Category Archives: China

China, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 146: Niya to approx. 100km from Niya in a featureless desert

Ok, I hope I don’t come across as too negative, but this was another day of desert riding where a lot didn’t really happen. Riding in the desert tends to be a case of mind over matter as mile after mile of nothingness provides little to motivation to continue. It also means I don’t have much material for these daily write ups so they will probably be pretty short.
In the morning we left our field and filled up water in a gas station. The morning started in what I would describe as sort of savanna type environment with dry grassland and a few scattered trees. Small streams coursed intermittently, I presume what allowed these trees and grass to grow. This was a nice area to ride through but after about two hours we stared to climb out of this basin and up into sandy, exposed, windy desert.

  
 

gotta stay hydrated

 
We cycled in the desert for the rest of the day,mouth so little stimulation you tend to obsess over small thoughts over and over until you become a little bit crazy. For me I couldn’t get the thought of a full Irish breakfast out of my head. I suppose because it presents the highest concentration of tasty foodstuffs from home that I haven’t had in eight or nine months: Good bread, creamy butter, delicious pork based products: bacon, sausage and of course pudding. I don’t think a day went by in the desert that a fired breakfast didn’t float through my brain. At lunch we took shelter under a tree and ate instant noodles.

 

around the base of the tree lived a whole bunch of Giant Mongolian Camel Ticks. lunch wasnt the most relaxing

 
We were starting to run out of water, though we should be passing a village tomorrow according to the map we needed to try and find something. Finally towards the end of the day we passed a small building that was trying to irrigate the dusty sand and turn it into a fruit farm. The pumps were turned off but there was a barrel of clean looking standing water. We took a couple of litres and threw some iodine pills in it to sterilise just in case.

  
We came across a small scattering of trees in the evening and decided to camp. Despite the desert appearing devoid of life in the day as the sun went down a swarm of mosquitoes emerged and chased us into the tents for the rest of the night.

  

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China, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 145: Rezai Keyouti to Niya

Not a whole lot to say about today’s ride. It was in the flat desert with limited visibility and into a headwind, not much else to say about it. The desert was sandy but marram grass or something like it had been planted alongside the road to prevent the sand from blowing out into it.  
This morning we saw our first Bactrian camels, the shaggy-furred two humped cousin if the single humped camels we’d seen in Iran and Pakistan. Spotting them provided a bit of excitement in an otherwise uneventful morning.

  
We passed nothing most of the day. At lunch we took shelter under the large solar panels of a cell tower and ate instant noodles.

  
  
More desolate desert riding after lunch and eventually we came across a police checkpost that signalled the return of civilisation. After the checkpost a long avenue lined with trees where serious irrigation attempted to repel the desert. A petrol station was the first shop we passed since yesterday and we bought cold drinks and tested outside a while.

  
We pulled into Niya, another surprisingly large and well developed town and found a noodle place for dinner. In the vanishing light we rolled out of town into the irrigated belt which surrounded the town. We pulled off the main road onto a dirt track until we found a disused field to set up camp.

  

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China, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 144: Qira to Rezai Keyouti

Most of the day was spent spent riding through a pleasant little oasis region where grassy pasture fronted the road left and right and tree lined routes through small villages provided welcome shade. A real effort was being made to stop the encroachment of the desert into this comparatively verdant region. Large wooden frames formed tunnels along walkways that ivy and other climbing plants would soon cover to create shaded paths from house to house.  

sand dunes yesterday and grazing cows today

 
Riding along this cool, flat road with a tailwind we were making great time.mwe took a rest at a small shop along one of these tree lined roads. The young girl who was looking after the place brought us out some bread and tea while we sat by our bikes. She had a smattering of English which she shyly practiced on us.
By lunchtime we had made it to Keriya, a medium sized town with the usual, somewhat out of place wide roads and high rise buildings at the centre. 
After lunch and out the other side of Keriya the desert returned again, dusty and sandy as ever. The road was straight and flat and there wasn’t much to see all around. A haze hung on the horizon. Off in the distance a line of trees indicated a welcome change of scenery. But soon we couldn’t see the trees, even thought we had gotten closer. They were swallowed up in the haze, which was moving towards us.

  

the desert isnt so bad

 It wasn’t haze, it was a sandstorm barreling down on us. The wind hit then the sand, we donned sunglasses and buffs to cover our face as the wind blew right into us and the sand streamed around. The sand only lasted about ten or so minutes mercifully, but the headwind continued and the dusty haze stuck around to limit visibility to about 2km.

 

Andre slips into the sandstorm

 
We only found this out later: the sandstorm was the start of a season dust storm that would last for the rest of this leg to Qiemo. Normally the wind blows from the west, which would have provided a tailwind all the way to Qiemo but around this time of year for a week or so the wind changes direction and blows from the North East, picking up dust and sand as it crosses the Taklamakan.
We passed a small checkpost as evening closed in filling up our water and then walking our bikes out to one of the barren fields next to the road. A raised earthen barrier, designed to protect the crops from the wind when the field was fertile provided us with some rudimentary shelter from the wind that night which howled until the early morining.

  

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China, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 143: Hotan to Qira

Free at last, we awoke ready to cycle and eager to get going without the ever present looming of the Pakistan police escort. This was China, we were free to travel where we please as long as it wasn’t Tibet or any other region off limits to foreigners.
We left our little field and rode to a nearby town where stalls set up at the central crossroads were selling food. Im sure they get very few foreigners stopping in this towns outside of a major city so our presence caused quite a ruckus. Mercifully they have a concept of personal space in this country so we weren’t immediately surrounded and were able to enjoy a bit of banter with the locals. We bought three meat pies, the meat encased in a crusty, bagel-y sort of bread. We hadn’t a clue how to eat it so one of the guys came over and showed us how to cut the bread open with a knife and us that to pull out the meat. They then gave us some tea and wrapped it all up with watermelon, a fantastic breakfast.
We were riding in a desert region, and from what we had seen from the bus it was quite a dusty, sandy desert (unlike the rocky deserts of Iran). However around most of the towns and cities some serious irrigation work had and was going on to reclaim the land, so for most of the morning we were riding next to farmland and stunted trees.

 

starting to enter proper sandy desert

  

Sign for Qira, Kerya and Xi’an

 By lunchtime though we were well and truly in the desert. Long lonely road wound through nothing but sandy vistas. A strong tailwind brought a bit of excitement to the ride but it was hot and dry and empty nonetheless. We had better get used to it though, we have 600km of desert to cover before Qiemo, the city where we will get to turn off and ride up along the plateau for a while.
Intermittent cell phone towers dotted the sandy nothingness and provided much need shade at lunchtime. We waited out the heat of the day and then rode off, but after lunch the wind shifted to a crosswind and the sand was whipped across the road buffeting us as we peddled. 

   

the only shade in the desert

 We created a hill and down the other side we turned away from the wind. Here we ran into some policemen who pulled us over – but only to give us some bottled water. Not long after we pulled into the town of Qira. Qira is one of these newly built Chinese towns with wide roads, large municipal buildings, traffic light, street lights but only about half the population it can accommodate at capacity. To us it was the sprinkler irrigation all around the town watering trees and flowers that was the most attractive part of the city, after the afternoon in the sandy desert.

 

enjoying the shade of a park

 
We rested a while in the shade of one of these trees before eating dinner, a tasty noodle dish, and riding out of the city to find somewhere to camp. The desert didn’t come right back though, irrigation meant trees and far land lined the road and we came across a little patch of dirt away from the road to set up camp in.

  

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China, Dublin to Nepal

In China at last (Urumqi, Hotan)

It was a challenge to get into China, as I described in the last post. Despite trying everything we could getting across the land border in a timely manner was not possible. The worst landslides in 20 years had hit and the road wasn’t going to be cleared any time soon. So, feeling a bit deflated at the thought but comforted by the fact we had exhausted all other options, we flew.
We would have flown to Kashgar, the first big city we would have arrived at in China had the road been open. However, in a case of perfectly terrible timing the company that ran the flights to Kashgar from Islamabad had stopped for the month while,they renewed a lease (or something like that) so we flew instead to Urumqi.
Urumqi is the regional capital for the Xinjiang province, a semi-autonomous region at the very western edge of China. The culture here is more Central Asian than Chinese and it is the homeland of the Uighers, a Muslim peoples of Turkic descent. We flew out of Islamabad, catching a lucky break (one we felt was long overdue) when the airline let us put our bikes on the plane for free, along with our overweight luggage.

 

bikes being checked in. getting them on the plane for free was a nice break

 
Travelling from country to country on the bike means that everything changes very gradually, rarely are you hit full force the the shock of an entirely new country and culture all at once. Flying, of course, is a different matter and arriving in Urumiqi a modern Chinese city of some 4 million people was a huge shock, especially coming from Pakistan.
The roads were new and clean, the traffic was disconcertingly organised. People were walking about in regular clothes, there were even women walking around with their hair in full view! Scandalous! Everything was new and exciting, a wild array of restaurants, fast food places and noodle bars serving a wide variety of cuisine. Electricity being used willy-nilly to power signs and advertisements. And of course the Chinese characters emblazoned everywhere. In other words Urumqi was the complete reverse of what we had experienced in Pakistan and wonderful for it.
We spent four days in Urumqi just enjoying the amenities and conveniences offered by a big city. On top of that we ran into not one but three different groups of bike tourers in the hostel. Having not seen another bike tourer since that brief encounter with the Frenchmen in an Iranian village it was real treat to be able to sit around and swap stories with other cyclists who had been through similar situations.

 

high rises in Urumqi

 
   

Im sure everyone who visits China experiences this: hillarious english translations

 
 There was an English couple who incredibly Andre had already met many months ago back in Bulgaria where they had been riding on a tandem. They had since flown out to Indonesia and were riding back to England, this time on individual bicycles. Mitch and Steve, two brothers from Australia followed them. They were on a trip to Scotland where their family were from originally and hoped to be there by Christmas. And finally three girls from England also making he return journey overland, who had hoped to stay with a Warmshowers host but had to change plans when the police told their host he should stop having foreigners staying with him.
After three days we left Urumqi. Urumqi is quite far north and we wanted to join back up with where would have been cycling had we not flown. At least, as close as we reasonably could. We took a 24 hour bus across the Taklamakan desert the city of Hotan where we stared to cycle once again. Our bus arrived in the early evening and after getting something to eat we rode a little way out of the city and found a small patch of a unused field to camp in.

camping outside Hotan

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