14
Dec
10

Minarets, Mosques and Mountains

By keenaskiwis 4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

We’re not the best at sitting down and writing for the old blog, the longer we leave it the bigger the job and then the longer we leave it, grrrr, it really is long overdue so here goes, though we are a bit short on time so it might be a bit rough and ready!!

Last time we updated was way back in Bukhara, where we only had a day of riding to the Turkmen border and the dash to Iran. Not such an enjoyable day as it turns out, with the heat, the flies, the wind and then camping in the sand but that’s how it goes some days.

Turkmenistan was pretty cool, we had some great Kebabs, met some great locals and Mike even got to have a sit in a Kamaz!!! The ride was only 480 km, not the 550 km we were thinking so it turned out to be pretty easy, no wind either which was awesome!! The roads were a little random though, there seemed to be a lot of corners for a flat desert with no obstacles to avoid, our first day after 100 km of riding we were only 65 km from where we started, too much Vodie while building the roads??? It’s a pity we were on limited time as it would have been cool to get to Ashgabat for a look-see but it wasn’t to be with the 5 day visa.

So after the wee dash across Turkmenistan it was on to Iran. We spent an hour or so at the Iranian border post while they sorted out where New Zealand was, we weren’t sure what to make of the question “what is New Zealand’s second name?” though they seemed happy when we told them it was Aotearoa.

Once in Iran the first thing to do was to change some money, no one looked like a money changer at the border so we headed into town, a couple of km away. Turned out we couldn’t find a money changer there either and were told to try back at the border. Back we went to the border and just as we arrived a guy on a motorbike rode by and waved us over to a shop. He knew just what we wanted and after working out a rate Mike pulled out a US$100 note to show the guy how much we wanted to change. The guy duly took it, put it in is his pocket, kick started his bike and took off, leaving the two of us standing there looking at one another wondering how we just let that happen!! Anyway to cut a long story short he eventually came back with all our money, wow!!! probably wouldn’t happen at home, hahah!!

From the border it was a couple of hundred km to Mashhad, Iran’s holiest and second largest city. We had a few laughs along the way, we wrote in the last blog update that we were off the the flatness of Iran, turns out Iran is definitely not flat!!! The ride was pretty good, we met a couple of young guys that were riding their bikes to Mashhad for a game of football and an awesome group of guys headed the other way with a great team uniform.

The ride into Mashhad was pretty hectic with the maddest traffic we have encountered yet, lucky for us though we got guided in from about 10 km out by some super guys in a taxi, ahh the kindness of the Iranians!! We thought Mashhad was pretty busy when we were heading toward the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza to find a feed and only found out later that we’d turned up in the Holiest city on its holiest day(Imam Reza’s Birthday), big mistake!!!

Not too much to say about Mashhad, we stayed at a pretty cool home stay, had a good rest and tried many of Iran’s culinary delights, hard to pick a favourite but Abgusht and Maajun have got to be near the top, mmmmmmm!!

Leaving Mashhad we headed for Yazd, we weren’t expecting much apart from about 1000 km of pretty desert-ish riding, turns out we were wrong again. Within the first few days we’d met another load of awesome people, had lunch cooked for us by a couple of truckers and were given about 20 pomegranates in just 2 days.

We had a wee encounter with the police too which was kind of fun. We were apparently headed for a town they didn’t want us to see so they escorted us for the last 50 km of our day. We eventually decided we’d had enough riding for the day and retired to some bushes on the side of the road to camp. The police weren’t happy with this and after arguing with them until after dark we finally gave in and went to a town about 5 km back so they could keep an eye on us for the night. After taking us to the third house it was pretty apparent they were having trouble finding us a bed for the night so we took the opportunity to do a quick sprint to the highway, switch off our lights and disappear into the night, running from the police is kind of fun you know!! hahaha.

We thought after that little incident the police might be a bit of a problem the next day, as it turned out we were back to the old smile, wave and ride by which suited us down to the ground. We even managed to score lunch with some really cool EMS guys who invited us in to share their lunch and a few laughs of course.

Our next stop was in Boshrooyeh, it wasn’t planned and we’d only done about 20 km of riding that morning but what an awesome time. We rolled in to town about 9 am and only really stopped to get some fresh fruit and vege, but it turned out to be one of the greatest stops we had in Iran. We met the coach of the towns cycling team, Mr Abbas, and spent the morning having our own guided tour of the city sights before heading back to Mr Abbas’ house for lunch. Abbas and his brother “Uncle Reza” took us on another bit of a tour, first to Abbas’ workshop (which Mike was pretty jealous of), to the pistachio orchards, then the family gardens before heading home for dinner, but only after Abbas took Mike down to his Mosque for evening prayers, a very special experience for Mike! So after a wonderful dinner we took off down to Bastani(Not to be confused with ice-cream which shares the same name), this Bastani is a combo of a series of different exercises, for men only, though Jo was an honorary bloke as she often is so was allowed in.

It was a truly great experience, albeit pretty whirlwind and we loved the time we spent with Abbas and Uncle Reza learning some Persian and generally just having a laugh. If the friendliness of the town wasn’t enough the next morning upon leaving we were loaded up with all sorts of goodies for the next part of our journey. We have to say a big thanks to everyone in Boshrooyeh for making our stay so great!!!

From Boshrooyeh we took a couple of days to pedal on to Yazd where we spent a few days relaxing, drinking date milkshakes (we smashed about fifteen in four days) and meeting some other tourists. Yazd was pretty cool with its mud brick buildings and narrow alley ways but for us it was totally over shadowed by our wee stop in Boshrooyeh!!!

Esfahan is only about 300 km from Yazd and we’d been told that it was pretty flat, though we should have learnt by that stage that flat and Iran don’t really go together! We pretty much followed a main highway the whole way, climbed 1000 m on the second day and then cruised into the sprawling, busy city of Esfahan.

It was great to meet other tourists, including some more cycle tourists in Esfahan and a great Aussie bloke named Doug who gave us an impromptu tour of the mosques and Imam square which Esfahan is famous for. We only had a couple of days here before heading out of town towards Kurdistan and yet more mountains.

However we followed what seemed to be an increasing trend and only made it 30 km out of Esfahan before we found ourselves in another Iranian family home! It had been a slow exit from Esfahan as we collected bits and visited workshops to fix Jo’s rearview mirror (a small meeting with the road a few hundred kms back and it had come off second best). Anyway we had a great afternoon with the young, recently married couple, Amir and Azadeh. We met their friends, went to Grandmas for dinner and spent several hours learning about each others cultures. Mike also spent a significant amount of time bonding with the lads over motorcycles. The tricky moment came the next morning when we were trying to leave and Amir’s mum promised to make Abgusht (Mikes favourite Iranian food) if we stayed another night, unfortunatly though we really had to keep pedalling.

After Jo managed to drag Mike away we carried on towards Kermanshah, our next planned stop. Along the way we stopped for photos with a great bloke, Mr Mohammed and his wife who were on a motorcycle. They invited us to dinner in the next town but we were still a few to many kms away but we did manage to stop in for lunch (only) with his family the next day before carrying on toward Kermanshah.

Kermanshah was a great city, lots of friendly people, cool shops and markets and great food. We were quite excited after a long day’s ride into the city to find great falafel wraps for only fifty cents each. The shop keeper was pretty amused when we ordered two more! Then to top it of there was hot rice pudding for sale everywhere, awesome!!!

Next we were off into Kurdistan and towards the Iraqi border. It’s hard to believe that it’s possible but the Kurdish were even more friendly than the Persians. One day, just outside Paveh while fixing another flat tyre for Mike and having lunch, a very enthusiastic chap who wouldn’t take no for an answer took us back to his house “just for chai”. Once again before we knew it, we’d had a second lunch, showers, were learning Kurdish and Jo was even kitted out in full Kurdish dress! Pretty warm though as all Iranian homes seem to have the heating on full bore 24/7. Ahmad and Shootah were great hosts and not long after dinner the house was full with their family and friends, Shootah’s father even gave us a great demo of some traditional Kurdish music which was really awesome!!

The plan was to head to some remote mountain villages in Kurdistan, this meant that we were back on gravel roads with a few mean climbs so there were a couple of 30-40 km days. As we hoped this part of Iran was really beautiful and we loved every minute of it. Late one arvo after a 1000 m or so of climbing we came to a pass where we met a guy out on the road wanting to borrow a lighter, turns out that he and his family were having a bit of a BBQ and their matches weren’t working in the wind. We lent them ours and in return they fed us some of the greatest kebabs we’ve had, though it was perhaps the most rapid BBQ we have ever seen!!!

Back on the seal again we rolled along fast to Saqqez which was a really cool wee city, we stayed the night and have to say buying custard on the street for dessert was definitely one of the highlights. Anyway after that stop it was only a couple of days before we were in Orumiyeh.

Orumiyeh was one of those cities that we didn’t love, nothing major just not the great feel of many of the other places we’ve stayed, lots of staring too, ok we get it we’re different!!! hahaha. We did however meet a great couple of chaps when we arrived and got talking with them only to find out that they are in the same line of work as Mike. Anyway, we needed dinner so invited them out with us, they came along and after Mike lost the battle for paying when we ordered it only got worse when our food arrived and it turned out that these guys weren’t even going to have dinner, no matter how hard we tried they wouldn’t let us pay, super kind chaps they were.

With only 60 km to the Turkish border from Orumiyeh we were thinking we’d be there by lunch. Although Jo’s three flat tyres slowed us down a bit we were still there by about two in the arvo. The border was one of the most random we’ve been to with not a lot of order or signage, though we found our way through and soon had our stamp and free 90 days in Turkey, our first Visa free country, woohooo.

After our super easy entry into Turkey we were pretty surprised when we got to the first of many military check points and they wanted to look in our panniers. It only took one look in the pannier with loo paper, toiletries and other assorted junk for them to figure we weren’t running drugs and to send us on our way. The second check point we came to we had to fill out a form like we’d expected to fill out at the border but didn’t have to, which did leave us wondering about what they might expect at the third check point.

It seems Turkey is another country of chai drinkers and cups of chai and warm shops have already become pretty important to our mornings, it’s been quite chilly!! The other night saw us camping at about 2000 m, well wrapped in our sleeping bags and greeted in the morning by frozen drink bottles. It was only about 20 mins down the road from camp that we came across a military check point where we could catch our first cup of chai for the day, love the chai!!

Our first hotel stop was in Tatvan, a cool wee town on the south western shore of Lake Van. We had a day off riding and went for a trip up Nemrut Dagi, an inactive volcanic crater with beautiful lakes and a ski field on the outer rim. We were pretty lucky to head up to this beautiful spot as eastern Turkey has had a very dry November and would normally be covered in snow! Maybe the only time EVER that we’ll be happy about going to a ski field with no snow.

Unfortunately the dry weather finished on our way from Tatvan to Diyarbakir, the first rain we’ve seen in 2 ½ months, yay!! It looks like the next two to three months might be a bit on the cool side, watching the news tonight was a little worrying with all the snow in Turkey only a hundred km or so from here, fingers cross we can stay warm!!

The plan is to ride west from here through Turkey to the Aegean Coast and depending on the weather we’ll either follow Plan A and head through Eastern Europe or take Plan B and go via Greece and Italy, hopefully we don’t need a Plan C!!

11
Oct
10

Overdue Update, Part 3

By keenaskiwis 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

The scenery and landscape leaving Khorog was amazing, big rocky faces with green tree filled villages popping up wherever there were streams. The road however was much the same as the other side with broken down seal, gravel and the occasional bit of sand. This along with the ever present headwind meant progress was still slow. On the upside we were at times really close to Afghanistan, close enough for a wave even. We’d heard a rumour that our friends Cat and Adam were on the road ahead and headed our way. We were pretty stoked to see them at about 9:30 am the day after we left Khorog and it seemed like a good time to stop for a roadside cuppa chai and have a catch up, turns out we camped only about 20 km apart the night before, classic. So much to say and so little time, before we knew it we were setting up camp and having a fantastic team effort dinner, 3 courses including custard and stewed apples for dessert, yum!!

We parted ways in the morning, Cat and Adam off to Khorog while we headed towards Kailikhum where again we had the choice of two routes on our way to Dushanbe. Option A was to follow the longer flatter and reportedly better road that follows the Afghan border, Option B was a bit shorter, a bit steeper and a bit rougher, being a bit lazy the shorter Option B it was. We camped not far out of Kailikhum and were straight into the 1800 m climb to Sagirdast Pass the next morning. The climb wasn’t too bad and after a mere five hours and nearly 30 km we were on the pass being greeted by some very friendly check point officials who were much more interested in having their photos taken than looking at our passports.

After the pass the road wound its way down toward Tavildara where we stopped to grab some lunch and by the time we’d finished it was persisting down, which combined with the rough gravel road made for some good mud!! The one bit of asphalt we did get proved a bit tough for Mike,as out of the blue his bike was sliding down the road with him running out in front desperately trying not to face plant! No trouble with all the rough roads but give him flat and smooth and its carnage, luckily enough though the only damage was to a can of tomatoes and Mike’s pride. Not to be out done, about five minutes before camp that same day, Jo decided to ride through a rocky wee ford rather than walking and get wet feet. Turns out it is was a bit of a mistake as next thing she knew she was sitting in the creek, with a lot more than just wet feet!!

Down the road we struck a load of shepherds herding their mobs of sheep down from their summer pastures. These are no ordinary sheep either, it probably takes a Kiwi to recognise this, but they had the biggest arses you’ve ever seen on a sheep, it was pretty hard not to have a bit of a chuckle to ourselves as we were riding down the road behind those big wobbly arses that’s for sure!! We figure they’re bred like this as animal fat is pretty valuable in this part of the world, you apparently pay more for a fatty cut of meat than you do for a lean cut, next time we’re in a Bazaar we should find out if that’s true.

We had a few “Ohhh China” moments over the couple of days leading into Dushanbe. It all started with a beautiful 8 km stretch of asphalt, it was just so good we swore it couldn’t have been built by anyone but the Chinese. It turns out it was Chinese and there was a load more of it, in varying stages of completion, over the next 150 km,we even got the chance to throw out an occasional “Nihao” to the Chinese road crews. Along with the roadworks came the Chinese truck drivers who were as friendly in Tajikistan as they were in China, waves and smiles all around, those were the days!! The only real upset to all this was when we were coming down a bit of a hill before the climb to Obigarm and all of a sudden one of Mikes rear panniers was in his back wheel, not so fun at 40 km/hr. Luckily no damage was done and it was just a small but important bolt that had fallen out of the pannier, even luckier we were able to find all the little bits on the road, slap it all back together and carry on, after checking all the others too!!

With pretty much bang on 100 km of pristine Chinese highway, a gradual downhill and a tailwind we had a mint ride into Dushanbe, 90 km before 2 pm was something we hadn’t done in a while, come to think of it 90 km in a day was pretty uncommon over the last month or so . It was pretty exciting to be cruising along at 30 km/hr that’s for sure!! Not far before Dushanbe we followed our noses to find a bit of a feed and came across some great looking beef and tomato shaslyk (kebabs). To the amusement of the waitress we sat outside with our bikes and demolished 4 massive kebabs, a couple of breads and then ordered more. So good to finally have some big juicy chunks of meat!!

Cat and Adam had given us a contact for an apartment in Dushanbe as accommodation is notoriously expensive or terrible. Unfortunately it was already taken for the night and as we were really hanging out for a good shower we thought we’d check out the expensive option. After a bit of a chat with the boss we settled on US$80 for the night, probably the most we’ve ever spent on a nights accommodation in our lives, though the suite was probably bigger than our house back home!! Anyway’ it was money well spent, we checked in at three in the arvo, they took our bikes in no questions asked, we had a mint shower, got our washing and shopping done, grabbed some dinner and even managed to catch a bit of a Central Asian pop concert before calling it a day.

We thought Dushanbe was a cool city but sadly had to leave after less than 24 hours as we had to keep pedalling to keep ahead of the visa game. We stopped on the way out of town to grab some fuel for the stove and just had to take a photo. Not unusual for Tajikistan this chap was selling fuel from his mobile tanker, though not quite as you might imagine. First of all the fuel was pumped into a big plastic drum resembling a large rubbish bin, then the chap selling the fuel would scoop it up bucket by bucket and pour it into your vehicles tank. He was literally up to his elbows in fuel, OSH would’ve have a field day!!

As always we had a couple of options for getting to the other side of Anzob pass on our way to the Uzbek border, either head through the tunnel or climb over the pass. Easy decision you might think, why climb? The trouble is that the tunnel is a thing of legends, 5 km long, no lights, massive potholes, rivers of water and no ventilation, not too flash on a bike. All the cyclists we’d met hitched rides on trucks through the tunnel (there was a rumour of one cyclist riding through which apparently it took forty quite scary minutes). The other option was to climb up and over the pass on the now little used road. Again rumours were flying about the state of the road, how long it would take and even the amount of snow at the top. As you can probably guess we opted for one last pass before before hitting the flatness that is Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran.

After the late start in Dushanbe we still managed 70 km for the day which got us up to about 2000 m which meant we only had another 1300 m to climb to get to Anzob Pass the next day. The climb was mint, as the road, although not like our beloved Chinese asphalt was in surprisingly good nic. After about three hours we were on the pass surrounded by snow, though the road on the climb was completely clear which was awesome. Up top there were a couple of local kids with their dog, now dogs and cyclists aren’t always best of mates and this particular dog was definitely not. Most dogs just chase us, barking and that’s about that, though you never know so you always have to be a bit careful. Anyway, this dog really over stepped the mark and had a bit of a chew on one of Mikes panniers, ever the animal lover Mike promptly dumped his bike and threw a couple of decent rocks at the retreating dog. happy with his effort Mike got back on his bike so we could carry on, when wouldn’t you know it, but the young lad obviously took exception to the whole incident and threw a couple of rocks back at Mike, fair enough I guess, if someone threw a rock at my dog I’d probably do the same. Once we got past the lads with their dog on the pass and had a bit of a play in the snow we set off down the now rather rough gravel road toward the town of Ayni. As it turned out riding over the pass probably only added three hours to the trip and was definitely worth the effort.

After a brief stint on that wonderful Chinese asphalt that we love sooo much we were soon on to a rather rough, undulating and frustrating road that would take us the final 100 km or so to the Uzbek border and once again our friend Mr Headwind paid us a visit, grrr!! The ride probably would have been OK except for the fact that we’d set ourselves the goal of 100 km a day so that we could get to Tashkent and get the Turkmen Visa applications in on Friday rather than having to wait another couple of days and do it Monday. The plan was to cross the border at Penjikent, ride through to Samarkand, where we’d leave the bikes and catch a train about 300 km north to Tashkent and sort out the visas. It turned out to be a bit of a mission but we made it to Tashkent on Thursday, then got up early on Friday morning and set off to the Turkmen Embassy. Unfortunately we were just following the directions from our guidebook, which is apparently a spot out of date, so we ended up in the wrong place. Luckily for us the bloke that rents the old Turkmen Embassy building is an absolute legend, after giving us directions (that we couldn’t understand) we bumped into him again as he was about to take his son to school, seeing that we were still lost he gave us a lift to the new embassy on the way to school, sweet!! We’d managed to find the embassy, we were there early to get in the queue but still our plan was foiled!! The Turkmen Embassy no longer opens on Fridays, all that hard grind for nothing, bugger!!! At least we knew where the embassy was for attempt two!!

The visa fun and games weren’t over yet. On Monday morning we figured we’d be at the embassy a couple of hours early to get in the queue or on the list. We got there about 9 am only to find that we were twenty fourth on the list and at 1 pm(Yup that’s right, they are open for visas 11 am – 1 pm four days a week!!) when the embassy closed we were next in the queue to go in, so close but so far!! Never-mind, another lesson learnt, we just needed to get on the list earlier. On Tuesday morning Mike was at the embassy at 7 am, still only twelfth on the list but this time it was enough for us to get in the door and get the application in, and so started the ten day wait for our five day visa!!

The Iranian visa was pretty straight forward by comparison and we were stoked to find a couple of couches and world news(with english subtitles) on a huge TV in the consulate. Unlike the Turkmen embassy the Iranian embassy kept our passports while they were issuing the visas so we were pretty much stuck in Tashkent until we got them back (Tourists have to register each night and you need your passport to show your hotel). The Iranian Embassy had a bit of computer trouble so it took eight days not five to get our passports back, by day seven we were starting to think maybe we needed a plan B as time was running out and we still had the 400 km to the Turkmen border to cover.

In the end it all turned out sweet, we got our Iranian visas, picked our Turkmen Visas up the next day and then hopped a train back to Samarkand that night. We got into Samarkand pretty late which made Friday morning a bit of a mad dash getting ready to hit the road, as it was we didn’t get out of town until about 11 am. Friday was also Jo’s Birthday but apparently no one told the tyre gods, Jo’s dream run had to stop at some point and today was the day, three punctures in less than an hour, Happy Birthday!! Mike had one in the same period and woke the next morning to another so we spent a while that next morning patching up our tubes, all five of them!!! Anyway apart from that and the sore bums, two weeks off the saddles wasn’t kind to us, the 280 km through to Bukhara was pretty good, we met a few more neat people along the way as well as having some of the best apples we’ve had in ages!!

We’ll have a day off here in Bukhara to do the tourist thing then hit the road again, our five days of Turkmen glory start on the thirteenth so we’ll have about 650 km to cover in six days, we’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve done it but it’ll still be a challenge, fingers crossed for a trouble free ride!! After Turkmenistan we’ll be into Iran which we’re super excited about as we’ve heard nothing but good stories from fellow travellers.

11
Oct
10

Overdue Update, Part 2

By keenaskiwis Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Despite a beautiful clear morning and views of the freshly snow covered tops the weather again turned cold and we pulled into the Kyrgyz border amidst a small flurry of snow. The first customs chap was quite happy just to chat and let us warm up by his heater which was pretty cool. However it was another 20 km and a 1000 m climb to the Tajik border so we had to truck on. The road up was a bit rough in places, the huge amount of snow melt in spring making road and bridge maintenance in no-man’s land a bit difficult. It was pretty cold waiting as we went through the motions at the Tajik side but it was all pretty straight forward and before we knew it we were in Tajikistan.

After another chilly night and we woke to more fresh snow on the mountains around us, it was pretty magical. The road was amazing too, the deepest and most symmetrical corrugations we’d ridden, just beautiful, NOT!!! Thankfully they gave way to seal pretty quickly and we followed the road and the Chinese border fence (in true Chinese style even though the border is miles away the fence was only about 10 m from the road!) to Kara Kul.

We camped by Kara Kul and the next morning were rewarded with stunningly clear skies and great views of the lake and surrounding mountains. Between Kara Kul and Ak Baital, the highest pass of our trip at 4600 m, we met a hard-case German chap coming the other way, turns out he was sixty four and had cycled all the way from Istanbul, what a legend!! There was definitely no complaining from us going over the pass after meeting him that is for sure!!! hahaha

We rolled into Murgab the next day ready for a hot lunch, a call home and a replenishing of supplies. Despite the information centre/ internet café being closed, the servo having no gas and a ‘friendly” young chap who would only help us if we went to his guest house, we found our way to the bazaar and an extremely helpful young girl who made up for the earlier problems. She deciphered what we wanted for lunch, spent 10 minutes helping Jo find benzen (petrol), sold us veggies and sent her older sister running home to bring us fresh bread straight out of the oven. All this and she was only twelve!!

Murgab wasn’t finished with us yet. As we left town we came across our first check point, we’d heard all sorts of stories about corrupt officials It turned out that we would have more trouble with the mozzies over the next 10 km or so than with the officials. A quick stop to fill the water bag began perhaps the most uncomfortable 30 minutes of the trip as the mozzies attacked on a fairly steep climb, unfortunately you can’t outrun them at only 6 km/hr, Jo braved a quick stop for some repellent, however Mike persevered and spent several days very itchy, mistake!!

Meeting other cyclists as always is a bit of a highlight, a chance to exchange stories and advice(and have a short rest). Its amazing how much it can influence your decisions and trip. We met two couples on our way to Alichur, who helped shape our next few days. A Swiss couple made Mike’s day when they told us they’d had pancakes in Alichur that morning, it rapidly became our goal to get there for tomorrows breakfast. We then sat and chatted to a Polish couple who told us about a great homestay near Yashil Kul, where we were heading. Sometimes it can be a bit tough to fit in enough cycling between stops to chat so we didn’t make it Alichur until mid morning, just in time for second breakfast though!! The woman that served us seemed a little confused when we were trying to order another serving of everything, but we got in there in the end and we each smashed two servings of pancakes, fried eggs, bread, homemade apricot jam, and chai, SOOO good. To top it all off some friendly chaps in the café gave us a whole pile of fresh apricots, we still must have looked hungry!

From Alichur we headed to Yashil Kul, a lake off the main highway. As we followed the undulating dirt track a motorcycle with a sidecar pulled up behind us, turns out the guy driving was dropping his Mum home. They lived in the next village, Ak Jar and were pretty insistent that we stopped in for chai when we got there. We weren’t quite sure how we’d find them when we got there but this soon became obvious as we came upon their town, there was only them and possibly two other families!

After the stop for chai we carried on to Yashil Kul to camp for the night. The next morning was a bit of a late start for us as we’d decided to have a lazy day and only cycle the 15 km to nearby Bulun Kul for lunch and hopefully the night. While relaxing in the tent a tiny van pulled up and out popped several large men and an even an inflatable boat. They were heading down to the lake for a mornings fishing, Mike figured it seemed like fun and ended up going out in the dingy for a spot of fishing too, we even scored a dozen fish for lunch!! To be honest we were initially a little disappointed by the lake as we’d heard so much about it’s awesome colours but as the sun got higher during the day we finally saw what everyone had been talking about, and it really was beautiful.

We’d decided to try out our first homestay at nearby Bulun Kul which turned out to be a great success. The homestay was with the local teacher and his family who were all pretty hardcase. We got chai, bread, biscuits and lollies on arrival and discovered kefir which is a natural yoghurt drink that is super tasty (we do occasionally do more than just eat by the way!). After a great dinner, a whole pile of blankets and sleeping mats were pulled out and we slept the night away. Given how great it was we were pretty tempted to stay another day but the road was calling and we dragged ourselves away, on towards Mat’s Pass and a bit of an adventure.

There are two main cycling routes from the Eastern Pamirs to Khorog, one follows the Wakhan Valley and the Afghan Border while the other sticks with the Pamir Highway in the Gunt Valley. The Wakhan valley was a must for us but we thought we’d try a slight variation, our map showed an alternative to the main route over Khargush Pass via a couple of 4×4 tracks. This way added some more climbing and another day of cycling but seemed a good opportunity to get further off the beaten track.

To start with it was all pretty smooth going, though the road up to Turumtai Kul was a bit more of a track than a road which did have us wondering about the state of the old 4×4 track over Mat’s Pass. As it turned out the climb to Mat’s Pass was a bit of a challenge with a few quite steep rocky sections, some requiring a push rather than a pedal. As we came to the top we met a local shepard, we didn’t understand much of what he said but we did get “Nyet daroogi”, which is Russian for “no road”, we had a bit of a laugh and figured that he was talking about the section we’d just ridden. The south side of the pass was really beautiful and about halfway down we decided to camp for the night, we figured we could ride the remaining 12 km the next morning and be in “Langar for lunch” the next day. As it turns out we couldn’t have been more wrong! The next day after 8 hours and 12 km we got to the highway with still another 30+ km to get to Langar, a bit late for lunch!! The day had started out well but it wasn’t long before we had the panniers off and were ferrying our gear across the river and around the slips. The further we went the worse it got but luckily enough the last 500 m, where the river disappeared through a narrow gorge, there were still the skinny remains of the old track. We edged carefully up and around the track, including the abandoned bulldozer in the middle, we’re not sure if it was the driver or the dozer that gave up first, and were stoked to finally drop down onto the main road at 5 pm, you might say it was a little more of an adventure than we’d planned.

We eventually made it to “Langar for lunch”, all be it the next day. Initially we were having trouble spotting a café so stopped to ask at a local shop for directions. It turned out there we’re any cafés but the lady in the shop ran a homestay and was happy to whip us up some lunch. Her and her husband were so friendly, the food so good and the house(that Duldor built) so cool that even though we’d only done 25 km for the day it wasn’t a hard decision to stay another night.

After a night of great hospitality in Langar we hit the road heading for Ishkashim and Khorog. The road wasn’t too flash but the people and scenery more than made up for it. There we were on the border with Afghanistan and able to look to the Hindu Kush Range and its 6000 m peaks that run down the Afghan – Pakistan border. There were also fields of wheat everywhere and seemingly no end of people out harvesting it, all willing to chuck out a Hello and we had more offers of chai, bread and apples, than even we could handle!! It was truly a special experience. Unfortunately the weather packed a bit of a sad on us and we lost our view of the Hindu Kush as it clagged in, we also spent a fair bit of time pushing into a strong headwind which combined with a few sections of sand made the riding a little less enjoyable.

The road and weather came right after a day or so, though the headwind continued, pretty much with out fail starting about 2 pm making the afternoons drag a little!! One day just as we were on the look out for lunch we came round a corner to see large pile of wheat in the middle of the road. We soon figured that it was all set up so that passing vehicles had to drive over the pile and break up the Husks, clever!! As you do we stopped to take a photo when they invited us over for chai and obet(lunch), a fantastic potato stew which we couldn’t pass up. We always feel a bit indebted eating someone else’s lunch and never really having anything to offer in return. This time was a little different though, as a passing vehicle had got a load of wheat caught up under it and dragged it a 100 m or so down the road. We had our chance to pay back a little of their kindness and collected the wheat for them, we’re still not sure who was more amazed by the whole affair.

In Khorog we once again met our old mate Thibault along with a few other cyclists and a bunch of other tourists. Khorog was a bit of a maintenance and supply stop for us and the day went quickly with washing, shopping, some phone calls, internet and whoops did we forget to mention the best part of all, clean hair for the first time in a long while!! In the end though Jo was a bit crook again and we stayed another day, always a tough decision as time was getting tight on our Tajik visa.

11
Oct
10

Overdue Update, Part 1

By keenaskiwis Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

It’s been a couple of months since our last update so we thought it was about time we let you know we’re still pedalling along. Last time we updated we’d just arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Right now, we’re in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, we only have a day here to see the sights, we’re a bit tight on visa time again, but hopefully it is enough to see the sights!! Then it’s off toward Turkmenistan to do the six day dash from here to Iran which all going well should be doable.

Right, back to Almaty.

The aim of the game for us in Almaty was to get our Kyrgyz and Uzbek Visas, this, it turned out, was really hassle-free, we were even able to get “same day service” on both which was awesome. We’d heard a few stories about trouble with border officials and registration of passports so we figured we’d stay an extra day and register with the Migration Police as well. Even though you’re not required to register we thought it might make for a smoother exit from Kazakhstan. We enjoyed Almaty, it was a great place to spend a few days getting our visas, wandering the tree lined streets and enjoying a place that was just a little more like home.

So with our visas in hand we were ready to leave town, with the obligatory stop to check out some brand new UAZ 4×4 vans we were on our way and heading for Bishkek. The road was smooth and flat and after the days on the Assy plateau it was nice to be covering some kms again. The only hold up was flat tyre for Mike, though it wasn’t all bad as we met a hard case Canadian chap riding his “BMW” from Moscow to Almaty.

Halfway up the only climb between Almaty and Bishkek we figured we’d take a mid arvo rest and hang out under a tree, read a book and let the heat of the day pass. The only problem was that after about an hour or so a Kazakh Police car came screaming in to where we were parked up. After all the stories we’d heard about troublesome and corrupt officials in Kazakhstan we weren’t too impressed to see them. As it turned out these chaps were super friendly and had only stopped in as it was obviously a good spot to Radar the passing cars.

Being about 230 km from Almaty to the Border and 20 km on to Bishkek we figured we would give it two and a half days. This meant we were able to be at the border early in the morning, given what we’d heard we figured some time up our sleeve wasn’t a bad thing. We turned up at the border and before we knew it we were in Kyrgyzstan, must have got the officials on a good day!!

We were so stoked with the half hour crossing that we decided a mid morning Ice-cream was in order. Luckily for us just past the border there were loads of road side stalls where we got an icecream and then in a show of true Kyrgyz hospitality we were fed up on grapes and tomatoes out of the owners garden, mint!!

In Bishkek we came across the recently done up Sakura Guest-house, with it’s great showers and comfy beds it was total Luxury!! It’d been a while since we’d had a comfy bed and a good shower so we couldn’t have asked for more. Even the Tajik visa was a piece of cake so we were only stopped for a couple of nights. This gave us just enough time to have a quick look around the city and ask a few questions about the situation in Osh, we were stoked to hear good news.

The ride on out to Issyk Kul was a bit average, lots of fast traffic on a somewhat poor road but we picked up a kilo of honey and got given a load of apricots along the way so it wasn’t all bad. Cool though it would’ve been to ride around Issyk Kul we really didn’t have time so we dropped by the lake for a quick swim before heading on out of town toward Kochkor.

On the way into Kochkor we met a couple of Swiss Cyclists who’d come from the Pamirs in Tajikistan. They very kindly gave us their map and shared a load of info about the road ahead which was great. We meet so many other people that are doing pretty much what we are and it’s always great to stop on the side of the road for a good old chin wag, though some days it’s difficult to fit in enough cycling between chatting with locals and other tourists!!

The mostly gradual climb from Bishkek up to Song Kul culminates in a short steep 500 m climb to Kalmak Ashuu Pass. Just before this wee climb we had one of those not so nice encounters with a bunch of kids. The wee fellas linked arms across the road to stop us riding past and were demanding money etc. It’s really unfortunate that they end up having the expectation that tourists are going to give them money, you have to take the good with the bad though I guess.

It was early afternoon by the time we got to Kalmak Ashuu Pass and not far past we were invited into a Kyrgyz Family’s Yurt for chai (Tea). After the kids down the road we weren’t too keen but decided we should go and say hi and it turned out they were a neat family. Not far before the pass we’d met Nathan, another cyclist, he soon turned up and popped in for chai too. We didn’t really have anything with us that we could share apart from a 2 bottle of Fanta we’d picked up a day or so earlier, thinking that the kids might like some we gave the bottle to the parents who ended up letting the three year old look after it. To the little guy’s credit he did share it but even with just a litre of the stuff he was as high as a kite, you could almost hear the wee guy buzzing, classic!!

An hour or so later Thibault, a French cyclist we’d met a few times between Bishkek and Song Kul, and a couple of Russian cyclists came down the road and stopped in too. In the end this Kyrgyz family made dinner and put us all up for the night which was absolutely fantastic. Mike even got to go for a wee ride on a horse, not that the horse was too keen on doing what Mike wanted!! So after a warm dry night inside the Yurt the six of us said our goodbyes to the family and headed off around the lake. We were planning on having a day off beside the lake but as sometimes happens that part of the world was way bigger than it looked on the map so we rode with the gang for about 50 km before finding a secluded camp spot for the night.

There was a wee climb out of Song Kul before the descent to the Naryn river, on the first of many switchbacks Mike had some more tyre issues. While Mike was playing tyre surgeon and Jo dodging bugs, Thibault caught up and ended up being stuck with us for the next week or so. With the tyre stitched up we descended quite quickly through a beautiful tree filled gorge out to the Naryn River and the beginning of some pretty mean corrugated gravel roads.

On a supply stop the next day the kindness of locals again came to the fore, we could really only get bikkies from the local magazin (shop) but ended up leaving town with bread, apples and Thibault even hit the jackpot with homemade apricot jam!!! These went down very well halfway up the next climb with what seemed like hundreds of switchbacks.

Collecting water has been relatively easy in Central Asia as all the towns have communal wells with safe drinking water (none of the houses have running water). We just follow the locals with their buckets to the nearest pump or pipe and fill our bottles up. Half way to Jalalabad we passed through Kazarman and finding a well that worked was proving a bit of a challenge. The locals pointed to the only well that sort of worked and after a bunch of messing around we were eventually off, only to find another 500 m down the road a whole series of working wells. Seems maybe some of the locals don’t venture far from home!!

A few days later, late in the arvo, with another 1000 m or so to climb before reaching the last pass before Jalalabad we stopped at a wee creek to have a bit of a clean up when a lovely Kyrgyz man invited us in for chai. With the vision of a hot milky cuppa chai and a biscuit we eagerly accepted and wandered on up to his Yurt. Unfortunately chai wasn’t on the menu and instead the family served up kumys (fermented mares milk, the national drink, mildly alcoholic and kind of like sour vinegary milk) and kurut (dried yoghurt balls, taste like dried kumys and the consistency of plaster, mmmmmm!!) A kind gesture however apparently neither of these things agreed with Mike making the climb the next morning’s climb was a bit of a challenge:(

The descent from the pass was pretty fun and with the good downhill it didn’t take long for Mike to perk up and start to look a little more alive. Eventually we emerged out of the hills into the fertile Fergana Valley and found ourselves cycling amongst paddocks of wheat, sunflowers and fruit trees.
We camped for the night in a field of sunflowers and figured that the map we had wasn’t quite as accurate as we might have liked and so instead of sneaking round the back of Jalalabad and on into Osh we’d be riding into Jalalabad the next morning.

We’d originally planned to get a car from Kazarman to Gulcho so that we could skip Jalalabad and Osh due to the recent political unrest. However we’d heard that both cities had settled down, so we decided to ride into Jalalabad and see how things went. We were also on a pretty tight schedule as most visas for this part of the world have specific entry/exit dates and we needed to keep moving towards Tajikistan so we could make the most of the thirty day Tajik visa.

Osh was in a much worse state than Jalalabad as large parts of the city had been burnt/destroyed. Coming from NZ where we’re pretty isolated from events like this it was quite mind blowing to see the aftermath first hand. It’s scary to see what an angry mob can do and you can’t help but wonder if they’re happy with themselves for destroying large parts of their own city, and for what gain?

We spent a couple of days in Osh dealing 30+ deg heat, eating melons and decided that we would continue with our original plan and jump into a car for the 100 km trip to Gulcho that would take us a day closer to Tajikistan. Straight out of Gulcho, to our delight, the road was beautifully resurfaced however it soon deteriorated and we eventually met Chinese style road works on the 2000 m climb to the pass between Gulcho and Sary Tash. On the climb we had plenty of offers of lifts from truck drivers who couldn’t understand why we would want to cycle when we could be in their trucks which was pretty entertaining!!

We must admit to being a little tempted by the offers as the weather deteriorated from rain to hail and eventually snow before Sary Tash. In the end, at about five in the arvo we had to call it quits as we were both frozen and spent the next hour or two in our sleeping bags warming up before we could cook tea. As it turns out we were only about 5 km from Sary Tash and a guest house or two! Whoops!

06
Aug
10

Moving On

By keenaskiwis 5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

It’s another one of those posts where it’s hard to know where to start. We’re now in Almaty, Kazakhstan working on yet more plans and visas. Perhaps though it’s best to start with why it seems so long since we last updated. In Urumqi we had a spot of bad luck with some little maggot(stronger words may have been used:)) cutting our locks and flogging Jo’s bike from in front of the Kazakhstan Embassy, apparently Mike’s wasn’t cool enough to steal so they left it behind!!

Luckily for us a helpful young Kazak chap that we’d talked to during previous visits went out of his way to help us out. He called the police and then spent the whole afternoon acting as an interpreter and filling out forms for Jo, missing the opportunity to pick up his own visa in the process. Thanks so much for all your help Nazar!!

A few days were spent with police, insurance paperwork and searching for the bike(needle in a hay stack, but you have to try!!) though the unfortunate reality was that we weren’t going to see Jo’s bike again. We had two options, buy a local bike or get another Thorn. Needless to say we think Thorn bikes are that good that we ordered another. Lisa, Robin and James from Thorn were absolutely awesome and had the new bike ready in only a few days.

To take the ridiculous to the extreme we decided that the best option for getting the bike into China was for Mike to go and pick it up from the UK. There started a pretty epic, largely sleepless journey for Mike, via train to Beijing a flight to London with a 20 odd hour stop over in Moscow. A really big thanks has to be said here to our mate T and his Girlfriend Tam!! With less than a week’s notice and only by email, T was more organised than Mike has ever been!! Along with a bed, came a rail pass, a cell phone, street maps and all the directions Mike could ever need, meaning the trip to Bridgwater and back to collect the bike was a breeze!! T even took a couple of days off work and gave the best one day whirlwind tour of London you could hope for. T’s a tree surgeon by trade so Mike now knows the life story of most of the trees in London along with a few that don’t exist any more, T gets a bit carried away with the old chainsaw sometimes!!!

Jo was pretty excited to see Mike back just over a week later but wasn’t quite sure what to make of him returning without her new bike!! Some quirk of fate had Mike arriving in China but the bike was lost in transit. Some choice words were understandably said but a few hours and phone calls later we were assured it was heading to Urumqi. In a surprisingly hassle-free process we went to the airport the following morning and picked it up in all its Yellow glory:)

To add to all the fun and games Mike got a wee bout of what our Aussie mates from earlier in the trip referred to as Tap-arse. Jo’s visa was about to expire so recovery was going to have to happen on the road. Due to the delays we took a bus 500 km closer to the Kazak border getting off for a night at Sayram Lake. The area around Sayram Lake gave us a taste of what we probably missed on our planned route so one day we’ll have to head back to Xinjiang to explore!!

As we were getting sorted for the night by the lake a lovely Uigher chap and his family wandered by. After quite a long chat they were really keen for us to go and stay with them, 100 km east of the lake, it would have been fantastic but Jo’s visa was to expire the next day so we had to decline:( When we head back to Xinjiang we’ll definitely have to visit!! Needless to say we were stoked to finally be back out and about again, meeting people and in the mountains.

The next morning we were heading down a steep mountain valley with our last taste of Chinese road works and on towards the border. There were a few stops enroute for photos as usual and even one last feed of Suoman Noodles!! Unfortunately being Sunday the border was closed so we figured sleeping on a park bench near the border was the best option for the night. We’re still not too sure who was more confused at 2 am when an army patrol woke us up. A quick check of our passports and a few laughs and they were on their way.

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At 6 am we were in the queue along with twenty or so others and ended up beside an Uzbek bloke who has two wives(both ten years younger than him, one in China and one in Uzbekistan) and six children . He thought it was absolutely hilarious that Jo is older than Mike and thought that perhaps the reason we don’t have kids is because we don’t know how, Joker !!

By the time the border opened at 8:30 am there were about 200 people crowded around the entrance. Queueing was not the order of the day, every one just squeezed from all directions to get as close to the gate as they could, with the bikes we weren’t too good at that game!! As soon as the gate opened the whole mass surged forward to get through a space only just wide enough to fit our bikes side by side. People were pushing, shoving and climbing over the fence, it was a pretty intense experience on the whole but once in the crowd there was no way out so we just had to do as best we could. We eventually burst out the other side to find that the bit we’d just been through was only to get into the compound, nothing at all to do with the border crossing, though we felt pretty lucky to come out with all our kit intact, all except for Mikes jar of Pears that is, pear juice in your panniers, good times!!

Chinese Customs were quite straight forward apart from a slight issue with Jo being an “over stayer”, once the fine was paid it seemed we were on our way, that was until we got outside. Apparently riding our bikes across no-man’s land wasn’t a go so we needed to get on to one of the many buses. Unfortunately though the border was closed from 11 am until 1 pm and we had to wait for a couple of hot hours in the sun. Luckily enough the Kazakh Customs were nice and straight forward when we finally got there and we were on our way in no time at all, about time since it was getting on for 9 hrs since we were first in the queue!!!

From the word go Kazakhstan was great with a quick 30-40 km ride from the border to Zharkent, we got some money, bread, a bottle of Fanta and had a rest on the footpath to get over the rather full on border crossing. The locals were pretty interested in what we were up to and one kind chap even popped into a shop and brought us a bottle of Kazakh fruit juice.

The next day we pulled into a small town and had rather fortunate chat with some locals who convinced us to take the southern of the two routes to Almaty. After a quick shop getting some super fresh bread and even some salami we were south bound. Along the way we met a French couple, who had left Almaty only a week ago and were right at the start of their year long cycling trip. They very kindly gave us the maps of Kazakhstan they no longer needed even though we only had a very small part of a Chinese map left to give them.

Not much further down the road we met a Dutch couple who arrived in Almaty on the same flight as the French couple and they told us about the Assy Plateau. It didn’t take us long to figure that at the expense of a couple of extra days we could ride down into the Charyn Canyon then head to Bartoghay Lake and over the Assy Plateau to Almaty. These were some truly awesome places to visit that we would have missed if not for the people we met along the way. Some times you just get lucky!!

The Charyn Canyon was a 20 km gravel ride off the main highway, this saw us at the top of the Valley of Castles for some great views that enticed us down in to the Canyon for a night by the river. The first 100 m or so of the track down in to the Canyon was pretty steep and a bit of a challenge to ride on a fully loaded bike, but great fun all the same. The rest of the descent was pretty continuous and saw us down at the Charyn River for a bit of a swim, dinner and bed.

When morning came it was time for the climb back out of the canyon, which wasn’t as bad as expected, though the last 100 m required both of us to push each bike to the top!! On the ride through to Bartoghay Lake we met a Belgian couple who’d also been over the Assy Plateau and were able to give us some key tips. Not long after, in Kokpek, while deciphering a Russian menu we met yet another cyclist. Ken was his name, he’s cycled from Bridgewater, UK (where Mike had been only a week or so ago) and was a fellow Thorn rider. We shared some stories and thoughts over lunch(3 hrs) and then continued our separate ways. Ken is fund-raising for Outward Bound and has far greater plans than we have so check out his blog and donate to the cause! www.acrosscontinents.org

A night spent by Bartoghay Lake and with Mike now over the health issues we were ready to get up into the mountains. A quick 5km round the lake saw us at the bottom of the climb, Jo did an awesome job and rode her bike 99% of the way to the top, probably not that challenging on an MTB but on the loaded tourer it certainly was!! The measure of the day really came down to the fact that we managed just over 30km and were both totally knackered by the time we stopped. The scenery and serenity were totally worth the effort though.

The next day saw us up on the Plateau proper along with loads of Kazakh Yurts and people in their 4x4s out camping for the weekend. As the day got colder and wetter we both got quite excited about the prospect of a cozy night in the tent, being cold was quite a nice change!! The riding wasn’t quite so challenging though we still only managed about 35 km and camped just over the western end of the plateau.

We woke to a beautiful blue sky the next morning, quite a change from the rain the previous night!! While Mike was out cooking breakfast a chap from one of the nearby Yurts dropped by on his horse. A good chat was had but while sharing some photos of NZ his wife called him back for breakfast, so he invited us along too. It proved to be an opportunity not to be missed as both he and his family were a whole lot of laughs, the tea was great and the food(our second breakfast) was fantastic!! Before we left they even packed us up with biscuits, fudge and fresh milk for the road, it was a really neat to experience their genuine interest and kindness.

At the leisurely time of 9:30 am, with our two breakfasts on board we were eventually on our way and descending down beside the gorgeous river(no pun intended). We were really sad to be leaving the mountains, we’d only been there for a couple of days but they were just so breathtaking we could have stayed for weeks!! The further down we came the busier it got, to the point that we thought maybe the whole of Almaty might be in the valley.

Lunch time came and we figured a stop by the river was in order, out came the mangy 4 day old bread and some peanut butter and honey. Obviously this looked like a bit of a desperate situation as a very kind chap wandered over with a couple of big BBQ’d chicken drumsticks and some nice fresh bread for us. We thought it’d be rude not to go and join them and much to our delight this meant more tea and cake:)

The rest of the ride into Almaty was pretty uneventful, though we were quite excited coming across intersections and roundabouts where all the drivers seemed to follow some sensible rules:) hahaha Almaty is a really beautiful city, we have a few days here as we need to register our passports and get Kyrgyz and Uzbek Visas. Although we only have a short two week visit to Kazakhstan the small taste has definitely got us wanting more.

The plan from here is to continue on and ride through Kyrgyzstan(Skipping the dodgy bits) and on to the Pamir, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran, all visa permitting of course. We’ve decided that there is no point us rushing through this fantastic part of the world and that maybe we will just end up riding through a bit more of the European winter, we’ll see how it goes!!

30
Jun
10

Sun, Sand and Snow

By keenaskiwis 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Well after 3 months and 6000 km of riding we’ve reached Urumqi, Xinjiang province, Northwest China. We’re going to be here for a while sorting out visas and planning our route through Central Asia so it’s a good time to catch up.

Last time we wrote we were in Golmud where we spent a couple of days, not a bad spot especially given that the only hotel we could find that was allowed to host foreigners was four star, the rough life of cycle tourists aye!! A little bike maintenance, a bit of blogging, some route planning and a whole lot of ice cream eating (Mike’s favourite pastime) was all that was really achieved at this stop.

The plan was to continue on with Arve for a couple more days, then we’d go our separate ways as he was heading north while we wanted to head west to the Taklamakan Desert. The planned 8 am leaving time came and went as Mike was running a little late on the packing front, Arve’s card got eaten by an ATM and then a trip to the bike shop and gas station meant that we weren’t on the road until about 11 am, which is a spot on the late side!!

After finally getting on the road we spent the day riding across the massive plain that Golmud sits in, passing salt lakes and the associated salt extraction industry, to our surprise the new road was even being built using salt. As a little side note here, we’ve been riding beside or amongst road construction for almost the whole time we’ve been in China, the scale of road building is just immense, not to mention the rail, transmission lines etc

Anyway, although our maps had been really good up to this point they were rapidly becoming rather out of date, it seemed that all the towns that were marked were either never there or had, more likely, been removed. It was probably 150 km before we came across the first town out of Golmud which combined with the temperature and wind meant that we were pretty low on water by the time we got there. As it was early in the morning the gas station was the only place open that had water, all in barrels that get trucked in. They were quite amused at us pumping/filtering the water rather than boiling it.

In our planning and we use “planning” quite loosely, we’d noted that there were two highways both labelled G315 shown on Google Maps, though Jo’s map showed only the one to the south while Mike’s showed only the one to the north. When we turned up at the southern junction it appeared this was the brand new G315. A bit of a “chat” with a road crew revealed that there were no towns for 300+km to the west on the new G315 (that’s what we think they said). Although we would have had the wind behind us and been on a brand new road we decided that it was probably better to head north and take the old road with the possibility of towns, especially given how much water we’d been through the previous day.

At the only town between the new and old G315s we had another one of those moments with the Police, apparently we weren’t allowed to head into town. No doubt this was a military thing as there were a few speeding convoys of Land Cruisers and the odd group of soldiers wandering around out in the hills over the last 100 km or so. Delingha, a missile base we’d taken a fairly significant detour to miss is only a couple of hundred km to the east as well. Anyway we managed to get some food and water on the way past before camping by a river about 30 km further on down the road.

We turned up at the turn off to the old G315 pretty early the next morning only to find what looked like a gravel road heading out into desert, bugger!! We flagged down a truck to see if we could find out a bit of info about the road, despite the lack of a common language the driver managed to explain that a large part of the road didn’t exist and that the only alternative was 300 km of gravel road with no towns. He also kindly offered us a lift- unfortunately he was only going about 40 km of the 300 km trip but what a legend! Amazing what information you can share across language barriers.

We decided that the best option was to take the G215 to the north where we were pretty sure there were more towns. The next couple of days were certainly a challenge as we came through a freak rainstorm out into what was pretty much a desert and headlong into our first sandstorm. What a crazy experience!! Head winds aren’t much fun at the best of times but when combined with sand, well we’re sure you can imagine :) The question was,”Is it really worth this for 6 kph?” The difficulty when you are in the middle of a big, flat desert is finding shelter. Thankfully the Chinese (they were thinking of cycle tourists at the time we’re sure) have built heaps of fantastic culverts under the roads. So beating a hasty retreat to the last culvert we’d passed we were soon under the road pitching the tent, hoping that the wind would die down and that the tent wouldn’t take off. We would later find out that Arve was only a few km ahead also camped in a culvert for the night, great minds aye!!

The tent stayed put!! But unfortunately the wind didn’t die down and not surprisingly there was significant reluctance to drag ourselves out of the tent in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised though to find that even though the wind was still howling the sand was again mostly where it is supposed to be, on the ground!! The day was still pretty tough with the wind not relenting at all, dark days when your moving average is only 10 kph, on the flat!!! At the end of the day having only travelled 60 km we once again found ourselves pitching the tent in a culvert and praying for the wind to stop!!

Next morning we were stoked to wake to sunshine and NO WIND!!!, kicking off what would be an awesome day. While stopped for morning smoko (an important part of every day:)) a couple of Chinese blokes in a 4WD stopped to say “Ni hao” and take some photos with us. Before we knew it they had stocked us up with water and Red Bull for the day ahead, awesome!! Our straight road then ended and we climbed up beside the snow to 3800 m, the contrast in the landscapes within a couple of hours of riding was pretty amazing!!

We downed the Red Bull and a compressed biscuit at the pass then started the descent, this was pretty spectacular as we cycled past a massive open valley and then rode on to great views of the upcoming desert and oasis town. As we came into town it was getting a little warm in our jackets, gloves and merino, not surprising given that over the last 50 km we had descended 2200 m!! A shop with cold drinks and ice-creams was a definitely on our to do list.

Heading out of town and into the desert was pretty surreal, especially when looking back to the 5-6000 m snow capped peaks behind the massive sand dunes!! It was about 5 pm when we decided that the 50 km to Dunhaung would be better than camping in the desert for the night. That was until we came across a lake, yes a lake in the middle of the desert, it may have looked to some like a blue wall but it was in fact a lake. It proved too good to pass up so we high-tailed it out there and jumped straight in for a swim before camping for the night.

A quick 50 km the next morning saw us in Dunhaung catching up with Arve who as it turns out had only been about 10 km ahead of us for the last 3 or 4 days, though we never saw each other.

Next morning we were off again leaving the oasis town of Dunhaung and back out into the desert, within a day or so we found ourselves turning west onto the G312, saying goodbye to the relatively quiet roads of the last weeks and hello to hundreds of trucks carrying everything from melons to tractors. It wasn’t super pleasant riding in the heat with all the trucks, though as it turned out we only had 100 km or so of that before we came across some brand new express-way that wasn’t yet open, it would have been rude not to use it!! The combo of no headwind, a descent of 800 m over the first 100 km and the promise of ice cream in Hami saw us stretching our legs and pedalling 200 km in about 8-9 hours of riding, we were worn at the end but fully stoked to have covered some ground, definitely more satisfying than 60 km in a day!!

A couple of days hanging out in Hami (The Melon capital of China) and we were ready to roll toward Turpan and Urumqi. The ride was mostly in desert with temps maxing out at about 45 deg C!! We carried a bit more water, got on our bikes before sunrise and hung out in the shade for the arvo so all in all riding at 45 deg was OK, we even managed some good kms. Along the way, out in the middle of nowhere we came across a truck that had lost it’s load of melons, melon seemed like it would go down pretty well so Mike trotted off to buy one. The guy wouldn’t take any money and just gave us a melon, which made for an awesome desert snack!!

The ride into Turpan was pretty warm, so it was a relief to get to the outskirts where there are some really sweet houses with trees and grapevines providing all important shade, Mike is still kicking himself for not taking photos!! We pretty much spent the afternoon looking round for a hotel, not being too keen to pay for the five star job and the budget option not having the all important internet access. We ended up finding a mint place though, air-con, internet and they even welcomed our bikes inside!! Sometimes it can be a challenge to talk the hotel into letting the bikes to our room, though we haven’t had a night yet were we’ve had to lock them up outside.

Turpan was a great place for a day of rest with the grapevines on the “main street” being great for getting out of the sun and then the food markets where we were able to get a couple of great feeds. Turpan is also pretty special because of the abundance of water that flows in via Karez (tunnels), there are apparently 5000 km of these tunnels dating back a couple of thousand years. While talking about random facts, the bottom of the Turpan Depression is the third lowest point on dry land at 154 m below sea level, unfortunately we didn’t have time to head out to check it out.

We left before the sun was up and were lucky to have a little early morning cloud as we headed up out of the basin and towards a couple of large wind-farms. It turned out it was a great spot for a wind-farm, but a really crap spot to be heading the way we were, straight into another head wind!! Though about lunch time we came to a small town which meant cold drinks, shade, lunch and a great new Chinese dish, ding ding noodles (for some reason we don’t think this is the real name!). Not far up the road we tucked in under a bridge by the river for a mid arvo swim and a nap, along with a bunch of truckers!!

We had a couple of hours of evening cycling before camping at the top of the climb beside a little stream with views of the snow capped mountains to the north. The next morning we headed on past a couple of salt lakes and on to Urumqi, unfortunately we’d lost our beaut express-way at the town where we had lunch the day before and apparently we’d softened up a bit over the previous week so found it a little rough being back on the bumpy old road!

Urumqi is a pretty cool city, lots of trees and parks and a really nice feel, also interestingly enough it is the furthest city from an ocean in the world. We’ve been here a week so far as we are waiting on our Chinese Visas to be extended, we have another week to go before we get our Kazakh visas too. It’s been a good chance to get some much needed bike maintenance done, cleaning, replacing the worn out chains, changing fork and hub oil etc. Not too sure that’s what the hostel had in mind when they let us have our bikes in our room though!! We even met a lovely French lady on our first night here, she was here to visit her son who’s been a winemaker here for the last ten years. He was getting married so they invited us along to the wedding, it sounded a bit flash for a couple of smelly cyclists given that it was at the Sheraton!! but we tidied ourselves up, went along and had a great time!!

We’ve also been doing a bit of forward planning as a few things have changed due to the situation in Kyrgyzstan. We were planning to ride from here to Kazakhstan then south through Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan. Unfortunately the direct route south heads through Osh, the centre of the recent violence. Although we’ve heard stories about people travelling through it seems like there might be better options than riding through what is somewhat of a humanitarian crisis.

The new plan should see us riding through to the Bishkek(Kyrgyzstan) then taking a somewhat mountainous route via some sweet looking gravel roads back into China. A quick stop in Kashgar then back to Kyrgyzstan via another border, 100 km or so of riding then into Tajikistan, skipping Osh completely. Looks like it will be an awesome trip, though with all the visa waiting time, the planned rough roads and a few more kms it will see us entering Uzbekistan with about 8000 km to ride in three months to get to Paris before Christmas, hopefully we still have time to see the sights along the way!!

04
Jun
10

passes, plateaus and pedaling

By keenaskiwis 4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

We’re staying in a hotel, have internet access and a little time to write a wee story about our adventures, so here goes.

We’re in Golmud , which is about half way between Chengdu and Urumuqi having cycled about 1800km in the last 3 weeks.

The first couple of days leaving Chengdu were a bit tough for Jo as she’d spent most of our time in Chengdu holed up in bed and wasn’t quite 100% when we left. Just 10mins out of the Hostel we had a touch of excitement with Jo catching a pannier on a barrier while battling the traffic. It wouldn’t have been an issue except for the fact that she was doing about 20kph with Mike right behind:( To our amazement Jo manage to run off her bike, over the handle bars with both Jo and her bike surviving unscathed. We also learnt that having 15kg of panniers on the back of your bike doesn’t mean that you can’t get your bike up on the front wheel trying to avoid running over your girlfriend!!

As with any large city it was a bit of a challenge for us to find our way out but once we were on the 213 highway we were away. The first day was mostly flat with a bit of a climb at the end of the day that saw us camping near to the start of the ruins from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. As luck, rather than good management would have it, we were cycling through Wenchuan on the second anniversary of the magnitude 8 earthquake that struck the area in 2008. It is astounding how much damage was done in the area, our photos show some of the damage but they don’t really convey the scale. About a 100km stretch of the highway we were on was pretty much completely destroyed and apparently most of the buildings were destroyed. In the two years since the earthquake a new highway and a huge number of buildings have been built showing just how much the Chinese people can achieve in a relatively short period of time.

At the end of our second day out of Chengdu we struck the start of the 200km stretch of roadworks that we’d been told about. With all the trucks, buses and other vehicles on the dry gravel road the first 100km was pretty dusty riding. Though with a bit of rain coming down the last 100km or so was fantastically muddy, gotta love those fat tyres and mudguards:) The roadworks soon passed and we got back onto the seal, the pace increased and soon saw us up at 3840m, not super high but for us it was pretty cool to have pedaled up to that height.

From the high point of 3800m we dropped down to the Sichuan-Tibetan Plateau at around 3000-3500m. This was a pretty amazing change of landscape as it is just so open and massive, it made estimating distances a bit of a game for a while, pretty much had to double anything we were thinking. There was also a dramatic change in the locals, no longer were they mostly Han Chinese but now were predominantly Tibetan. There was also a significant shift from cropping toward livestock with a huge number of Yak and their herders. Given the altitude and the somewhat hostile weather most of the locals we saw/met were fairly well covered up, most of the time you couldn’t see much of their faces. It was quite a surprise to us just how intimidating it was to encounter a group of new and different people when you couldn’t see any facial expression, only their eyes, however as with everywhere else they were unbelievably friendly.

Dropping down from the Sichuan-Tibetan Plateau we came across a tunnel that was about 1.5km long, by no means the longest tunnel we’d encountered but this one was something special. Heading into the tunnel we both got our headlamps out as it was looking pretty dark, they really didn’t allow us to see much but once a car came by it was pretty clear why our bikes were riding a little funny, ICE!! The tunnel being at 3000m and obviously stays pretty cool so there was quite a bit of ice inside, in parts there were only the two tracks made by vehicles that were clear of ice. We were both pretty glad to get out the bottom of that one, though we were straight into a headwind maxing out at about 9kph down hill:(

There were a couple more days of rolling around between 3000 and 3600m on the 213 before we turned off on to our “Dirty little shortcut”. This was a pretty neat part of the trip as we got away from the highways and rode about 100km of gravel roads and met some really cool locals. This is where we had our first real encounter with a mean looking dog. Riding through a small group of houses we saw the dog on one side of the road and an old lady (she looked about 80) on the other side of the road. As we rode up she’d just picked up a rock and we kind of figured that she knew how to sort the dog out and was going to help us out. The dog wasn’t really backing down so Mike started to try and out voice it to scare it off, as we came by it was pretty clear the old lady wasn’t out to help us as she pretty much started running beside Mike using him as her shield from the dog, pretty funny in all.

We climbed over another 3700m pass before we ended up camping for the night, while cooking dinner we had a couple of visitors, one of whom was a very enthusiastic Yak Herder. Although we didn’t have a common language we managed to learn a bit about each other and he invited us up to his tent for the night as he, like most of the locals, seemed to know that it was going to rain. Unfortunately we were both pretty knackered and had already pitched the tent so declined but did continue to chat for a while before he had to take his Yaks back to where they stayed for the night. He popped by another couple of times that night before we finally went to bed. Next morning we’d barely woken before he was again sitting in the end of our tent, we were both pretty inspired by his enthusiasm for life and just how friendly he was. He had to run as he had to get the Yaks out on to the tops for the day so we said our goodbyes and he was off. Once we’d packed up and were ready to go we thought we’d swing by his tent to see if he was back just to have a bit of a nosy. It turns out he wasn’t there and we weren’t really sure we had the right tent none the less we were welcomed in and had a chat for a while before we were fed a second breakfast of Yak Butter, Cheese and what we think was ground oats. An hour or so had passed before we finally got on our way but it was quite a cool experience.

From the highest point on the “Shortcut” we had a bit of a descent with quite a few little shortcuts that lots of motorbikes had been taking so Mike was living it up and having a bit of MTB fun. We then popped through a low pass and out into what seemed to be a surreal landscape that we couldn’t have dreamed of. Massive red sandstone walls, deep ravines and mudbrick villages, truly amazing!!! Lucky for us it was getting late so we started looking for a good camp site, again we struck some locals that seemed pretty concerned that it was going to rain on us and what do you know, we just started pitching the tent when it started to bucket down!! When the locals tell us it’s going to rain we put our jackets on now!!! hahaha. Descending from here down to the Yellow River we were riding in quite a tight little river with a few run of the river hydro schemes which was kind of interesting.

Once at the Yellow River the landscape changed again and after a bit of undulating riding we made the final climb back up to 3200m before a 1200m descent over 30km down to Ping’an and on to Xining.

In Xining we had a couple of days rest and met a crazy Norwegian cyclist who is also riding a Rohloff equipped Thorn bike, though his is a custom frame in a sweet blue colour. A bit of talk over a beer and we decided we were heading in the same direction so we’ve teamed up for a bit. The first day out of Xining was pretty entertaining as we found out that not only is he riding the same bike but has the same helmet and an orange jacket too, should make a nice team photo!! From Xining it was a climb up to 3200m to see Qinghai Lake (where bird flu started apparently), we managed to get the distances just right and ended up camping right beside the lake for the night which was pretty neat.

The climb up from the lake was a little testing as all three of us had a bit of a dodgy lunch and the head wind was pretty strong. Jo was pretty stoked to discover that she could stay on her bike up hill at 4kph while Mike was entertained by the fact that leading in to a hairpin he was doing 10kph and out the other side was doing 25kph on the same gradient!! Lucky enough there was quite a gradual downhill that let us cover some ground before camping for the night. Next day we cycled past the Chaka Salt Lake while arguing over whether or not the animals in the distance were Yaks or Camels, lucky someone knows what a Camel looks like!!!

We had a great day managing 130km before watching the storm come in that would mean we spent the next two days cycling into a solid head wind. Over pretty flat ground we only managed 80km in 6.5hrs so we were stoked to have Arve on board to help share the load out the front as we all got into drafting. Dinner was had while discussing the fact that we could cover the next 110km to Golmud pretty easily if the wind dropped the next day. Sadly the next morning we were all a little disheartened when the wind was as strong if not stronger than the day before. About 20km into the ride we decided that we were going to get the kms done wind or no wind, out came the MP3 players for some motivating tunes, we all took our turn out the front and we covered the 110km to Golmud, into the wind in just under 8 hours. We were all pretty knackered and ready for a well deserved couple of days off so have really enjoyed just chilling out.

Hopefully this reads alright, if not there are always the photos to tell the story.

25
May
10

A picture is worth a thousand words

By keenaskiwis 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

No story this time but here are some photos. We’re currently in Xining leaving tomorrow for Qinghai lake and the 2000km trip to Urumqi.

09
May
10

The Policemen, The Centipede Hunters and the Rest

By keenaskiwis 8 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

We’re now in Chengdu, Sichuan province having a few days R & R so it seems like a good time to do a little update as it might be a while before we get a chance again.

We were pretty excited to leave Xi’an as we had a route planned through the hills to get to Yichang and we were hoping for a little more “wilderness” than we’d seen up to that point. About 50km out of Xi’an we started to head up a neat river valley, quite rugged and by far the most pristine part of China we’d seen at that point. The rugged and pristine didn’t last too long but was still a remarkable change from the sights seen between Beijing and Xi’an, we now had hills!!! The riding was great with the occasional tunnel and a bit of road works to spice things up. We even met another cycle tourist, he was Chinese and had cycled about the same distance we had and was heading on to Xi’an then to Chengdu and Lhasa, awesome chap and the first cyclist we met.

The 4th day out of Xi’an it started raining, great times to be had in all the puddles!!! but it rained all day so we were pretty drenched by 4pm and were looking for a good spot to camp for the night. Luckily we found a spot which was not going to flood, slip or be slipped onto because the rivers were all well up the next day. The tent was awesome, the huge vestibule is totally worth the slight weight penalty as it lets us unpack and pack our panniers out of the weather!!!

We got to Shiyan and an awesome hotel, they were super happy to have us and really helpful. Hotel nights always seem to be really busy with us trying to get washing, drying and shopping done, after a few wet days there was a fair bit of drying to do so this was extra busy!!

From Shiyan we were taking a slightly longer route that climbed to about 2500m taking us through a national park along the way. The first day out of Shiyan was pretty awesome, two passes to climb over with about 1500m of climbing all up. Not far before the top of the second climb we had a joker on a motorbike try to stop us, this goes on all the time and given the task at hand we said hi and carried on riding without stopping. He then got on his phone and seemed to do a lot of yelling and that was the last we saw of him, a bit weird we thought but on we went. We pedalled on over the pass and decided to push our luck a bit and head down the other side for a while rather than camping on the top. Not long after, maybe 10km we rode past a Police van going the other way, they flashed their lights and pointed to the side of the road before turning around and coming to talk to us. We hadn’t had too much attention from Police to this point so both thought it was a little strange, this was soon confirmed when the English speaking officer told us we couldn’t go to Fangxian. A little confused by this Mike asked the question, “Why is it closed?” only to be told it was a “secret”, next question was “how long is it closed for?” with the answer of “Maybe 5 years”. 5 years being a little out of our time frame all we could do was turn around and ride back to Shiyan and ride the longer, flatter and less attractive way around!!!

A couple of slightly disgruntled days followed, it was a bit of a let down to be back in the rubbish and mess of towns rather than the mountains that we’d been planning!!!  As always China hasn’t let us be down for long and there was lots of fun and games to come!! We finally got out of the rubbish and back to a fairly well populated but rural area and all was was going smoothly again. This particular day we decided to ride on to 6pm or so and then worry about a camp site. Sometimes finding a camp site isn’t too easy but this night seemed to go well with Mike spotting a sweet track up to a house where we were able to climb off the side to a nice patch of grass only slightly smaller than our tent.

Most of the time we don’t know if someone owns the land or not so this night we figured that we’d cook dinner and pitch the tent in the dark. Dinner was had, some noodles and fresh veges,a great feed after a long day!! The time to pitch the tent came and since there were a few houses around we decided to flag the headlamps and just get the job done in the dark, all went well until a torch came up the track, a bit of whispering by us, then some duck and cover and the light soon turned around and headed away, SWEET!! Not that we were worried, but it was just easier not to have to explain what we were up to. Not long after a headlamp started to come down from the top of the hill we were on the side of so we really had to say hi, the guy had a massive headlamp, so not only could we not talk to him but we couldn’t see him since we were blinded by his lamp!!　Anyway it turned out he was happy as Larry that we were there, though we couldn’t quite figure out what he was looking for with his bottle and over sized tweezers, was he after snakes?? who knew!! Anyway, within minutes another bloke was there and he actually had something in his container, turns out these guys were centipede hunters, random!! Once they’d left us it turned out that this wasn’t so unusual as there seemed to be heaps of headlamps wandering around in the little valley we were overlooking. Mike even managed to “hunt” a centipede for one of the hunters a little later that night.

From here to Yichang it was fairly uneventful, as we rolled in to Yichang and were looking at the map on the outskirts a good chap on a scooter took it upon himself to ride with us the last 10km to show us the way, that’s China for you, awesome!! In Yichang we sorted a cruise on the Chinese tourist boat up through the Three Gorges and a tour around the Three Gorges Dam. The tour around the dam was awesome until we had a slightly scary hour or so when we’d missed our bus just to take a couple of extra photos, but after that stressful hour we managed to get back to where we were meant to be, and get reunited with our bikes, phew!! The cruise was great, 1000 Chinese, us, and couple of Aussie characters, a few beers were had, a few friends made and generally a great time had, once you learnt to breathe through your mouth so us couldn’t smell the loo in your room!!! haha

We stepped off the boat in Chongqing and tried finding a hostel, but being the May three day holiday weekend everything was packed so we had to crash our Aussie friends’ penthouse accommodation, awesome view from the 24th floor!!! Some quick planning was done and we headed off, some trouble as usual getting out of the city, but the detour was only about 5km so pretty happy in all. The climb out to the road we wanted was pretty mean, a couple of hundred metres in about 1.5km on the 50kg bike was interesting!!

On to Chengdu was fairly uneventful apart from some kind people buying us lunch along the way and a visit from the Police in a hotel one night, they were apparently concerned for our safety and just wanted some details about us, seemed a little random but all worked out in the end. In Chengdu we’ve met a bunch of other cyclists, one chap who has come from Germany on a similar route to that that we plan to take so we’ve managed to get heaps of useful info out of him about where we’re off to.

We leave Chengdu in the next couple of days, then we’re pretty much done with tourist attractions and the riding starts, Tibet was a dream that’s not to be fulfilled but we have a plan that should be pretty awesome anyway! It’s about 4000km to the border with Kazakhstan then about 5000km to Iran taking in the Pamir on our way. Along the way we will try to update the blog but it’s bound to get harder for a while as we are about to head into some more remote parts.

A quick note to those that are interested, there is now a link so that you can view our route in Google Earth, still a work in progress but it’s better than it was.

16
Apr
10

The training begins

By keenaskiwis 3 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Hopefully those subscribed to the blog haven’t been getting too many emails, we’ve had a bit of trouble getting the photos up so there have been a few trial posts. Anyway that all seems to be sorted now and hopefully the photos look reasonable.

We put up a quick post a week ago but didn’t really get past the first couple of days so thought we’d try to catch up a bit.

It’s hard to know where to start because even though we have only been on the road for 2 weeks we have lots of adventures to share and stories to tell.

We’re currently in Xi’an which is near to the Terracotta Warriors in the Shaanxi Province. We’ve come just over 1200km in 15 days from Beijing, pretty close to the plan and in all, not too bad for a couple of kids who’ve never been cycle touring before!! Still, the real test will be the mountains to come!!!

The weather seems a good place to start as each day for the last 3-4 has been getting much colder, we’d figured that 1000km south and 2 weeks more toward summer would equal warmer weather, not so unfortunately :( We woke up in the tent to a frost a couple of days ago and struggled a little to stay comfortably warm during the day, mostly just cold feet, we’ll have to come up with something to keep them warm as it will no doubt be colder along the way. We were pretty lucky though as the morning after we arrived at the hostel in Xi’an we woke to snow and some pretty cool, wet weather, stoked not to be riding in that yet!!

The biking so far has been pretty good. We’ve managed to do 90-110km/day every day for the last week or so which is pretty satisfying. We started with a few days of flat out of Beijing, a bit of rain but not too much wind. After a day off in Shijiazhuang we started heading into the hills and a fairly major mining area, they were some pretty dirty and dusty days!!! The wind picked up here too so made things a little more "interesting". With all the dust we were looking pretty dirty and every time we stopped people were offering to get us water so we could tidy ourselves up!!

The roads on this stretch were pretty mad too, as the 4 lane highway would narrow to a single lane bridge through a little village in a valley, there were hundreds of trucks queued for hours on end. Lucky for us we could just dart around in between them which was super fun, especially as we were doing it for several kms at a time. Great times though as all the truckies would be giving us the big thumbs up, waves, big grins and more laughing!!

The trucks and cars are also really considerate, when they have room they’ll quite happily pass you as far away as possible. The thing we are struggling a little with though is that no one looks before pulling out onto the road so you have to be constantly watching for bikes, buses, taxis, pedestrians and the occasional donkey in front of you that might suddenly occupy the space you were hoping to. It kind of seems that the rule is "if you can’t see it, you can’t give way to it" so why bother looking??? hahaha

Everyone uses their horn, mostly to tell you that they are coming up behind you, but some times just to say hi. Its hard to know where to look, even when you have the green light there is no guarantee you have the right of way! Having said all of that, we are starting to adapt but find that it is hardest at the end of the day when stopping your 40kg bike means getting it moving again too, after 100km+ this isn’t so much fun, but no doubt we’ll get fitter and not even think about it. We’ve been quite surprised though at how few accidents we’ve seen, given it’s not that uncommon to see a bus passing a truck that’s passing a car passing a bike passing a tractor all in the same stretch of road, Not kidding!!!

After the madness and mess with rubbish everywhere coming out of Beijing it was awesome to get into the Shanxi province where it appears that there is a real drive to clean up. There’s an army of people planting trees, building walls, and just generally cleaning up, much nicer to cycle through, plus along the way there have been a few wee towns where they grow strawberries, you can get a kilo or so for about NZ$3!!

In the last week we have used the tent quite a bit and its been great, lots of space, easy to put up and take down and not too visible, though a couple of westerners sleeping in a tent on the side of the road sticks out, well as Mike would put it "like dogs b..s"!!! We’ve not had too much trouble finding a place to stay, its often a bit hard to know who, if anyone owns the land but the people we’ve "talked" to seem intrigued and more worried that we will be cold and uncomfortable rather than a nuisance. Every campsite we’ve been to someone has come over for a chat and quite a few mornings we’ve woken to a shepard and his sheep grazing around us, on the whole it’s been rather stress free.

To all those who thought we’d fade away, never fear, we are eating very well. In fact it seems to be as much of a culinary tour as a bike tour as hardly 20km goes by before we’re stopping for more food. In fact some of our better stories revolve around food. We’ve been eating a lot from roadside stalls and so when lunch time rolls around we start looking for steam and people, usually a sign of good food. A few days ago we saw quite a few people and some big bowls of steaming soup which looked pretty good so we leant our bikes up against a friendly tree and wandered in. As often happens we weren’t quite sure how to order or make our needs known but we were shown some seats and as people gathered around us some bowls of soups and buns arrived in front of us. Everyone else was tucking in and it was good looking soup so we started eating. As we were looking around we thought it seemed strange no one was paying and there seemed to be quite few kids and came to the conclusion that perhaps it was a school lunch we had barged in on. A couple of young guys who spoke some English sat down and we asked if it was some sort of festival. Turns out that the reason noone was paying for such great food was that we were at a wedding reception!! Whoops.

The people here are great, we seem to a gather a little and sometimes bigger crowd whenever we stop for food and lunch, some subtly trying to take photos and others not so subtly take photos. Almost everyone tries to talk to us despite our inability to communicate back to them. Actually we stopped for a little roadside break the other day and a lovely retired man came along and chatted to us (in Mandarin) and taught Mike how to say "I don’t speak Mandarin" (Theres some kind of irony in that I’m sure!), awesome chap really. Despite our distinctly lacking conversational abilities we’re getting by pretty well, the phrase book comes out most stops but a hello, a smile and a thankyou goes a long way to getting us what we need.

Right that is about our limit for now, we’re off in the morning, heading to Yichang, it’s about an 800km ride so will probably take10-14 days. Plan is to go for a nosey at the Three Gorges dams then take a boat trip for four days up the Yangtze to Chongqing.

Before we go, a big thanks to those that have sent messages on the site, we struggle to access the comment part so thought we’d just say thanks here!!!

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