Langmusi

21st September we get going again. We cycle through a region where we have to pay an entrance fee to get in. After a few km we get of the paved road and onto a smoothly rising dirt road. We now have entered the world of the yak and sheep. Along the road we have seen so many sheep being slaughtered and we wondered where all the sheep come from, now we know. Around lunchtime we are invited to have lunch with a Tibetan at his tent. 500m from the road surrounded by yaks, sheep, pigs and little Tibetan kids, we get dry bread and butter in hot water. Not the best lunch ever, but company is worth something as well. Just when we are searching for a proper place to camp we are invited by a Tibetan on a motorcycle to eat and sleep with him. Halfway (?) his home he overtakes us and we are not able to find him again. We decide to have dinner in the village and then cycle a few km back to camp.

In the morning we are nearly over run by a herd of sheep. In the town after breakfast, I do an investment in my travel gear by buying panniers. All of my stuff still fitted in or on my backpack, but while cycling this hardly is accessible. With the panniers I really start to look like a proper cyclist. Later in a bigger city I want to have a rack constructed for the front wheel, so I can put them there, having a better weight distribution. Today we end up in a very small town, with to our surprise a decent hotel. In the evening we are invited in the owners house and I get a lesson Tibettan from one of the daughters.

The next day we reach Langmusi. Underway we stop at an Tibettan festival, nothing much happens. A lot of Tibettan families are sitting on the grass. It is more a social event I guess, after waiting an hour for something to happen I get going again. Chele and Enrique already had left. Langmusi is a very touristic town and although there are some nice buddhist and moslim buildings, the atmosphere is somewhat spoilt by the scores of white people walking by. At the same time it is nice to meet fellow travelers though. Sunday is a rainy day and we fill the day by writing, reading, washing and I of course work on my never ending project, my guru shirt. In the evening I say goodbye to Chele and Enrique, I am going to try to go to Shanghai to visit Marieke. For that I take the bus at 7 the next morning. On the way down from a pass we almost turnover. The mud road is so slippery that first we move sideways and then tilt dangerously to my side. Fortunately nothing happens and we continue to Zoige. I had hoped to get a connecting bus to Chengdu, but the only one leaves at 6 in the morning, which means I will stay the night in this boring town. That is why I am updating my blog I guess.

Xiahe

In Xiahe I do not much but eating, sleeping and hanging around. It is a great place for it though. In Xiahe the streets are dominated by monks and people in rough Tibetan clothes. The faces of the people look battered by sun and cold. Tomorrow we will start cycling again, we are heading south.
The monastary.

This old lady makes an attempt to spin all 1200 prayerwheels at the monastary.







The guesthouse we stay is, apart from us, only populated by locals, these two people are my neighbours. We have taken some dry wood from them to light the stoves in our rooms. Unfortunately my stove was leaking, so all my things smell to smoke now, which is probably an improvement. This morning I tried to shower in an other guesthouse by giving the impression I stayed there. No problems emerged, but the water was freezing cold. I felt not so brave to jump under.

These 2 monks and the monkey in the middle were photographed by a third monk. The camera always is a great tool to make contact.

Company

September 12th I buy a trainticket to Lanzhou. The train only departs at 1:45 at night so I have plenty of time to explore Hami. I am still not sure how I will bring my bike, but I am sure that will be clear later on. I arrive early at the station and I am indicated to go to an office to check in my bike. No one speaks English but after half an hour I have some tags on my bike and some receipt in my pocket. I hope they do not forget to put my bike on the train.

I am seated in the class hard-seated which is the lowest class. The seating is the same as in the African busses, 3 chairs left of the aisle and 2 to the right. Fortunately I am next to the aisle, so I can stretch my legs a little. Still I do not manage to sleep more than 15 minutes in a row and in the morning I do not know how to sit anymore. In the morning more people get of the train than and after a while I can put my legs on the opposing chair, allowing me to properly rest for a while. At 19:30 the train arrives in Lanzhou. When I go to the office to pick up my bike I meet Enrique and Chele a Spanish/Argentinian couple who also are cycling. They also were on the train but were so lucky to acquire hard-sleepers. They are going to stay at a hotel near the station and we agree to share a room, but first I have to pick up my bike. What I already feared has happened, my bike has not come on the train. I am assured though that it will arrive the same night at 3.

The three of us search for a hotel and manage the get a room for 50 RMB for the 3 of us. In the early morning I fetch my bike so we can cycle the same day in the direction of Xiahe. However we decide to postpone departure with one day and recuperate from the trainride and do some chores.

I do not know why they really do it, but on several spots they put straw or other grasslike materials on the road. May be they want it just to dry or it might be that they want to have it crushed by passing traffic. In the last case my bike is not of much help, although I am eating a lot lately.

It is not only my bike that needs constant attention, also the bikes of my fellow cyclists once in a while need some at the road repairs. Here Chele's bike gets its steering secured, an action I am not unfamiliar with as my bike has a habbit of loosening the bolts on my steering. Later Enriques bike got a problem with a wobbly pedal, not unsimular my pedal problems.

As can be seen is my technique slightly less sophisticated, but uptill now I manage to tighten the bolt for a couple of km. The longer I hammer the longer it sticks. May be in Xiahe I find a decent cycle repairshop to get rid of the problem for a long time.

Just a sorry attempt to catch the beauty of the views. If you really want to know how beautiful it is, you have to go your self I am afraid or find some one who can make decent pictures.


With our maps with Chinese characters we were almost always able to ask for the proper directions, only when leaving Lanzhou on the September 15th we are directed to a different town then we wished. Everything worked out quite fine and we think the route turned out for the better. At least we were cycling over a road not much travelled with great views.

The monastary is a few km from the road, at first it annoys me that the monk who invited us, underestimated the time to cycle there so much, but when we arrive I am happy we went.

We had anticipated to reach Xiahe on the 17th but rain and problems getting up early the last few days, make that we search refuge in a monastary for the night. The place we sleep is very luxurious, with satelite tv, dvd, a stove and nice wooden floors.





The next day we only have 40km ride left to Xiahe and although the sky looks like rain we manage to arrive with only a few drops hitting us. We check in a guesthouse near the famous monastary. It does not have shower facilities, which makes Enrique and I decide to built one in the courtyard with my tarp and some ropes. All goes well until Chele takes a shower. The wind suddenly picks up and the tarp almost blows away. Enrique comes to the rescue of his wife before she is left in the courtyard only covered in soap.

Crashed

I finally find the strength to get up in the morning early enough to start cycling to the next destination. The goal is Hami, roughly 400km away. The first day I head east and visit a place where they have old tombs from 900AD. In one of them they still had the mummyfied corpses. In 5 minutes I have seen enough and the girls at the entry look at me surprised that I am already leaving. After a few km I am in Chaofang, this is supposed to be an interesting ancient Uighur city. I look in through the gate and I decide it is not worthwhile to pay the 3 Euro. I do wander around the little town though, which has the advantage of not being overcrowded by the busloads of Chinese tourists. From there I go to Tuyugou, where I should be able to find the 1000 Buddha caves.. I do not find that many caves, but it is a nicely located in the mountains. I am not allowed to take pictures in the caves, because that would damage the caves, according to the caretaker, who when seeing my camera keeps on following me everywhere. I can understand that maybe a flash would harm a picture, but fail to see how a picture taken without damages anything. It was not that great anyway. While cycling to Tuyugou my pedal problem plays up again. This time I try to fix it with a nail and a stone, but I cannot really get the bolt on the axes tight enough that it sticks. Every 5km I have to repeat the procedure. Just when I had finished it for the so manieth time, a trucker stops to take me with him. I tell him I want to go to Shanshan. Unfortunately the trucker does not stop there, but a few km later. I do not feel like turning round and keep on going. In a shop I buy cookies, they do not have bread and refill my bottles. I also find a bigger iron stick, that I can use for my pedals, the nail is bent. After a dozen km I arrive in a little town where I find a mechanic, with his chisel and hammer I try to secure the bolt for sure, but I do not try it as I also find a hotel.

The daughter(?) of the owner has, I guess, not seen a foreigner before, she tries to touch me every time she can. She insists on washing my hair and initially does not want to get out when I want to shower. After showering she grabs my clothes to wash them.

The next day almost immediately starts again with working on my pedals again. Now I keep hammering, with a big stone for half an hour and this seems to pay out. The wind is horrible today and I do not mind when a truck stops and takes me for 20km. After that I grab the backs of trucks when they pass me. This of course only works when they go slow, but fortunately there are enough climbs. The last truck I hang onto, stops after 15 minutes. I think he wants to shoe me off, instead he offers me a thick ribbon which he ties to the truck and he suggests I tie the other side to my bike or me. I do not like the idea to being tied to a truck if I fall, I or my bike will be dragged behind the truck for possibly a long time. I decide just to hold the ribbon, which is nicer to hold than the sharp steel edges of the truck. After being towed for a while, I decide I might put the ribbon through my frame and then hold it with my left hand, while it is on the handlebar. In case I fall, I can immediately let go and I will be relatively fine. The problem is to get the ribbon on the right location. One hand is occupied with holding the ribbon the other I need for holding the handlebar. Fortunately I have strong teeth and I manage to put the ribbon in my mouth, so I got towed on my teeth, while my right hand puts the free end through the frame to my left hand. My right hand takes over from my teeth and slowly releases the ribbon till finally I am towed via the frame. This works excellent, especialy when the speed goes up, I can have both hands on the handlebar. Then I notice that the knot at the truck side is just about to let go. I quickly pull my self to the truck and hold onto it directly again. I decide to try to tie the knot again and after 15 minutes of hard work I have the whole construction back to as I want it.

Everything keeps on going well until the trucker indicates he wants to pull up. I think he means he wants me to ride to the right of him. I go so far to the right that I am next to the truck, then when the truck goes over a little bump or accelerates slightly it gives a forward pull, with me on the end of the tight ribbon on the side of the truck, my bike is basically pulled to the left from underneath me. I let go of the ribbon to late and before I know it I am rolling over the asphalt. I am lucky, only scratches on my right side; knee, hip, elbow and sholder have abrevions. The bike is still ok, only this time the raincover and a side pocket of my bag have holes and the zipper of the bag of my camera is broken, the camera, miraculously is still working.

I guess the truckers feel sorry for me and they invite me to the truck and put my bike between the cabin and the rest of the truck. After 20km I have to get off, but I get grapes and apples for on the way. I cycle for 1 hour and then find a place with a little vegetation to sleep. I have made good progress today, only about 90 km to go to Hami.

The final kms to Hami I all cycle, not many trucks pass me and the ones that do are either full or just do not stop. In Hami it is more difficult to find people who speak English. I want to take the train from here to Lanzhou, but have no idea how I will get a ticket and make clear I have a bicycle. Well that is a worry for tomorrow.

Going down

I don't know how far it is to Turpan, but I know, by bus it takes two and a half hour. I usually count on how many hours it takes by bus that many days it will take me to cycle. Today however I reach Turpan the same day. I just cannot find a suitable place to sleep. The road is rather boring although I come through the worlds largest windmill park, I read later. However none of the mills I see are working, but this could have something to do with the lack of wind. For a long while I see no one, the road I cycle is not open yet but (because of that) of very good quality. I do see these railroad workers pushing a rail along the tracks and women sweeping the sand of the road. This seems like a waste of time, but they probably have their reasons for this. Later I bump into a couple of camels. Note these have two bumps instead of the ones with one I saw earlier. When I reach the time I want to stop cycling for the day I am in the middle of an empty plain and there are no nice spots to stop. With 30km to go I stop at the side of the road and eat a little of my Chinese powerbar, sugar mixed with raisons and nuts all pushed in a huge bar. Then a tractor comes by, with the idealspeed for hanging on to. I put my stuff away as soon as I can and start chasing him. For 15 minutes I go as fast as I can and I am able to overtake him. When I indicate I want to hang on to his cart, he stops and suggests I put my bike on the cart and indicates I can sit on the adze. After a while we stop for a couple of beers, but we manage to reach Turpan, the second lowest point on earth, 154m below sealevel.

In a bar I run into a Dutch couple, who are on a grouptour following the Silkroute. Later we are joined by 2 older Dutch ladies. They are staying in the hotel at the other side of the street, where I also hope to find a place to stay. Probably much less comfortable, but also against a much lower price

I decide to take it easy in Turpan, (like I did in Urumqi) and just cycle a bit through the city and his surroundings for a couple of days. On the 7th September I plan to visit the famous minaret and mosque, but upon arival I decide I can see it well enough from the outside and cycle on I end up with a Uighur family who invites me for dinner, when I take a picture of their house. When waiting for dinner I work with this happy fellow for an hour. We hang crapes on bamboo sticks to dry. I take some other pictures of the family, which I deliver the same evening. The family is delighted and they offer me a lot of grapes and bread, as they cannot invite me to their evening meal, because they just finished it.

Back to school

When I enter China I feel a little bit lost. Where should I go, what should I do. When coming from the border, a group of man trying to exchange money surround me. The advantage of a bike is that with a few turns of the pedals you can leave people behind, thus is what I do, although one keeps running behind me. I first search for an ATM, but when I can not find one I go back to one of the money changers. After negotiating for half an hour I get a reasonable conversion rate and enough yuans for a while. I ask the direction for Urumqi, the only city I remember I had "planned" to visit and got on the way. When in the centre og Khorgos I see an ATM and take some extra 2000 Yuan, not sure when I am able to find another one again. After 25km I stop to have dinner and get the best meal on my trip so far and a crash course Chinese, for only 6 Yuan. I now can say hello, thank you, goodbye, yes, bread, eat, drink, good, paprika, tomato and I can count from 1 to 100 in Chinese.

At the moment I want to start looking for a place to stay, a Kazakh trucker pulls up to invite me to come with him to Urumqi. He had seen mee in Zarkhent in Kazakhstan and at the border. I do not mind not cycling the 600 something km to Urumqi and put my bike on the truck and climb in the comfortable cabin. We do not share a language, so it is a quiet ride. The trucker feels very save in his big volvo, overtaking cars when clearly there is not enough time is standard, the oncoming cars just have to slow down. At one stage when he cannot make the turn because the trailer rams into a parked truck, he keeps on banging into the truck till someone wakes up. After some screaming back and forth and continous colliding cars, the other trucker chooses to move his truck.

At three in the morning we arrive in Urumqi. I get the top bunk. This would have been a nice sleeping place were it not that Viktor, the trucker opens the roof window a bit, which makes it rather cold in the truck. All my warm clothes are in my backpack on the trailer and I only am wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In the morning we drive the last few km into the centre, where I thank Viktor and start searching for a place to stay again. On internet I find a cafe, Fubar, run by an Australian and from which they say, they can give advice about accommodation. After a long search through town I finally find the bar. It is still relatively early, but it is open. While drinking a couple of beers I talk to the owner and a German guy. The last one is staying at a cheap place, which he advises me to go to. This time I find my destination quite easily and I finally can have a proper rest.

The next day I meet a local Uighur girl in the Fubar and we decide tohave dinner at a proper Uighur Restaurant, when we are finished it is rather late and she says there are no taxis and buses to her house and that she is scared to walk alone. Always the gentleman I suggest to walk her home or better,why does she not jumpon the back of my bike. When she eventually gets on the back she wants of just after 10 minutes, because she does not feel well. We end up walking for more than an hour and I have to rush bak to the hostel to be in before curfew which is one o'clock. In the hostel I meet Kirsten, a german girl with whom I go to a nearby internet cafe. I have trouble opening hotmail and are not able to update this blog, because the site is blocked. In the evening I go to the movies, Mission Impossibe 3. And even in Chinese it is a pretty bad movie.

On monday I am invited by the Uighur girl, Karima, to be a guest in her class English on the local university. I look really forward to this opportunity to have a look at the Chinese teaching methods. The class starts with the teacher asking a girl to recite a text. She manages to do 3 lines, but then gets stuck, the next person was asked to continue from that point onwards, but does not speak English at all. Volenteers are asked to finish the text. Surprisingly there are none. The assignment is moved to tomorrow and all students are happy with this generous gift of the teacher. Then it is my time. I am invited to tellsomething about my self. So I come to the front of the class onto the podium and tell something about my self for 10 minutes. The remaining time of the 2 hours class I stay on the podium being asked questions from the class and teacher. The first question I got ofcourse is if I am single, second, if I would consider marrying a local girl, third, if I would marry a girl even she had a different religion.
The level of English is so low, many students do not speakEnglish at all, that most questions are asked in Uighur translated into English by the teacher,who also translates my answers back into Uighur or Chinese. Being an English teacher in this class must be very hard. Not ony do the students not speak English, most of them even do not speak Chinese.

All together it was not a bad experience, but I had hoped to so more of teaching, instead of me being the show and tell of the day. In the evening I meet Dave. With his enthousiasm he manages to convince me to go into the Uighur part of town an wander around. I don't regret it. We try to speak Uighur to all people we meet, with the help of Dave's little list of words and in the process find a really nice meat filled bread.

When I leave the next morning I find the wordlist on my bike, thanks Dave!

To the border

The good cycling feeling returns quickly, although it seems to be going less smooth then it used to be. Probably because the road goes up, while I think it is flat, at least I hope that is the reason. At my first stop, a yurt on the side of the road, I order tea. Next to that I get shashlick and camelmilk. Camelmilk is very sour but when you don't swallow to often it is ok. Outside of Almaty the prices are reasonable, at other places where I do have to pay for my tea they only charge around 25 Tenge. When I ask an old man for directions he invites me into his shop and offers me 500 Tenge. I try to refuse but he is determined and smiles from ear to ear when I accept it. He also shows me a book in which a German guy has written his name in 2000, apparantly he was cycling too. I put my name and address in the book as well and leave in the indicated direction. When the little km signpost on the side of the road indicates 97km I steer my bike in the shoulder and continu until I am out of sight of the road. I do some light repair work on my Guru shirt, the holes keep on falling into it, so I have always something to do.

The next morning I am woken up by cows walking passed me and soon after I am cycling again. After a short while I reach a little village where I can replenish my empty water bottles and get some bread. Afterwards I stop at a little cafe to drink some tea. The cafe is closed, but the owner invites me into het shop to have breakfast. I get 2 sorts of bread, butter, honey, sausage, cheese, cakes, sweets and tea of course. The daughter speaks some English, so I even am able talk a little, what a treat. When I leave I get a get a bottle of pepsi for the road. Cycling goes slow, I feel like stopping all the time and give in to it.

The busstops are nicely ornamented, but in this case only donkeys seem to have an eye for it. The scenery gets more barren. Left and right of the road are small herds of cows and horses accompanied by a cowboy and his dog. Halfway the day I am cycling through a small mountainous section, fortunately I can go through it on the bottom of the hill, so I do not have to climb. When I stop here for dinner I get everything for free again. The cost to me was that I had to drink a mug of horsemilk, which is even worse than camelmilk and smells like horse (manure).

I already saw them alongside the road in Georgia and Azerbaijan, but also here there are tombs of someone who has died on the road. I have not seen any accidents, but by the number of tombs I see there must be quite a few of them.

On August 30 I meet a fellow cyclist. He came from the opposite direction and had already visited China. He was a real diehard one, who cycled everything, not such a baby like me who skips pieces when he can. After a short stop we say goodbye and with increased morale I continu on my route.

Sometimes the horses do not stay on the side of the road but feel like taking part of traffic. The 31st I try to cross the border. Rob the cyclist I met the other day, had warned me it could take a while, it had taken him 10 hours, so I was prepared. For me it was not so bad it only took me 5 hours, it consisted mainly of waiting at the Kazakh side. First for the border control, at one they all went for lunch for an hour and than for a bus who would bring us to the Chinese border. I pleaded I could cycle but was not allowed. Instead I had to make a lot of efforts to carry the bike onto the bus and then get in it my self. In the bus they even asked for money to take me, but I indicated I did not have any money, which was almost true after which I drove for free. The Chinese side was smooth and efficient and I was through in 15 minutes.

Almaty

After a nights driving the bus arrives in Almaty. I have asked Wilko to arrange an letter of invitation for Russia via internet when I was still stuck in Uzbekistan, so I can pick it up from an internet cafe as soon as I had the time. So I need to find an internet cafe, a bank to get money and the Russian embassy to apply for a visa. I want to get a Russian visa, to be able to travel with 'the Mongols' as they are going via Russia. I am pressed for time, but don't know where I am and I cannot find anybody who is able to explain it to me. Ideally I arrive before 12:00pm at the Russian embassy as that usually is the time embassies close. When I am lucky I might pick the visa up in the afternoon. I find an internet cafe and then it is clear I can relax, the letter of invitation has not come through so I can forget about the visa and travelling with 'the Mongols'.

The new goal is now to find a decent cheap hotel. This is not as easy as it seems in a city you do not speak the language and you do not have a map. I cycle through town all day and find nothing I want stay. I do meet a local who speaks English and we end up in a bar till around three. I decide to sleep in the park. I have to be careful not to be spotted by the police, I've been told it to be illegal. Twice a courting couple stumbles into my hideout and twice I scare the living hell out of them, when I say hello. Not very much rested I restart my search for a place to stay and this time more successful. I find a place which charges 1000 Tenge a night and although this one is full, I meet a Dutch and a Japanese guy with whom I go to another hotel where we share a room for the same price. Before finding a hotel I have applied for a chinese visa, which I can pick up after the weekend.

In the weekend I hang around on terraces together with the Dutch guy, Mart. On Monday morning I get up early and retrieve my passport including visa:-). I wait till ten o'clock when a bookshop opens. I am a bit scared of travelling in China without map, guidebook and any knowledge of the language, so I want to buy a guidebook. Unfortunately neither a guidebook or map of china are for sale in the shop so I leave Almaty without them. The good thing is that I am cycling again.

Stuck between the borders

On August 21, I wake up with a hangover, the night before with the policeman I drank half a liter vodka, the policeofficer does not look so fit this morning either. This does not prevent him to finally get all the appropriate signatures. Around noon I have a stamp in my passport that says I have to leave the country the same day. An hour later I am in a minivan with 10 others and my bicycle, on my way to the Uzbek Kazakh border. Smoothly my officer directs me past the Uzbek side and then I am on my own again, with my passport, it feels nice to have that back again after 3 days. Now I head for the Kazakh side and what I expected happened, I am not let through, I only had a single entry visa and this is the second time I want to enter. I walk back to the Uzbek side and when I try to explain the situation and ask for a telephone to call the Dutch consul in Tashkent, my passport is taken again. When I was stuck at the police office I had sent text messages to two good friends, Sander and Wilko for the telephone number of the Dutch consul in Uzbekistan. It seemed the consul worked at ABN Amro. At first no one answers, but the second time I get some one from ABN Amro on the phone, who is so kind to put me through to the consul, Hugo Minderhout. Hugo used to work for ABN Amro, but had recently quit. I manage to explain the situation and he is so kind to come from Tashkent so see what he can do for me.

After an hour I am called away from the border to a nearby office, where I meet Hugo and his fixer. I do not know how they arranged it, but I am allowed to come with Hugo in his custody for the time it takes to arrange a new (exit) visa of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The consul lets me stay in his house. In the back of the garden is a huge guesthouse, with indoor swimmingpool, where I have my stay. At night Hugo has an appointment with an English Dutch journalist for which he invites me as well. It turns out a nice evening over a few beers and a good dinner.

The next morning we visit a couple of offices to get the application of my new Uzbek visa going. At first progress is slow, but when Hugo can get hold of the fixer again he manages to set things in motion and late in the evening my passport arrives back at casa Minderhout. While waiting I have been spoiled by the consuls wife, she makes sure I definetly will not lose weight while staying with them. The consul tells me he has received an email from my little brother, that I am probably arrested around Tashkent and if he might be able to help. I do not know how Taco found out, but I am proud on him. During the time I was stuck with the police and waiting for my visa, I got messages from Eleanor, a girl I met on the Mongol Rally, who cheered me up. It feels good to have friends who take care of you or think of you.

On the morning of the 23rd I try to repair the steer of my bike because now I can move the handlebars 10 degrees in both direction without the front wheel changing direction. I consider this as quite awkward and manage to find the origin of the problem and more or less fix it, although still the steering is a bit wobbly. At 9:30 we head for the Kazakh embassy to apply for my Kazakh visa, which I can pick up at five the same day. In the mean time I relax in the consuls garden, swim a little in his outdoor swimmingpool and of course eat all the delicious things Alla, Hugo's wife offers me.

At five I pick up my passport again and Hugo brings me to the border where I this time have no problem of going through. At the other side I find a bus who is willing to take me and my bike to Almaty, where I might be able to reembark on the Mongol rally.