Leave Belgrade - 1 week later rioting spreads through the city
Leave Istanbul - 1 week later terrorist attacks on the US embassy
Leave Georgia - 2 weeks later a war is in full swing
Leave Osh - 1 week later the city is hit by an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the richter scale
So watch out China!
But back to the trip - sorry for taking a while to write another blog but it's been difficult, particularly as my website is banned in China! But the last time I was in contact was in Kashgar: the 4 days I spent there were excellent. Having come in from laid back Krygyzstan to be in a proper city, with the hustle and bustle was a culture shock and the moment the sun went down the city transformed with the Uighur influence coming out in the form of the nightmarket.
An Uighur man makes pastry parcels stuffed with minced lamb at Kashgars night market
The market offered all the usual kinds of fruit and vegetables you'd expect - but the real treat was the freshly cooked food: Fish grilled and served on skewers, boiled eggs in a rich spicy sauce and other Central Asian dishes with an Uighur blend such as stuffed meat dumplings with that extra bit of flavour - all served on the amazing backdrop of the liveliest night market I've ever seen. Me and Alvaro both agreed that coming here from Krygyzstan felt like stepping off a plane, and the closest thing we'd ever seen to what lay before us was the main square in Marakesh.
But after a couple of days of eating far to much food whilst my body recovered fromthe Krygyz mountains and my behind recovered from the Krygyz roads I was left to square up to the task in front of me. I hadn't planned to go through Central China, in fact the original purpose of the trip was to go to Tibet, however a combination of the Chinese government and the weather meant that central China was my only choice. With a 2 month visa and 5,500 km to cover a part of me had hoped to do without having to extend my visa, however this idea quickly died as 20km out of Kashgar, having just said my goodbyes to Alvaro aswell as the other cyclists I'd met in there I was hit with the first serious illness of my trip.
If you've ever had either a migraine or giardisis, you can imagine how pleasant it is having both at the same time but that's exactly what happened and perhaps more frustratingly help wasn't on hand. I spent the first night in a ditch being sick hoping to get it out my system, before limping towards the next town the following day - however it soon became apparent my body was in no condition to stand up right, let alone ride a bike. I tried talking to locals but the language barrier was too much so I took a more straight forward option of going for the sympathy vote by lying down as pathetically as I could by the side of the road and letting passers by see the sick mess I was. This didn't work either and it was 18 hours before any of the people who had watched me all day came over, and even then the man in question simply put his hand on my forehead, felt my high temperature, shook his head in sympathy and then walked off and that was the last I saw of him! I realised I needed to move and spent the next 3 days to cover the 65 km to the next town where I took another 3 days to recover - not a great start to my time in China (for those of you wondering why I didn't go back to Kashgar please note that common sense isn't something that's overly welcome on this trip).
But fully recovered and rested it felt good to fly off on the less travelled southern silk road - a 3,000km long road to Xining with the first 1,500km in the Taklamakan Desert. I have to say I loved cycling in the desert: Good roads, sunshine beaming down on me all day every day, flat as a pancake meaning I could cover 130km upwards without breaking sweat and best of all weather good enough meaning I could sleep at night without the tent - giving me the best view of the stars it's possible to have.
Sleeping in style
And with only one road to follow it should be impossible to get lost, right? Oh if only it were that simple - in the town of Cherchen I'd had to come off the main road to stock up on supplies and when trying to get back on course I'd trusted the 2 things I really should know that I can't trust by now - locals directions and Chinese road signs - and pretty soon I'd gone 40km in the wrong direction into a dead end in the desert. Not fancying cycling back to where I needed to be in a strong headwind I hitched back to the town, sneaked past the shop where I'd been given the wrong directions (I didn't want to hurt the guys feelings) and was back on my way - more frustrated at losing half a day than anything else - and heading towards Charklik, the last stop in the desert before the mountains began.
A common theme of whereever I've been since leaving Europe is that seemingly every shopkeeper will try to rip you off upon seeing your not local. As someone who's been described by a previous employer as 'someone who wouldn't say boo to a goose' I have to say I was getting pretty fed up with it, whilst trying to be as courteous as I can but in Charklik I finally snapped. A local baker charged me double what I'd been paying for a loaf of bread and the following scene I made was neither big nor clever - I am not proud. But worse was to come as it turned out he hadn't been ripping me off - locals couldn't understand my complaints and as I watched them part with the same ammount of money I'd been charged I was left to feel thoroughly embarrassed, offer my apologies and be left to slink out of town with my tail between my legs - woops!
But back on the road, and with one right turn I was out of the desert and without a word of warning I hit a 50 mile climb into the mountains where I spent the next day discovering another Chinese tradition - starting road works whilst having no intention of finishing them. Whilst this left for some frustrating riding the mountains a further problem was emerging - the cold. I've met some sadistic people on my trip, people who have camped in -25 and enjoyed it, people who have cycled through Siberia in the winter and people who have waited till mid-January before going to the furthest outreaches of Tibet - I am not one of these people so I needed a motivation to tackle the cold and it wasn't long till I was in luck. Whether we admit it or not we all have our vices in life, the little self-indulgent pleasures we try not to share with others and I'll freely admit that one of mine is KFC, so finding out there was a KFC in Xining was all I needed and I was back in the saddle flying.
But life is never that simple - upon leaving the desert I'd punctured two of my spare tyres - nowhere sold the spares I needed but this should not have been a problem but when I got to just an agonising 150km from Xining my front tyre got a puncture and I found that the spare I had had a broken valve - not for the first time I was indebted to a local who's skilled hands fixed the valve enough to get me to Xining - even if it did mean stopping every 10km to pump the tyre back up again.
The chinese man who somehow managed to fix my broken tyre
Xining was the first proper Chinese city I'd arrived in (for those of you who don't know the history of Xinjiang province China basically has no historical right to the area, the Chinese are a minority, and the current status as part of China is due to the area declaring independence as Turkestan in the 50's, only for their leaders to all die in a suspicious plane crash on their way for talks in Beijing - oh how cynical it is of anyone to suggest that the Chinese government were involved in this in any way) and how to describe Xining, hmmm I think 'hole' is the word. A very ugly city, over crowded, ridiculously noisy and with pollution that was at times unbelievable so after 2 days I was glad to get back on the road.
And back into the mountains. Except by now the weather really was beginning to change - the first couple of days were ok but after this the next week was spent at an altitude above 3,500 metres and past -10 at night! Upon leaving the town of Hazuo I slept the night only to wake up the next morning to look out the tent and be greeted by the images below:
Above shows a nights snow fall on the bike and below shows a nights snow fall on the road!
As you can imagine camping in this weather was about as fun as it seems but I was soon facing up to further problems I hadn't even considered in planning. The first was cycling in snow: the above picture was taken just before setting off for the day and there was just 8 seconds on my odometer before one of my frequent trips to the ground that day - the sheet ice proving spectacularly difficult to ride on in the mountains. The second was my gears freezing: With the wind chill factor terrible and with the blue sky meaning the sun turning much of the snow to slush it soon meant that everytime I went down a hill I was left with a fresh layer of ice on my gears, meaning they wouldn't work - the solution to thaw them out? I'll give you a hint - it's a liquid that usually comes at around 37 degrees and is made by pretty much everyone everywhere (and is also a damn sight quicker than boiling the kettle every 20 minutes).
So with the problems sorted I moved onto Zoige, a mostly Tibetan town in Northern Sichuan where I spent 2 days at a Tibetan run guesthouse. In China I have consistently struggled with the people but I have to say the Tibetans I met were consistently a pleasure to be around. Unlike the Chinese, who's first action will be to shout 'Laowai' (literally 'foreigner') at you at the top of their voice before staring repeatedly at you as if you've just fallen out of a space ship, the Tibetans would stop to talk, invite you into their home, ask you questions and make you feel genuinely welcome. For a group who have suffered so much persecution over the past 50 years to still be as bright, optomistic, friendly and welcoming as the Tibetans I met were was something truly humbling and something that will stay with me long after this trip is over.
Another posing pic after leaving Zoige
And with that warm feeling inside I left back out into the cold where I began to descend (thankfully) and was soon even out of the snow, much to my pleasure and on the road to Chengdu. The descent was as fun as ever (I'm not sure if it's possible to ride a bike from an altitude of 4,000m to 2,000m in a day and not enjoy yourself) and after a couple more days I was 100km north of Chengdu, riding through the area that was the epicentre of the 2006 Earthquake. I think in England we sometimes forget how lucky we are to live where we do - away from fault lines, tornadoes and other natural disasters - the fact that we still talk about Michael Fish's incorrect prediction of there being no hurricane over 20 years ago shows how little suffering we've had - so seeing the destruction Mother Nature can create when she wants was yet another eye opener and the effect it's had on the people was also noticeable, with people warning me about rocks falling on me or landslides happening no matter where I camped.
Unfortunately my pictures of the earthquake zone didn't come out as I would have liked, but hopefully you get the idea
But of course I was ok, and after seeing the destruction Mother Nature could cause when she wanted to it was time to move onto Chengdu - home to a species that no matter how hard she tries Mother Nature simply can't seem to get rid of: The Giant Panda.
I was in the city for 5 days (I got ill again so didn't see much though) but I've been looking for a way to summarise just how bad the pollution is in China and Chengdu offers that opportunity. I was to stay with a friend named Tasha and she'd told me to go to the airport to meet her. This should have been simple enough but the hardest part was finding the airport because whilst I could hear the planes coming in, with the pollution as bad as it was I simply couldn't see any of them come into land. Blue sky is something you simply don't get in China's cities, whilst rubbish, noise and litter are everywhere. And don't get me started on the spitting - it's bad enough when someone spits in the street but out here its in restaurants, internet cafes, shops - you name it and the locals will be spitting in it - even hotels, and don't think it's just a man thing either - women are some of the worst offenders - lovely!
But the 5 days in Chengdu were fun, not least for learning about Chinese University. To any (lazy) students reading this let me tell you about Chinese University - everyone lives on Campus - ok, fair enough, but you don't get a room, you don't share a room with another person, no the average room has 8 people to it. But don't worry if your worried about waking each other up at different times as everyone has to be in bed by 11, when the lights go out, and I mean physically go out as the power is turned off. And don't worry about who'll be cooking breakfast as you're all up at 6.30 the next day for group exercises, which everyone has to attend. And if you don't? Why then you get a massive fine! So in short you go to bed when your told, get up each day to exercise and have, well, who are we kidding, you have no freedoms - and all this 7 days a week!
Southern Sichuan
From Chengdu it was on to Leshan to extend my visa and it's at this point I'd like to go on a little rant about the Chinese people. To be quite honest, dealing with a lot of the Chinese people who are over the age of 30 is nigh on impossible.
In China, a lot of the time I've found that if your not a persons direct problem then they don't care about you. Over the last 2 months I've had to deal with so much rudeness you would not believe - if you ask a Chinese person for directions etc and they don't want to answer you they won't apologise or say they don't know, they'll simply turn their back on you and walk away, more often than not whilst laughing (I've given up speaking to women over the age of 25 as it's a pointless task). People will go out of their way to avoid helping you, when it would be simpler to give the advice you need and don't get me started on the drivers.
There's a historical theory which goes something along the lines that China's 'One child per family policy' created a generation of spoiled children, and after having come through areas populated by these 'children' I fully support the theory that suggests a lot of the people in China are used to getting their own way: On my way into Leshan I had a small accident, nothing serious but I was sprawled in the middle of the road - what help did I get? None. Not a single person stopped, but 3 motorcyclists rode around my splatted body with one helpfully shouting 'Laowai' at me, whilst a bus that arrived on the scene seconds later simply drove up to me, stopped and repeatedly used his horn again and again until I picked up my sorry body and heaved myself off the road. By this time I was thoroughly sick of the attitude of this generation of Chinese people, who I have to say have soured my time in China. (But I have to say the refreshing thing that gives me optomism for the future, as it has done whereever I've been, is the attitude of the young people, who are looking to the future and embracing the outside world).
The pollution in China really is disgusting - this shows where a natural spring meets the polluted river - you can see how quickly the colour changes
After extending my visa in Leshan I embarked on what should have been a simple enough ride to Kunming - unfortunately once again the word 'simple' proved to be the wrong word to use as first of all I embarked down a road that wasn't on my map for 50km before being kicked off to a road that also wasn't on mine, or any of the other maps I've managed to find since. I eventually found out where I was (100km out of the way and going further wrong) and was forced to take a 2 day detour through the mountains and this is where the problems really began - first my chain snapped. This shouldn't have been a massive problem except that my chain tool had broken in Chengdu and the replacement wasn't being posted out till Christmas, but this was soon fixed (with yet more help from some legendary locals) and I was soon back on the road, only to hit more snow and for the weak link in the chain to snap again 2 days later. I was now really in trouble as I could only manage a partial repair job and with no help available for 300km I was treading on egg shells and going as slowly as possible. However my carefulness soon became even more irrelevant as with 180km to go to Kunming my rear derailleur snapped in two!
Snapped in two - Impressive
This was impressive, even by my standards and whilst I knew it would be satisfying to walk into the bike shop in Kunming and see the look of horror on the mechanics face as he wondered 'How the hell has he done that?' (a question I can't answer), the problem had left Tullulah looking severely like a domestic violence case: battered, bruised and now immobile, and had left me with the problem of actually getting to Kunming in the first place to get her fixed.
But help was at hand: In China the police presence is ridiculously big. Every village's largest building will be a fully staffed police station and throughout my time in China I'd learned that the authority figures in this country come in one of two forms: the first type of Policeman is the level-headed man who realises how pointless it is having a Police Station staffed with 20 full time officers in a village of 2,000 people where everybody knows everybody else, and will let you get on with your business. The second type is 'The Little Man', the type of person who's been given the smallest bit of authority and must show others that he has it by telling you you can't walk your bicycle down this street despite the fact theres 20 Chinese people doing the exact same thing (Undermining him by pointing this out doesn't help) or by telling you can't go through a Checkpoint the way you have and you have to go back 50 metres to walk round the side gate (In this case undermining him and refusing on the grounds of common sense actually worked as he pushed my bicycle the 50metres for me whilst I hopped over the barrier).
Luckily the Police Station I went to for help was filled with the former type: I was told that there was no bus to Kunming until tomorrow, but not to worry as I could spend the night with them: Over the following few hours I was treated to a tour of the Police Station, shown the cells, the supplies cupboard and even the unlocked cabinet in the unlocked room where the guns were kept, before being taken to a slap-up dinner with the entire force and then given my own private room on the third floor for me to sleep in - the whole time I was told by my new Police friends how bored they were in this job as no crime ever happened here and there was nothing to do, so it's fair to say we got on well and were both happy at the break from our routines. The police it has to be said have consistently been some of the kindest people I've met in China, and the next morning I was sent on the bus (they even paid for me) with a brand new Police thermos flask to boot!
Me with the local Police Officer
I arrived in Kunming with another 200km to add to the 'cheat' list that currently contains the other cheating part of my journey in Kazakhstan and that's where I'm writing this from. The bike's fixed and raring to go, whilst to be honest I can't wait to get out of China so hopefully I'll be back in contact again soon from Laos - sweet, laidback Laos! This is of course if the bike doesn't fall apart in the meantime.....
For anyone wondering what I think of the political situation in China I would love to write my opinions on it, and I will in the future. However as I have to come back to China to get to Korea and taking into account that this website is blocked out here, coupled with the fact my original visa application was rejected I think it's for the best I keep my mouth shut until I'm in a position where I don't need to come back.
