The word desert will henceforth be renamed to blamange, or any other after dinner sweet, time for something new and less desert. It's my way of coping. Err, carrot.
Last 3 days much harder than expected, due to unfavourable winds, and feeling mildly sick all the time. Have lost appetite since Turpan, can recommend this journey as a 'wonder diet', takes 4 months, dropping about 15kg down to a brilliant 85kg, and I'm a big tall person, looking admiringly sideways into the bathroom mirror, I can 'pinch about inch' only of stomach fat, yehoo!
Wind
And hard days, the worst windy conditions yet. Crawling at 7/8 km per hour, being blown sideways across the road, particularly with passing trucks, who kindly gave good clearance, but alas, the wind was so strong and turbulent around each passing vehicle, it was difficult just to stay on the road. One viscous gust blew me off the road and down a steep gravel bank towards the blamange floor, 'luckily' I came off and rolled out of it, no real damage done, but in shock. After that I stopped cycling for each passing truck, otherwise, it would have been a choice between being sucked into passing lorry or being blown in the blamange. A long endless gradual uphill, progress painfully slow, the scenery so big, it was like standing still, eventually got to the next horizon/bend at the top.
Stopped at the only building for miles, a petrol station, no cool drinks, but was delighted to join and share melon with a picnicking coach party (sweets and a much appreciated hand-wipes, I must have looked pretty dirty, having slept under bridges). Mixed Chinese/Japanese, talked good English, really lifted my spirits having a break and talking with these people.
Between the nice towns, am staying in dust bowl villages/towns, more or less just buildings along-side the road. Very basic and cheap, the toilet is the tricky part, as usually its a open pit 100 yards out into the desert. Hope you haven't eaten, but you can imagine... To add to the experience, there are sometimes guard dogs between buildings and toilet, straining at the leash and barking, as I select a route, taking careful note of the length of each dogs rope.
To Hami
Conditions improved, it rained a little, a lovely cooling effect, downhill, arrived at Hami, 187km and over 10 hours in the saddle, where I just went to the nearest hotel, crashed out and slept, no dinner.
So it was 3 days & 410km from Turfan to Hami for a well needed rest day. The hardest day was 100km in about 9 hours cycling time, strong winds again, sleeping under bridges mid-ride, to cool down and rest, no towns/villages for very long stretches, was glad to crawl into a truckers stop at a 'short' 100km, have a beer, egg fried rice and fall asleep. Paid 25 yuan for the lot, about about 1.50 English pounds.
Sounds grim, but am still enjoying the ride, rising to the challenge, good to be out in the open, beats a day at the office any time. Will be in a new district soon, usually its a country, but in China a new district is something to look forward to, and more blamange never hurt anyone. No food last night, a little breakfast this morning, off to try and eat something more substantial, my task for this evening;)
Slowing Down
Hello from Jiayuguan (chinats.com), Gansu Province, where the Great Wall has its western most end. Pretty hard time getting here, all turning out well as usual, with a late surge of 262km to get here yesterday, a new personal best distance in one day. Nice to see wild sunflowers on the road-side, also some less blamange like areas, well irrigated greener, some rice fields (at last in China), and sheep... a different feel to the last province perhaps.
Setting out from Hami, lacking energy and suffering in the heat, the area was spartan there being no shops, cool drinks etc... did the usual resting up in tunnels (under the elevated road) drinking hot water. Turned out there was no accommodation for about 200km, so it was lucky when I stopped at the "road construction camp", the only building around. Was really just after shade and tea, but seemed I attracted interest and before long 3 construction students, speaking reasonable English, beckoned me to the office, where I sat on a comfortable sofa for tea, melon and a chat. Seems it's a family run business, everyone was related in one way or another, friendly and relaxed, we chatted, and I sipped tea endlessly all day - this is the Chinese custom - and healthy too for maintaining body fluids - of course, the mind wishes for cold drinks, but after a while I began to feel alot better. The sun-set beautifully on the wide blamange horizon, everyone outside relaxing in the cool evening air, as a new moon rose, auspicious in China. Dinner was a very decent home cooking affair and was pleased to have eaten something now. Joined them for walk around a reservoir, walking across dried cracked mud, a strange sensation - like walking on plates and breaking them on each foot step. All in all, going local was a great experience.
Had a few bears with Mibo (or Bruce in English), a well travelled oil worker from Beijing. He explained that Chinese construction workers frequently work 8 hours on, 8 hours off, continually in shifts alternating between night and day! That explains the phenomenal road building out here; the construction of motorway seems to go on forever, surveyors, diggers, tarmackers, manual workers all working up & down the line ... spread out over vast distances, 10km if not 50km at a time. And of course, having a great transport system, means all the oasis towns/cities on the way are ace too, obvious you'd think, but new to us after having been through Central Asia with bad roads and more lax attitude to enterprise. Nice to get background info from Bruce, also met up on the road again the next day, with his work colleagues as they were off to trouble shoot some oil well.
The wind, although not as bad as before, has been hard to cope with, alot of the time its been cross/head winds, a real energy sapper. I have adopted a time trailing position, for about 30mins at a time, elbows on the handle bars, this is can be pretty helpful. My appetite was beginning to return, yippeee. Came across 2 Chinese cycle tourers:- they were having a pow-wow comparing notes as they had met travelling in opposite directions. So, I joined up for the rest of the day, this Chinese guy who was surprisingly fast, a good workout pacing/helping each-other out. Had a great lunch stop being entertained by this Chinese cyclist gambling at cards with the employees. Turned out to be easy long downhill to Anxi, where I ate loads of food, yippeee.
Keith had spent a few days cycling ahead of me, an incredibly strong pace, I being too slow and not making the distance. Actually, I rather enjoyed it, as I'm sure Keith did, going at my own pace, stopping for breaks.
The Longest Day
A new personal best of 262km in 1 day, yipeeeeee! confidence restored after some slow days, and its all helped restore my ego too;) Set off 7:30am eating breakfast on the bike, being determined just to see how far I could make it, even sleeping in the desert, as was pretty keen to get here, to a lovely rest break here at Jiaguang. The day started with light/medium head/cross winds and I soldiered on in the 'time trail tuck'. Later, conditions improved, the wind being neutral.
There were road signs along the 250km indicating service areas, keenly anticipated new supplies, food, .... but really annoyed when they were still being built! It's a real tease, looking forward to a break in 50km, just to find a construction crew building the place. Eventually, I took a side trip away from the express way to reach a service station and rest.
Then a bit of luck, a 10km downhill, good speed and later with a 100km to go, decided to go for it, but would have to put in a real non-stop time trial to make it before dark. It was like that film 'Speed' where the plot is that a bus will blow up if the speed drops below a limit, and I wouldn't let my cycle computer drop even on the harder bits for 4 hours.
I would finish at 246km, and just made it after a beautiful sunset behind me. Twas getting dark now, but to my dismay, it was a further 18km to the actual town on along "a dark desert highway" (cf hotel california - the song). A new experience, I relaxed and was guided by my dim head torch and the few passing motorists, considerate too, careful approaching from behind, their head-lights flooding the road with light, and guiding me further. Enjoyable finsih to the day, "cool wind in my hair", finally arriving at 10pm, the longest day!
Could I do 300km? With a decent tailwind, feeling full of energy, full of steroids, no lunch, setting off at 6am, arriving at night - but there'd be no fun in that, except for the record. Um, don't think I so, even if were possible.
Bla bla bla
Lots of talk about "London to Beijing", but now heading down to Singapore instead. Have been thinking this for a while, making it official now. East China Beijing is very built up, busy & expensive, so better to turn south at Xian (the terracota soldier place), which'll make for more interesting cycling. May do a Hong Kong detour, or possibly a huge one to Shanghai. Decide in Xian.
Toilet Humour
Travelling like this, to some extent you become desensitised to stuff, for instance, dropping a biscuit in mud, just wipe it and eat etc... But this one takes the biscuit:- Quite often one needs a wee at night and usually there is no nearby toilet, and as such, Keith filled a washing-up type bowl by morning time. As there was no water close to hand, Keith then used his own bowl of urine to fix punctures, ie dunking the leaking inner-tube (to find the bubbles) in a bowl of full of his urine. This is what it takes to be a hardcore cycle tourist.
Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of visiting a communal squat toilet, 3 holes in the ground and no cubicles, joining all the other squatters for morning chorus of musical symphony. OK, enough of this.
The Great Wall
Visited the western end of the Great Wall and the Fort nearby, great day out, the best tourist attractions in China so far. The ancient section of wall we visited dates back to 1979, the inflation rate for the entry price is 300% over 3 years, meanwhile one of the top stories from the UK (google news) is the price of a 2nd class stamp has gone up. Actually t'was reconstructed, destroyed or fell apart, but good, all very scenic winding up & down hills, and of deep historical importance, hence the fort:-
Jiayuguan Fort is impressive, made my day, built during the Ming Dynasty with a history of more than 600 years. One of the most important forts along the wall, the last outpost of ancient China, regarded as an honour to be the general in charge. It's huge and very formidable in a military sense, guarding the route from the silk road into china proper, otherwise known as "The First and Greatest Pass under the Heaven".
Enough of the history lesson, the fort has a really ancient solid feel to it, a sense of ancient civilisation, walking the ramparts, looking out from the watch-towers, over the desert plains towards snowy capped mountains. The wall (& its forts) created the vast territory of modern day China.