Turpan

Start: Turpan turn-off, Xinjiang, China
End: Turpan (Tulufan), Xinjiang, China
Distance: 6 km
Time: 0'30"
Avg: 12.8 k/h
Max: 23.4 k/h
Total: 12,392 km
Total riding days: 164
Riding hours: 0830 - 0905

After a gruelling six k, I go to poke my camera at a minaret, and eat a lot of ice cream. The latter was more rewarding; a photograph of the former follows.

Day 256 - Cycling to Turpan - almost

Start: Qiketai, Xinjiang, China
End: Petrol station strip, Turpan turnoff, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 141 km
Time: 8'03"
Avg: 17.5 k/h
Max: 40.5 k/h
Total: 12,386 km
Total riding days: 163
Riding hours: 0945 - 2045

Tried to stay in Shanshan, but after checking into a very nice little flatlet hotel room, and having a shower and a watermelon, the boss chucks me out for being foreign, strict orders from the Boys in Blue (formerly known as the Boys in Green).

So I try to hack it to Turpan across the Flaming Mountains, and nearly make it. But I take a short cut which turns out to be a long cut ending in sand dunes, and by the time I'm back on the road, I've run out of puff and daylight. So I spend the night in my preferred habitat, a petrol station. Jolly nice one too.

Day 255 - Riding the road to Qiketai

Start: Sandaoling, Xinjiang, China
End: Qiketai, China
Distance: 202 km
Time: 10'52"
Avg: 18.6 k/h
Max: 39 k/h
Total: 12,245 km
Total riding days: 162
Riding hours: 0645 - 2040

202 km, eh?

Never done 200 before, and I don't think I will again, either.

OK, I know that Asmund does 200 before breakfast every day and twice on Sundays, but he drinks Cherry Coke.

A lot of desert, more wildlife, and some sore feet at the end of the day.

Day 254 - Cycling from Hami to Sandaoling

Start: Hami, Xinjiang, China
End: Sandaoling, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 86 km
Time: 5'10"
Avg: 16.6 k/h
Max: 25.9 k/h
Total: 12,043 km
Total riding days: 161
Riding hours: 1145 - 1800

Trucks come past carrying beehives. A number of bees fail to observe basic safety precautions and are not wearing seatbelts. As a result they fall out, doomed to a sad and rather lonely death in the desert - but before that, they have time to buzz around a bit and try to fly up my nose, mouth, shirt, etc.

STOP THIS CRUEL TRADE!

END LIVE BEE EXPORTS!

From the west, coal trucks chunter past lobbing hunks of coal at me as they go.

And then some unexpected wildlife pops up at the roadside.




Life is rarely dull on the G312.

Pika news

The ever-alert CW has spotted another pika:

I thought my bike was feeling a little heavy the other day... and my biscuit stocks seemed inexplicably low.

From our own correspondent

A.R. writes to say:

 

I cannot resist asking this question:  I recall reading somewhere that a nineteenth century explorer - possibly Sir Richard Francis Burton (the chap who translated the Kam Sutra in 1883) encountered a community of Tibetan monks who had devised a code or private language through a series of intricately nuanced farts.

This is probably an early 'urban myth', but have you heard of or encountered anything like this on your travels, or any evidence that such behaviour might be within the range of normality? For, although I am interested in and respectful of Tibetan Buddhism, I can't help hoping there's some truth in it!

 

I will ask my Tibetan contacts, A.R., and get back to you.

 

Get this

For the hard-core nothing-better-to-doers among you, an experimental new service, brought to you with revolutionary new technology developed in conjunction with the CIA, Nasa, and the Communist Party of China:

The 2wheels blog by email in real-time!

Never miss a post again!

What does it do? Any new post, or comment, on the 2wheels blog, gets zapped straight to your email inbox, instantly, as it happens, and in, like, real time, man.

Why would I want that? Search me.

How does it work? That's a trade secret.

How much does it cost? The 2wheels blog email notification service is being offered at the incredible introductory price of 0 Peruvian zlotys a month. (Terms and conditions apply.)

What's that in Her Majesty's Pound Sterling? Works out at about 0 pounds, 0 shillings and 0 pence, at current exchange rates.

I'm sold. How do I get it? Just send an empty email to 2wheelsblognotifier-subscribe@googlegroups.com, sit back, and wait for your life never to be the same again.

What about the old monthly 2wheels update list? That will carry on just as before.

Can we have a picture now please? Sure, have two.

See what big wheels I have? And what steep hills I climb?

Hami moon.

Day 253 - Hangin' in Hami

0 km etc.

The Hami-ites make the best Cornish Pasties in the world (Cornwall included). Not especially vegetarian, but we all have our moments of weakness.

Meanwhile, here is a small mosque.

Gated community

Locking out the desert, Huahaizi, Qinghai province, China.

Spot-the-pika: Competition Results

I'm pleased to announce that CW is the winner of last week's Spot The Pika competition.

Here is the winning entry:

Carl, your pika awaits collection from the Tibetan Plateau.

Desert flowers

On the G215, the desert road from Dunhuang to Liuyuan, after a couple of days' rain.

Day 252 - Cycling Luotuojuanzi to Hami

Start: Luotuojuanzi, Xinjiang, China
End: Hami, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 63 km
Time: 3'18"
Avg: 19.3 k/h
Max: 29.3 k/h
Total: 11,957 km
Total riding days: 140
Riding hours: 0640 - 1100

A quick sprint through the desert, the mountains of the Tian Shan ahead and to the right, and meltwater-fed oases down to the left.

A nice desert sunrise, too - but spot the discrepancy in this photograph:

Day 251 - Cycling from Xingxingxia to Luotuojuanzi

Start: Xingxingxia, Xinjiang, China
End: Luotuojuanzi, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 142 km
Time: 7'54"
Avg: 17.9 k/h
Max: 41 k/h
Total: 11,894 km
Total riding days: 139
Riding hours: 0645 - 1640

A cold, cold morning in the desert.

The roadside is littered with shoes.

The invisible unidexter, naked but for a black leather winkle-picker, hitch-hiking on the desert highway to Urumqi.

A pretty funky hotel for the night, with a pretty funky world-cup-ready water-tower.

For fellow-travellers: there is nothing at all on the road until you reach the oasis at Luotuojuanzi, after about 135 km, except a tin-hut mining operation at around 35 km and a solitary house around 95 km. The map shows other places, the roadsigns say things like "Yandun 73 km", and after 73 km there is a sign that says "Yandun". But that is it, really it. No houses, no people, no camels, not a potato in sight. Just a sign saying "Yandun", and desert.

Day 250 - Pedalling from Liuyuan to Xingxingxia

Start: Liuyuan, Gansu, China
End: Xingxingxia, Xinjiang, China
Distance: 88 km
Time: 5'32"
Avg: 15.9 k/h
Max: 29.4 k/h
Total: 11,752 km
Total riding days: 138
Riding hours: 0845 - 1515

Tonight I am in a truck-stop. The room is painted two-tone, pale blue and white, it feels like a Soviet mental asylum. And they have turned the heating on for me. They must be crazy. I can't sleep with heating. I have to open the windows and let all the heat straight out again. I'm just left with the banging hot-water pipes.

In fact I didn't mean to stop here at all, early in the afternoon, but I saw the truck stop and pulled in on auto-pilot. Before I knew what I was doing, I had paid for the bed.

Earlier, up ahead I saw a shape. It was the shape of a touring bicycle. Touring bicyclists can spot another touring bicyclist from 5 miles, in the same way that a certain species of sparrow knows from five miles away whether or not a black dot in the sky is another member of the same sparrow species.

I spend a happy half-hour hauling my conspecific down, and feel rather chuffed when I am on his tail. He is only carrying two half-packed rear panniers. I am on full load, front and rear.

Mr Kou is his name, and 72 is his age.

I feel a little less Lancey about catching him. He and three mates (he's the oldest; they're all over 62) are cycling from Xi'an to the Russian border up in Altay. They've been 1,900 km already in 25 days.

Mr Kou (right) (72) and chums. When you've been going as long as he has, you can do it with your eyes closed.

Day 249 - cycling from Dunhuang to Liuyuan

Start: Dunhuang, Gansu, China
End: Liuyuan crossroads (G215/G312), Gansu, China
Distance: 127 km
Time: 8'11"
Avg: 15.5 k/h
Max: 22.2 k/h
Total: 111,664 km
Total riding days: 137
Riding hours: 0855 - 1910

Baked beans for breakfast. No toast though.

A good road across flat desert. After two days of desert rain, today is bright, sunny, and the air is super-clear. Once out of the workshop strip, the road runs through an amazing green oasis, bright spring trees everywhere, fields planted with sprouting vegetables. The air smelt fresh and moist and succulent and clean, and then towards the end of the oasis, the wind blew in off the desert to the north and the smell of the air changed, becoming first heathy, then sandy and salty.

Riding the oasis was like cycling through some insane dream of a Swiss clockmaker's workshop. Cuckoos cuckooing everywhere.

The weather in the oasis was perfect, the sort of day when everyone has a ready smile, everything is easy-going. Suddenly back in the desert and I am back in expedition mode, thinking about where my next water is coming from.

And then the desert smelt of dung for a dozen kilometres. Far off to the left a gang of camels loaf about looking haughty even from a distance.

Ponging like that, they have little to look haughty about, in my opinion. I long ago perfected my humble cyclist mien.

The evening was amazing - so often the best time to ride, a beautiful rich clear intense soft light bathing everything, suffusing the desert with deep colours, dark black hills, green grit slopes, red, yellow, orange sand, the road a satisfying black, not a washy grey, the yellow centre line bold and strong.

All the horizons seem to slipping away downhill, as if I am on top of a vast mound or dome. But I never reach the downhill, and I realise that the desert is just flat, so flat in all directions that you can see the curve of the earth, and the distant hills seems half-buried as a result.

Publishing sensation

Asmund fans may be interested to know that the pink-gloved one now has his own blog at http://pinkgloves4ever.blogspot.com.

 

(Since the contents of Asmund's blog are deemed politically sensitive, readers in China will not be able to access it. (Try!). You can, however, sidestep the Great Patriotic Firewall of the Motherland like this: http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://pinkgloves4ever.blogspot.com)

 

Day 248 - Being cheated by the banana-merchants of Dunhuang

0 km etc.

Dunhuang is supposed to be an oasis town in the middle of the desert.

Since I have been here it has been cold and drizzling solidly. The place has a very English feel to it...

In fact I don't like Dunhuang very much - it has more than its fair share of dishonest traders. And I am unduly sensitive about the price of bananas.

On the plus side, you can always pay a visit to the Dunhuang Luminous Cup Factory.

Or take a solar-powered trip someplace.

Road shafety

Have you been drinking, officer?

Ouch!

The wire beading in my rear tyre has worn through its housing.

This is giving me punctures every 2 days or so - which makes a change from my ride from England to China, 20,000 km without a puncture.

(Or, one puncture, but it didn't count because it came from a spoke-hole, and my wheel didn't have any rim tape in it....)

Day 247 - pedalling to Dunhuang

Start: Akesai, Gansu, China
End: Dunhuang, Gansu, China
Distance: 79 km
Time: 3'43"
Avg: 21.4 k/h
Max: 40 k/h
Total: 11,537 km
Total riding days: 136
Riding hours: 0730 - 1230

Where in the world?

Ashgabad?

Agra?

No, it's Akesai (Aksay), Gansu. One of the most interesting places I've seen in western China.

The whole place has been knocked down (assuming, that is, that there was a place before) and replaced with a monumental avenue in Sino-Islamic (i.e. white tiles + pointy arches) style, crowned at the western end by a towering, Taj Mahal style mosque.

It looks particularly good in a sandstorm, when the sky turns custard-yellow just before the sand hits.

They have a nice statue of some geese, too.

The ride to Dunhuang was flat, downhill (you know what I mean), and easy.

Day 246 - on the bike to Akesai

Start: Huahaizi, Qinghai, China
End: Akesai (Aksay), Gansu, China
Distance: 109 km
Time: 6'02"
Avg: 18.2 k/h
Max: 47.5 k/h
Total: 11,457 km
Total riding days: 135
Riding hours: 0745 - 1600

If you feel nature calling on your ride across the G215 desert highway, save it for KM 280. Out in the middle of the desert, about 100 million miles from the nearest person, place, or thing, they have built this:

The most beautiful, clean, shiny, spotless public convenience in the eastern hemisphere.

It is really quite the most extraordinary thing, for want of a better expression.

You would think it is just another mirage, except that you can go and bang your head against the walls.

Whose idea was this? Perhaps Asmund is planning to ride this road next year, and he's sent out a crack team of Norwegian hygiene engineers to prepare the route for him?

Or maybe it is the work of some recluisve philanthropist, wanting to make a non-ostentatious contribution to humanity.

A long slow slog up to the Dang Jin pass, though in fact the road somehow slices through these imposing snowy mountains without climbing above 3648 metres.

And then an incredible downhill, finally off the high cold deserts of Qinghai and Tibet, and down into the low-altitude deserts of Gansu and Xinjiang.

On the way down, an SUV from Shanghai stops, and its occupants very generously give me their day's chocolate rations.

(Asmund would not approve. He will not even take water from other vehicles, on the grounds that this is cheating. I do not quite follow the logic. Is it OK to take water from wells? Taps? Shops? Or do you have to tow your own glacier or iceberg around with you and melt water as and when you need it? Fine for Norwegians, I guess...)

In Akesai, I am invited to spend the night in a mutton-drying shed.

This proves to be a mistake. Most smells you can get used to after an hour or so. Not so drying rancid mutton. I was still retching when I woke up the next morning.

Those are half-dried pieces of sheep hanging from beams, up above my bike. The smell was indescribable.

If, like me, you are trying to become a better vegetarian, a night in a place like this might help. Along with bivvying in a hut full of boiling yak hooves, this sort of thing helps to dull your primitive carnivorous urges.

Day 245 - cycling to Huahaizi

Start: Dachaidan, Qinghai, China
End: Huahaizi, Qinghai, China
Distance: 155 km
Time: 10'19"
Avg: 14.9 k/h
Max: 39.5 k/h
Total: 11,348 km
Total riding days: 134
Riding hours: 0650 - 1850

Weather: Sandstorms, blizzards, hail, sun, warm, cold, headwinds, tailwinds.

The day began with an absurd escape from the police story which I will tell one. Maybe in the book. (Remember to buy it.)

Dachaidan has fake plastic palm trees.


And, yes, they have detachable nuts.

Two passes, one at 4142 metres - the high-altitude plateau-desert ain't quite over yet. Still snow up there, even in May.

Then back down into more desert, mirage-man-camel-nothing over and over and over.



Overnight at a road depot.

(NB fellow-travellers: there are a lot of daobans marked on the maps. However, all these road depots have been abandonned and are in ruins. There is nothing now between Dachaidan and Huahaizi, apart from a couple of buildings and a herd of sheep at Yuqia / Ike.)

Day 244 - cycling to Dachaidan

Start: Xitieshan Lukou, Qinghai, China
End: Dachaidan (a.k.a. Daqaidam), Qinghai, China
Distance: 71 km
Time: 5'54"
Avg: 12.1 k/h
Max: 27.2 k/h
Total: 11,193 km
Total riding days: 133
Riding hours: 0815 - 1515

They're building the road out here, which means, for the time being, a lot of sand.

Into which big heavy trucks drive, one after another, and get stuck, one after another.

Sometimes it's good to be on a bike.

Day 243 - cycling from Golmud to Xitieshan

Start: Golmud, Qinghai, China
End: Xitieshan Lukou, Qinghai, China
Distance: 124 km
Time: 8'38"
Avg: 14.3 k/h
Max: 33 k/h
Total: 11,122 km
Total riding days: 132
Riding hours: 0905 - 1845

Hubris; nemesis. Flying down tarmac for 60 km, wind on my back, I'll be Budapest in time for tea. Then the wind turns, the tarmac dies, and I have to revise my estimates. Budapest in time for Thanksgiving, maybe.

Anyone thinking of going the same way - there's a little luguan (guesthouse) at Xitieshan Lukou, next to the petrol station. It has something rather amazing in its 10-kuai bunkroom: satellite TV. You can't get the BBC, but if you feel like spending an evening or two soaking up Palestinian politics, Sudanese soaps, Abu Dhabi documentaries, Libyan lifestyle programmes, Saudi soccer - this might be the place for you. If it's in Arabic, you can get it here.

Better still, you can get Indian TV and watch the cricket.

Admittedly, only Sri Lanka A vs Pakistan A, but it's still willow on leather. And because it's Indian TV, you get alternating half-hours of English and Hindi commentary.

The English commentary is rather dull, but the Hindi stuff is priceless - especially if you don't speak a word of Hindi, in which case it goes something like this:

...hindi hindi hindi tickled down to short fine leg hindi hindi hindi good effort there by the bowler hindi hindi hindi no laughing matter i can tell you hindi hindi hindi ...

I only took one photograph today. Here it is. Like it, or lump it.

Days 240 - 242: chasing the Greeks around Golmud

0km etc.

You thought I was joking about those Greeks?

I think found their hide-out.

Meanwhile, here is the local wildlife in action:

Snap-happy

Happy-slapping, Golmud style.

This bloke comes up to me, right, and starts clicking me with his mobicam.



So I'm like, right, have some of this then.

Eco-friendly

A rather nice set of public-information posters in Golmud are all very much in born-again, David Cameron, Eric the Eco-Chameleon mode.

Take sick pandas to hospital. (A panda would have to be very, very sick, or at least rather lost, to turn up in Golmud.)

Clean water is good.



Climate change is bad.

And so on.

Timeo Danaos...

Maybe there's more to this Greek thing than I thought.

Lots of Golmud shops seem to be sprouting Greek signs, all of them more-or-less nonsense so far as I can tell.

Anyone got any theories?

Until then, I'll be looking out for large wooden yaks.

Crackers

David Cameron recently mentioned Garry Baldie when asked to name his political hero.

Garry Baldie - yesterday's man?

A little off-message, surely, for a Tory leader trying to show that he has ' moved on'?

The gloves are off

Does anyone have any information about Ruth "Yellow Gloves"? She made a brief appearance a few weeks ago, and hasn't been seen since.

 

I was thinking she might make a perfect partner for Lonely of Trondheim, a.k.a. Pink Gloves, a.k.a. Asmund.

Pretty pictures from the Tibetan Plateau crossing

Golmud has such a pleasant wangba [internet cafe] that I thought I might spend my day off uploading some more pictures.

At the Kunlun Shankou (Kunlun pass), 4767 metres. The monument is to the Kekexili Nature Reserve, home to the endangered chiru (Tibetan antelope), wild ass, and other beasts.

Training for next year's expedition: first man to cycle solo to the South Pole.

Gravelly moonscape on the track between Qumahe and Budongquan

Bike takes a breather while I cook some noodles.

Riding into a storm on the road to Budongquan.




Desert plant on the road off the plateau down towards Golmud.

Kit list for cycling the Tibetan Plateau

Rob Thompson asked about my overshoes, which prompted me to go on at some length about the kit I had with me.

I reproduce the list here, in case anyone else might find it helpful, or interesting, or both, or neither.

My full cold-weather clothing list was as follows (bottom to top):

1 x thin pair socks
1 x thick pair of socks
1 x pair of Shimano cycling shoes (falling apart)
1 x pair of nylon windproof overshoes (make a huge difference to foot temperature - cold feet, physical and psychological, can be biggest obstacle to severe cold-weather riding)

2 x pairs thermal long-johns
1 x fleece trousers
1 x windproof overtrousers (not normally necessary when actually cycling - the legs tend to keep themselves fairly warm.)

2 x long-sleeved thermal vests
1 x cycling shirt
1 x woollen army jumper
2 x windproof fleece jackets ("Windstopper" style)
1 x GoreTex windproof jacket

1 x pair fingerless cycling gloves
1 x pair winter skiing-style gloves
1 x pair woollen socks worn over ski gloves as "mittens"
1 x fleece neck muffler (can also be pulled up over chin, cheeks, face etc)

1 x thin fleece cap (under helmet)
1 x cycling helmet
1 x spare garment (long johns, sweater, t-shirt, whatever comes to hand) to wrap around neck and/or face.

1 x pair sunglasses
1 x thick beard

Wearing all that, I was rarely severely cold.

Uphill I often stripped down to just one or two layers.

Downhill, it is the hands, feet, and, in galey blizzards, the exposed parts of the face, that suffer most.

Sunglasses are really important. I forgot to wear them one day and got snow-blindness which is EXTREMELY painful.

I had a down jacket in my panniers which in the event I never wore.

In my tent I had 2 foam mats ("Karrimat" style) to insulate me from the ground, and a good sleeping bag.

I also wore a "Russian"-style fake fur hat in my tent sometimes. When I got cold in my tent, I found I could usually warm up by wrapping my head up better, rather than by piling on extra layers on the body and legs, which can be uncomfortable/sweaty inside a sleeping bag.



As general advice, I should add that the "layers" principle of clothing is really important.

On the plateau, temperatures can fluctuate rapidly and widely.

When the sun shines in the afternoon, even in winter, it can get quite hot, and you need to remove lots of clothes.

10 minutes later, the wind can kick up, the sky cloud over, and a blizzard begin, probably kicking up a lot of snow and ice-crystals from the ground as well.

In these conditions you will get very cold very quickly, and need to add all the layers you can find.

The uphill/downhill factor makes a huge difference too. Uphill, you will probably be warm even in very cold conditions.

Downhill, the added windchill can freeze you even when the sun is out.

Stopping every five minutes to add or remove layers is tedious, especially when it is cold, you are tired, and your hands are gloved, all of which make fiddling with zips, panniers, etc., awkward.

But it is important not to sweat on the uphills, because if your clothes and body are wet, you will freeze very rapidly on the downhills.

I am wearing most of the kit described above in this photo:


(Although the sun was shining, there was a strong wind and I had stopped to fix a puncture, and eat.)

Washboarding

In case you were wondering what I was whingeing about, this is a not-very-good photograph of what a washboarded road looks like.

This is not a particularly extreme example, but you get the picture: the track surface "folds" into a series of waves which make for very uncomfortable riding (if you have a nice hard racing saddle and no suspension) or a fun, roller-coaster ride (if you have a moon buggy).

More photos from the Qumalai - Budongquan road

First pass out of Qumalai.

Motorbike at the pass - note baby keeping warm, strapped to front.

Coming down the pass.

The "Pompeii" ruins of Se Wu Gou.

Pika-boo

Not sure if this will win Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, but somewhere in this photograph, a pika (Tibetan plateau giant hamster) is lurking.

Can you find him? (Or her, it may be.)


Send in your answers, spot-the-ball style, with the pika circled, and win a pika. (Delivery not included.)

Hot tip

This policeman (right), attached (administratively, not physically) to the Kekexili Nature Reserve at Budongquan, tipped England for the World Cup. Place your bets...

More prizewinning wildlife photography from the Tibetan Plateau

Spot the herd of antelope.

Spot the herd of antelope (2).




Bird. (Any twitchers out there who can help me out with a more specific description?)

French circus comes to Tibet?

Is that a French big top I see before me on the Lhasa-Golmud highway?



No, just another petrol station roof designed by an excitable architect.

Day 239 - Blogging in Golmud

0 km etc.

Sat in the wangba all day, typing stuff for your entertainment. Go make a donation to FORCE or Sustrans or something, huh?

If you want wordy stuff, here it is. Otherwise, scroll down or click on the previous few days' posts for the pretty picture version.

Thanks chaps.

All Greek to me

Now, it's true that I read yesterday a poster claiming Golmud is a "perfect summer resort". But it is also true that Golmud, may god bless it in a very great many ways, is really not by any stretch a perfect summer resort.

What has this to do with Greeks?

Not much. But I really, really, really, really doubt that this shop-sign was put up to please the town's Greek community. If I had a million yuan for every Greek in Golmud, I'm pretty confident I'd have 0 yuan, 0 jiao and 0 fen* to my name.

But what the hell. There it is, clear as an Athens sunrise before they invented the internal combustion engine.

Distant memories of "schoolboy Greek" tell me that the sign reads "Thiaphiesenizi", and if that means anything in Greek, or English, or Chinese, or any language at all, then you can call me Zorba.

--
*Anyone remember the good old days when Honest Zhou at the Bank of China used to give you those little monopoly-style fen notes when you changed money - even when the fen (1/100th of a yuan) had ceased to have any value? Sadly they don't seem to bother these days. Sic transit gloria money?

Rollin'

Coming off the Plateau: the desert highway down to Golmud.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Petrol station, Qing-Zang Gonglu (Qinghai-Tibet highway, south of Golmud).

My Two Wheels

I'm proud of my l'il bike-icle. It's had a hard 10 days. The old girl's done good.

(Thanks to Cyril and Michael at Decathlon Shanghai for fixing it for me to ride one of their machines.)

Sorry Asmund

I ate the last dace. Sorry fella.

Nacho Man
Golmud

Another Asmund Adventure

The high-altitude desert and the marmots on the ride across the Tibetan Plateau, and of course the empty tin of fried dace at the end of it, got me thinking about - Asmund, of course - who else?

And, in particular, about an adventure Asmund had when he was riding across the Gobi desert a couple of years ago.

Being a hygiene-conscious, Norwegian sort of whale-killer, he wandered a hundred yards or metres or whatever it is they have up there away from his tent one night to answer a call of nature.

Tinkling over, he wandered a hundred yards or metres back to where he thought his tent was, only it wasn't. Tent, bike, stuff, all spirited away in the middle of a dark Gobi night. Had the Mongolian Horseman struck again?

No, Asmund had lost his sense of direction, mid-piddle. And spent the rest of the night curled up in the sand, marmots nibbling at his earlobes, knock knock knocking on a very cold Gobiesque death's door.

Next morning, the sun came up, and there was his tent, bike, and stuff, just over there - the other way.

To avoid a similar fate (likely to prove fatal in a Tibetan Plateau context), I have installed a sophisticated system of plastic tubing.

Day 238 - Cycling Nachitai to Golmud

Start: Nachitai, Qinghai, China
End: Golmud (Germu, Kermu, Ge'ermu), Qinghai, China
Distance: 91km
Time: 4'03"
Avg: 22.5 k/h
Max: 52 k/h
Total: 10,998 km
Total riding days: 131
Riding hours: 0900 - 1350

Downhill, tailwind, all day. I felt I deserved it. The only explanation for the tailwind is that there is another cyclist riding the Qinghai-Tibet highway in the other direction, and the wind can't make up its mind which of us to torment. I got lucky.



Arriving in Golmud was a strange experience. But my typing fingers are getting tired. It'll be in the book.