We’re on pages 46 and 47.

Thanks to our pal Mimi Bishop for putting together this tasty spread for the 14th Issue of Gallery Magazine Guernsey. Click the interactive publication above and have a read. As if being a design guru wasn’t enough, Mimi’s also a talented singer and ukelele player, why not have a listen to her sparkling dick – soundcloud.com/my-dick-sparkles

Crunchy and slightly prawnish, a bit like a hairy land crab. What else is there to say? Central Market, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The 12th of January marks our 18th month away. It started early, our neighbour the cockrel started his cock-a-do-dul-do kareoke at around 3.30, as his had done every ‘morning’ since we arrived in the relaxed beach town on Mui Ne. The sun has had his hat on too since we rode out of Nha Trang, and as we cycled past huge sand dunes to the right and crashing waves to the left, we both breathed in the warm salty air and exchanged knowing looks that this is a place to stay a few days. We quickly fell into the the morning ritual of riding out to our favored local Bahn Me stall for breakie and banter with the locals, followed by a couple of cafe sua’s and then hit the beach. Having finished reading my book, my tanning time has been accompanied by listening to various comedy shows on my ipod. The local ladies selling fruit seemed to find it hilarious as they watched me erupt into fits of (not so silent) laughter every few minutes. I was unaware of my voyeurs as I was under my well loved Herm hat, but Pete joined the ladies laughing over my giggles. I love laughing. There’s nothing quite like a good belly full of laughter. A real belly acher so it actually hurts. When we were riding across the desert in China I had to stop cycling as I was beyond recovery while tuned into some Mitchell & Webb sketches…I was a danger on the highway unable to control myself, nor the bike. So when I lift my head from under my hat and look out at the active kite surfers, I don’t feel lazy in the slightest, my muscles are getting their own work out session.
Other things that have really made me laugh incredibly loudly, and also scream from the top of my lungs, has been our recent visit to Vinpearl Island. Having met a couple of English girls during the intimacy of sharing a mud bath in Nha Trang together, we all decided it would be great to continue our bikini clad bond with a day trip to a water park. Armed with rubber rings and the eagerness of kids we did the rounds. Screams submerged and giggles gurged as we flew down the flumes and bombed into the finishing pools. As the wave machine started I was delighted to see that all bar a few splasher-abouters were adults, the laughs were deeper and the screams saucier, and it seemed to me that water with a dash of fear go a long way to helping us act our shoe size and not our age. I love it!

Getting nitty gritty with it

My latest bout of grinning from ear to ear has been meeting Hung, my knight in shining armour, a bike mechanic in Saigon. He has managed where so many others have failed. If you are sitting comfortably I shall begin. Once upon a time, about 7,000 kilometres ago, astride her trusty stead a fair maid went. Over mountain and through desert, across plains, under branch and bow they rode together, but loyal and sturdy as her stead was, time and great distance had lamed the beast. From hamlet to hamlet they went in search of a great master that might cure the ailing creature, but none could be found. Many tried, but all failed. So it was with an air of resignation that the fair maid told her predicament to the youthful Master Hung. Young as he was, wisdom lay in those eyes of his and with hands on hips he sank into a depth of thought for a long while. After the sun had stretched it’s fingers to the furthest fields Master Hung proclaimed he knew how to heal her stead, and that she should return to him once the crescent moon had risen and fallen and the birds had greeted the new dew of the day. And so, the fair maid returned to Hung, and like Excalibur was to Arthur in his palm, he did indeed have the magic touch. The fair maids stead was as revived and fresh as the morn they had set out together, all those many moons ago. Ere any of you should befall a similar fate with your own trusty stead, I hope this tale leads you to the door of young Master Hung. My humble hero in Ho Chi Minh.

Me and Master Hung, with a digital ‘tattered scroll’ to find him should you need to

View larger map
If you find yourself in Saigon with a bike that needs a little tlc, go and see Hung –
Le hoang Probike co. ltd 283/ 62-64
(this in alley on left side from number 283)
Cach Mang Thang 8 Str Ward 12
Dist 10 HCM Vietnam

Rated as number five in National Geographic’s top ten cycle routes of the world, Vietnam’s AH1 highway connects Hanoi, the capital city in the north, with Ho Chi Minh city, formerly Saigon, about 1800 kms further south. Plagued by some of the most incredibly bad driving we’ve experienced, I’m not convinced this route sits in my top ten… if I had one. Although, to be accurate, I think National Geographic is referring to the to the little side roads through villages and dodgy, but very Indianna Jones style bridges that hover precariously over the lush and watery landscape. As expected, and had been looking forward too, we’ve arrived in a South-East Asian land of touristy goodness and all that comes with it. Good things include food, cheap and surprisingly good hotels everywhere and, having spent so long in China, plenty of opportunity to practice our dwindling English skills. As a result of having spent so much time just the two of us we’ve developed our own language that relies on the very subtle changes in air pressure when we blink. We’ve found this to be a highly efficient method of communication when compared to the English language. Not so good things include a cynical expectation that we’re rich and have an endless supply of money to burn, which in turn means that we have to check the price of EVERYTHING before we buy it. Of course you’ll get this in many other countries, it just seems that in Vietnam you have to bargain for absolutely everything from bottled water to breathing. The really irritating thing about this is that it becomes difficult not to become suspicious of anyone that approaches you. I have to remind myself not to be sharp and not to have a negative expectation each time someone tries to interact with me or sell me something. Most of the time the excitable kids shouting hello from the side of the road want nothing more than to be acknowledged and to share a smile. After all, if I put this into context the obvious reason so many people are trying to get more money out of us is because they need it. Comparatively, even without jobs, we probably do have vastly more money than most of the people that are trying to ‘over-charge’ us by what is usually no more than 50p… so I’ll shut my metaphorical mouth.

The beach at last! Friendly fruit sellers. Mary enjoying a stroll along the beach front at Nha Trang. These little porkers are enjoying relative luxury compared to other pigs we’ve seen jammed into multi-story cages stacked high on the back of trucks. Yet another challenge to my brain to try ignore the terrible things we do to animals, prior to the ultimate terrible thing you can do to a living creature, so that we can have an accompaniment to our rice and veg.

Crossing the border from China into Vietnam has very much been crossing from adventure cycle touring to a holiday on bikes. During the three months of cycling across the People’s Republic we hadn’t met too many other Western English speaking tourists, or even crossed cycle paths with any overland travelers at all, apart from our mates Honkanen and Rumdog. Many parts of the China we experienced are absolutely bursting with tourists, most of whom are Chinese. We now get to enjoy regular opportunities to swop stories over a few beers (or a record-breaking quantity of gin and tonic, wine, beer, whiskey, jager-bombs and various cocktails… in that order, as we did on Christmas Eve) with folk from our side of the World (not that we’re from Australia, New Zealand or the USA).

Our tent, camping and cooking gear have remained bundled away in their bags since we crossed the border. As you’d expect, the food in Vietnam is varied, delicious and, providing you keep an eye on your wallet, very cheap. We’re now enjoying some of the lazy days on the beach that we had dreamt of in our tent so many times. Dreaming about future destinations, even thinking too much about anything that isn’t happening now is one thing that I’m trying not to do. With all of these nights of story swopping (not strictly swopping, as this usually involves us enthusiastically recounting various situations, much as I’m doing now, at a new friend) comes a certain amount of reminiscing and reflection. I’ve recognised that through recounting events as well as anticipating our arrival at new destinations, that we are sometimes guilty of not appreciating the situation we’re in a the time. This all sounds very buddhist, perhaps obvious and a little corny, however, by constantly looking at the map and heading from a to b, it becomes all to easy to ignore the amazing bits in between; the whole point of traveling around the world on a bike. Focus on the ‘to’ rather than the a or the b.

Living beside the railway. Old Town, Hanoi

This next paragraph is perhaps of more interest to researching cyclists…
We’ve more or less stuck to the AH1 all the way from Hanoi to the beach resort of Mui Ne, where we’re at now. It seems that the last couple of hundred kilometres before Nha Trang are some of the most scenic we’ve experienced; beautiful, lush landscapes made up of rice paddies, palm trees and hills. Actually there’s been a few other scenic stretches such as the Hải Vân Pass: a fairly easy ride up a smooth asphalt hill around 450 metres high. The climb took us into thick mist, which although masked the views, provided an atmospheric break from the flat coastal riding. The main thing that’s really opened our eyes, I mean seriously keeps them standing about an inch out of our skulls is the bloody traffic. Anyone that’s travelled around Asia, specifically countries like India and, I imagine, Cambodia, Thailand etc… will have an idea of what I’m talking about. The driving is horrifically bad. The way people use the road in Vietnam blows my mind, not to mention nearly knocks us off our bikes every two minutes. We were told recently that there’s a hang-up from the French traffic laws, but to me it just seems like an epic lack of common sense: when people want to get onto the road, wether they’re pulling out on a scooter, driving from a joining side road or simply crossing the road, nobody EVER looks left to check if there’s anything coming. The onus is completely on the on-coming traffic to beep their horn and give way. It’s absolutely ridiculous. On hour first day in the country Mary got knocked off her bike by some kid who just cycled straight out into the road. About an hour later, whilst reveling in the chocolatey goodness of countless cà phê sữas (Vietnamese coffee), best enjoyed whilst squashed into a one of the tiny plastic chairs synonymous with South-East Asian street-side dining, we saw some guy whizz straight into the road and take out another unsuspecting scooter pilot, like a heat seeking missile. I won’t mention the guy we saw who hit the side of a mini-bus or the many scooter-shaped chalk outlines we’ve cycled past.

Not a Banksy, but the unnerving outline of an oddly parked scooter… notice how they didn’t bother to pick up the sandals. Weird ad for a beauty salon.

Needless to say that the method of relying on the beeping of horns rather than using ones eyes to check for oncoming vehicles doesn’t seem to work too well. Perhaps the Vietnamese government needs to change the method of obtaining a driving license from putting a 10,000 dong note into a vending machine to actually teaching people how to drive. Rant over. Nearly. And another thing: these guys really do like to use their horns. Chatting with another cyclist we met in a restaurant last night, we all agreed that shouts of hellos, thumbs-ups and and friendly toots can be uplifting and really help get you up those hills. Ear-drum exploding blasts from atomic powered truck horns are not so welcome.

Check out more photos of our ride through Vietnam – http://www.twoonfourwheels.com/photos?album=2&gallery=40

Two of your finest ice cold Vietnamese Bia Hoi’s please Squire, I’ll take one glass half full and one half empty thanks. The latter, brewed with outrageously dangerous driving, distilled with hoteliers who have an apparent loathing for all tourists and kegged with the ‘liberation’ of our cash, is a hard one to swallow. Being negative is not my style, but some things bring a girl down and take their toll. I’ve necked this local brew enough, now I’d rather quaff something more palatable .. pass me that first glass Squire! It’s refreshingly friendly, with a devilish wit about it and has a depth of generosity to boot. I’ll have a refill please, and with it may I clink glasses and raise a toast to all who I know and love, near and far, past and present. To our newest friends may I say that cruising, boozing and curry choosing has never been more fun! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Everyone! xxx

Celebrating a traditional Vietnamese Christmas in Hue. Merry Christmas everyone!
(Except the cyclo rider who nicked £50 out of my pocket when we were walking home last night.)

Sat on a tiny wooden stool, barely held together by it’s own splinters. A key-cutter some how avoids being hit by one of the infinite scooters and motorbikes that whizz past him all day. Eyes intensely staring into oblivion. A stare only possible if you’re guzzling a drink. Dry lips connect to a can of chilled Bia Hà Nôi: the local beer of, you guessed it, Hanoi. This friendly looking key-cutter was clearly waiting and hoping to become immortalised by the honed photographic skills of a passing tourist.

As a sensitive soul (not that I believe there is such a thing) or maybe just a bit of a chicken, it often takes me a moment to psyche myself up before I decide to point my camera in someone’s face and press the shutter release. And so I was, albeit for a mere second or two (the kind of seconds that are long enough to find a nearby bar and write a ranting blog post) crushed by a humiliating, belittling and deflating blow of defeat when the recently refreshed key-cutting Vietnamese gentleman waved his open hand at me, eyes screwed up with targeted irritation and shaking his head in disapproval. Everyone in the surrounding area of Hanoi’s Old City stopped and stared. Mopeds and rickshaws screeched to a halt. Women carrying portable kitchens with woks full of battered delights bobbing around in seeringly hot oil before being dusted with sugar, delicious and crusty baguettes filled with crunchy shredded vegetables, Thai basil and coriander, gossamer thin rice pancakes stuffed with minced pork and shrimps dipped in fish sauce, bananas, starfruit and pineapples, bowls of lurid-green sweet noodles, were all dropped to the floor, splashing, tumbling, splatting. Lightbulbs in the surrounding stalls, bars and restaurants all flickered as the city’s power supply momentarily dipped. Backpackers and holiday-makers all stopped in their tracks. Ice-creams stopped being licked. Dark and chocolately Vietnamese coffees sweetened with condensed milk were put down on café tables. The daylight dimmed as clouds passed over the South-East Asian sun… All in disbelief at the gall of this arrogant and presumptuous tourist brazenly trying to capture a few megapixels of authenticity in this low-rise tourist town.

To further tweak my sense of shame, my initial interpretation of the waving hand was of a man waving in cheerful acknowledgement of my photograph. As a thoughtful and reflective human-being I was left with no choice but to wonder; How should I have felt? Is it OK just to take a photo of someone without their permission? Does he have the right to sit in a public place very heavily populated by tourists and be grumpy when someone takes a snap? Surely he understands that cameras don’t actually steel your soul. Perhaps I should have asked him first or maybe he should just sit inside all day where there is no chance anyone can see him if he’s so bloody uptight. No-one owns the light that reflects from their skin into the eyes of passers-by creating an image of themselves in someone-else’s head. Before this trip, my opinion on how to photograph people was based on the more sensitive approach of buttering them up with a bit of friendly small talk first, possibly even buying a little something from them (I didn’t and still don’t need any keys cut). Having spent seventeen months standing out from the crowd, masculine curves accentuated by ridiculous Lycra cycling shorts, precariously pedaling around on a bike loaded with bright butter-yellow panniers, a bell, a horn and a MASSIVE wing-mirror, looking more conspicuous than (insert simile here). I realised that it would be highly unreasonable of me, not to mention a massive waste of energy and the missed potential to make new friends, if I had decided to object to the hundreds of people who take photos of us on our bikes every week… and besides, who cares, having your photo taken really is no big deal? My conclusion, as I finish my own Bia Hà Nôi, is screw you grumpy street seller guy.

No longer my breathing, it’s Micah P. Hinson in my ears as I sit with coffee and reflection. Time is as elastic as ever, stretching out and pinging back with a snap. This time last year we were in Crete with family and new found friends tackling local Raki with gusto, climbing mountains and swimming the warm waters. Two years back I was itching for something more, try and cast my mind back three years but life was a blur. Four years ago, on the 24th of November 2008, as we sat at his side, telling him how much we all loved him, Dad passed away from us and loss overwhelmed me. As it did us all. Time ceased, perspective disintegrated and it seemed to me like the pain and grief that had taken over me could never ease. It was too great a force, a bleak place, and it was a lonely one at that.

Four years has been a long time, four years has been no time at all. As clear as yesterday. But not yesterday at all. A note tucked under my door from Pete’s mum four years ago read ‘Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.’ As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t believe in those Shakespearian words she had chosen at the time, but I kept hold of that piece of paper and trusted Marian that one day it might be the case. With a lethargy time began to tick on, quite when it picked up I don’t rightly remember, time can be sneaky like that, but as I sit here now the tick tock is upbeat and the hourly strike is strong. So much has happened since his death, riding just shy of 20,000 kilometres alongside Pete, the sights and experiences have been incredible in so many ways. The roughest days have passed. There are times when I have to navigate carefully, which ironically can be when fantastic things are happening and I wish he could share them with us, but I guess that may always be the case now.

Last week it was randomly hearing the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, the week before that it was the glory of discovering (and swiftly drinking a few) Old Speckled Hen in a tiny Chinese shop. These things can make me smile now, rather than being a sad reminder of his absence. I know that if he were here today he’d be taking great pleasure in our tales of adventure, even greater pleasure I’m sure in re-telling our tales proudly over a pint or two, embellishing them where he saw fit, and I know that if I could hear him at the bar now I’d be groaning like I always would saying ‘not this one again Dad’…

Much missed and never far from my thoughts, my Dad, John ‘Thommo’ Thompson xxx

Ingredients:

The nerves of two cyclists preferably one male and one female

1 x Huge country with an amazingly varied landscape. Now you might be able to find one in your local delicatessen or ask your friendly local butcher.

As many kilometres of unbelievably bad, crumbling roads that barely scratch the sides of the cliff walls of unbelievably high gorges that are being mined for various materials, causing massive landslides, as-well as intentionally being blown-up by highway construction workers. If you can’t find these in the supermarket then a good quality free-range chicken will do, organic of course.

1 x 1068 Kilometre bike ride that needs to be covered within the looming expiry date of the final of two Chinese visa extensions. Crème fraîche would be just a good.

Preparation tip – In accordance to the belief of some Chinese chefs: if an animal died with adrenaline pumping through it’s veins, in fear, the meat will taste sweeter. So, when preparing the nerves for this delectable noodley delight make sure you stress your cyclists out as much as possible by making them cycle for at least one continuous seventeen hour stint through the night, cycling up a relentlessly steep hill with terrible quality unpaved roads that are often covered in foot deep wet mud or concrete mix. The cherry on the cake, or rock on the head, is to really ensure that plenty of rocks come tumbling down the cliff-faces peppering the road in front of them. This should really get their adrenaline pumping and will benefit the depth of flavour and tenderness of texture of the nerves in the final dish… I’m not really sure where this recipe metaphor is going, I’m lost. If that didn’t make much sense to you, here’s a less creatively composed report of our last two weeks of riding… hopefully useful to any cyclists making their way south of Chengdu…

Villagers in Sichuan Province preparing dinner. The Grand Buddha, Leshan.

Chengdu to Kunming

S107 from Chengdu to Xinjin

S103 changing to the S305 to Leshan to see the Grand Buddha… don’t feel obliged to do the tourist stuff, but we thought we should and the big stone figure carved into the cliff is pretty impressive, as were the ten kahillion tourists that seem to be at every tourist attraction in China.

S306 from Leshan to Emeishan checking out the Golden Summit on Mount Emei and a load of monkeys… again, we haven’t been to too many tourist destinations since we’ve been in China, so this was nice to check out. Must have been at least eleven kahilla-quadrillion tourists there. In hindsight we should’ve gone to Emeishan before Leshan… but hey, that’s adventure for you (as adventurous as two extremely established tourist destinations can be).

One of the quadrillion Chinese tourists at the Golden Summit fulfilling his smokey spiritual obligations. The winding Yangtze. The four-side ten-directional golden statue of Puxian on the Golden Summit of the Mount Emei.

S104 from Leshan flowing nicely into the G213 taking us conveniently straight south to Kunming… is what we had planned and expected. Right on que, our first bit of riding in China without a proper map, this was the route that didn’t happen. It was the Root that Petered out. Happily cycling along only to see the road disappear into the depths of the Yangtze. We’re pretty sure, could be wrong, that part of the G213 was flooded earlier this year when the Yangtze rose as a result of the completion of the Three Gorges Dam. To use my surname in the Australian or Kiwi way: the S213 seriously Rooted us and our plans. That’ll teach us for trying to organise ourselves.

Cycling back up from the petered out S213, we met this kid who had just pulled a massive snake out of the hedge. Mount Emei monkey looking pretty shocked whist posing for a photo. Missing woman.

Back to the Petering out: as the S213 was swallowed up we found ourselves on the S307 heading for Liangshan. The first stretch of S307 included the ubiquitous dark-as-a-black-hole, ventilation free tunnels. Upon reminding myself that who cares which road we take to where, we cycled merrily along a pleasant stretch of road before hitting some seriously steep switchbacks taking us up from about four hundred metre altitude to over a thousand in only a few kilometres. The first day or two on from our planned route was an introduction to the huge ups and downs of riding in Sichuan Province. We had a massive ride up from a relaxing and balmy camp-spot on the sands alongside the Yangtze, right up into a cold and thick blanket of wet fog, in the dense, lush and green hills above. Although wet, and free from any visibility, the foggy mountain ride was extremely atmospheric, and completely different to any riding we’ve done in China. This was all very nice until we passed a small town called Leibo. The stretch of S307 between Leibo and Zhaojue decays into a dirt track, heavily pounded by a constant flow of trucks carrying rocks, sand and other stuff pulled out of the surrounding cliffs. Having thought it inconvenient to get stopped for half an hour by some kid in military fancy dress as construction workers used tonnes of TNT to blow up sections of the surrounding cliffs to make way for the new highway above, we were delighted to be waved on, only to be stopped 500 metres up the road. More explosives… this time for six bloody hours! When your traveling with no real plan, delays become part of the unexpected, often leading to the best and surprisingly liberating experiences of the adventure. In this case, I really had to use my imagination to convince myself that the seventeen hours of cycling after our six hour pitstop would be fondly looked back on as a highlight. We cycled from 5.50pm into the night. The road to Zhaojue included stretches of road no wider than a truck, with cliff-faces of over a hundred metres on one side and crumbling landslides on the other. Not intentionally aiming to worry either of our Mums, but Mary was actually hit by some falling rocks, luckily by some of the friendlier biscuit crumb sized pieces. *Now I’m sat safely in the comfort of an international youth hostel in Kunming with a few 3.6% beers inside me doing their best (admittedly they need to try quite hard) and some grub on it’s way, this genuinely dicey stretch of road slots neatly into the library of cool adventures somewhere in the dinner party story section of my brain. At 4.30am last Wednesday morning they hadn’t quite made it to the table.

The first of our two long waits, enjoying the spectacle of cliffs and TNT. One of the arm-chair sized rocks fallen from above. Peace!

G108 from Liangshan to Yonglangshen getting on to the S214 temporarily before returning to the G108 into Kunming. We wild camped most of the twelve day ride from Chengdu, apart from a couple of nights in Emeishan and a night in Zhaojue. In Zhaojue we were were initially given the, all to familiar, happy wave of refusal (no foreigners allowed) at three hotels before a small group of students used their ID cards to check us into a nice little hotel for the night. Whilst unloading our bikes, one of the students even went to the shop across the road and bought us a load of fruit, noodles and drinks… a very generous welcome! The whole hotel thing can be extremely infuriating. In bigger cities, usually with more tourists, it’s pretty easy to find a cheap hotel. However, in smaller, more remote places we’ve found that more often than not we get refused. I’m pretty sure it’s because officially the hoteliers are legally obliged to register your patronage with the police and therefore have to go to the hassle of contacting the police who then have to come to the hotel to complete your registration blah, blah, blah. Maybe it’s because we usually turn up caked in dirt and unable to speak more than two words of Chinese. Whatever it is, it’s bloody annoying when you’ve decided to splash out the Earth shattering sum of £8 (for a double room), and are mentally already enjoying a hot shower before popping the kettle on and settling down to a few episodes of The Simpsons on the laptop in the comfort of a hotel room only to be told, with an irritatingly friendly wave, to bugger off into the night and find somewhere else to rest your very weary head… and arse.

We picked up our Vietnam visas today, only took 24 hours to process at the Vietnamese Consulate in Kunming. Our package of new bike tyres and inner tubes also arrived today, from sjscycles.co.uk, so we’re just about set to make the final 450 kilometres of our ride through China and into South-East Asia. We are SO looking forward to a bit of beach action… or utter inaction!

OK, I wanted to include this photo on this post, but I decided not to inflict it on anyone. Click HERE if you fancy a peak at just how much hair can stick to a bar of soap when you haven’t washed after a week of cycling in mountains.

Have a look at more photos from our Chinese adventure HERE

*Actually, it’s two days on from when I started to write this post. We’re now sat in the same hostel, in bed, just about recovering from a messy and painful bout of food poisoning caused by the food we had been so looking forward to washing down with our 3.6% beers. Damn that fried Yunnan Province cheese!

Sweaty, itchy beards. Pounding 45°C desert heat. Lung-implodingly high mountain passes. Cows in lime-green Ladas. More friendly kids than an extremely enthusiastic baseball coach could high-five in the busiest of baseball seasons, and so much more vodka than even the most serious Russian alcoholic could ever dream of consuming. Months of adventure whittled down to minutes of digital moving-image-magic for your armchair entertainment. Kick back with a nice cup of tea and enjoy some snippets of our bike ride through Central Asia.

Huge thanks to our friends for the fun and adventure along the way, and of course for the amazing footage!
Good luck with the rest of your adventures!

Arian and Monique www.worldbybike.nl
Marianne and Tobias www.velosophie.ch
Ramon and Hanne

Soundtrack Credits

Kyrgyzstan recordings by Jerome Alexandre
www.lebigjay.net

“Khorezm family band 2″ Silk Road in Stereo
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Khorezm family band 4″ Silk Road in Stereo
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Machines and Muscles” CAVE
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Banjo” musicisfreenow
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“TV Dinner” Hiiragi Fukuda
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“over and under” Antiphon
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Ouistiiti” aztec
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Overand (csum cover)” csum
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“You on Stage” Heidi Harris
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“TEDxPeñas-Jorge Saade-una sinfonia de introspeccion-Two Guitars (Russian traditional song)” TEDx Global Music Project
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Happy song by King Konsul & 12 Tribu Basque Roots Reggae Band” King Konsul
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“07 – Song of Brass” aksenty
licensed under a Creative Commons License

“Russian waltz” accordeosynther
licensed under a Creative Commons License

Once upon a time

a few months ago… Here’s five minutes of footage we filmed during our two days of confinement to our hostel in Khorog. It was quite unnerving re-watching and listening to all the recordings… I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word, but have a watch when you’ve got time. We’re putting the finishing touches to our Cycling Central Asia film which should uploaded and ready in a couple of days. Cheerio x

Let’s start with the Tibetan monks shall we? There we were, up in the Grasslands, or should I say Snowlands, between Gansu and Sichuan provinces soaking up the vast landscapes, warmth of the afternoon sunshine and getting our first whiff of Tibetan life when we were overtaken by a procession of perhaps 15 cars filled with red robed monks, and at the forefront of the hazard light winking snake was a cattle truck full of teenage monks. Hmmm, could this be linked with the heavy police and army presence we experienced as we lunched in Hezou? The experiences of Khorog have taught us to heed advice on the road, so when shortly after we headed up a track to make camp and were followed by a police 4×4, we realised something was definitely up. We were advised to ride on an extra 10 kms or so as there was growing friction in the area, as it transpired, the act of self immolation had taken place, a horrifying way to protest against the governments restrictions on the Tibetan people. It’s not just colourful flags and ruddy cheeked children here, there is a harshness in this wilderness.

So the wilderness doesn’t come with out it’s tests and trials, an ever increasing altitude took our breath away, we felt the nip of jack frost, in my case Jack was biting off my digits as we camped in snow like he hadn’t eaten for a week. The cold was brutal during the night, our water froze and a layer of ice and snow cocooned us in our tent, but don’t feel sorry too for us, in the morning we emerged after hot porridge and coffee like pink and grey butterflies happy to cycle for a new day.

Even though the nights were cold, the sun shone during the day and we rode alongside grazing yaks, glossy horses and saw eagles and vultures spiralling in the thermals. Clusters of nomads dotted our route, their ingenuity to making the most to the sun intrigued me, reflective dishes heat their teapots and start fires while yak-pats splatted on tarmac dry out to fuel their burners. Nice.

We’re now in Songpan, over 1,000 metres lower than the Grasslands but it’s still cold at night. No yak-pats here though, it’s electric blankets and heat lamps all the way, which is great as Pete and I both brought colds with us down through the mountains. Hence the dash to the chemist this morning where the usual game of charades commenced and packets of tablets were dished out. Who knows what we bought but lets hope they do the trick!

Once again we’ve been hot on the heels of our good cycle friends Ramon an Hanne, who we last blew the froth with in Lanzhou. We’ll do the same again this evening and wave them off in the morning as they ride south to Chengdu. No doubt we’ll be seeing these guys again, even more likely as when Ramon strode in after lunch with a Lonely Planet for Vietnam under his arm he said ‘So let’s talk about Christmas…’

It’s sunday morning, I’ve made us breakfast in bed and the smell of coffee fills our compact room in Lanzhou. Sounds from the alley come in through the window, I’ve heard drums and cymbals this morning and I imagined a huge dragon dancing to the rhythms, sellers shout their wares with sunday lethargy and try as i do to ignore it, the sound of hacking and spitting never fails to catch in my ears.
We’ve been here since Wednesday afternoon and I am enjoying the rest time after the long stretch all the way from Bishkek. However the term ‘rest day’ is a bit of a fallacy as we seem to spend these breaks with bikes to fix and shopping to sort. We realised we had only taken 2 rest days since leaving Kyrgyzstan, thank heavens it was my birthday or else we may not have stopped at all! My legs are confused as they keep cramping up and wondering why I’m not pushing the peddles like a mad cyclist. And I felt a bit like a mad cyclist too this past month, a mad cyclist with an obsession to race across the desert, mad with a competetiveness to beat the previous days mileage, mad with a keen eye on the setting sun and an alertness to find the perfect highway camp for the night. I quite surprised myself as I can’t remember when I last rode with that particular attitude. Perhaps it had simply been so long since we had had such smooth roads before us, perhaps it’s because it’s the first time in months that Pete and I have been riding just the two of us and we quickly re-established a good daily routine and were both focused, I don’t know, as in all honesty I had initially felt panic when I looked at the map and traced how far we had to ride in such a short time, which involved turning the huge map over to see the full distance to Lanzhou, but as we got into our new rhythm we flew across the map and our black marker pen line grew longer my confidence grew likewise. I felt great, I feel great now, I feel fit and healthy and proud of our latest push East, and I’m excited about the next part of the trip heading south towards Chengdu then back west a little into the high altitude grasslands where Tibetan culture survives before making our way into South East Asia. Again it is against the clock with our chinese visa, but let’s just go for it and enjoy!

I had been expecting a monotony for the first leg of our ride through China as everyone had said skip the desert and take a train, but in actuality the scenery was varied, witnessing firsthand some of the epic scale feats of chinese construction as we went. Pete and I had glided onto the G30, past the road signs stating no entry for bicycles at the Korgas border and spent 5 days riding to Urumqi, I hadn’t expected cold rain and stormy weather either but we got it! Even this was a delight to us in some ways as it meant our new tent got put though its first wet weather test. It has been fun trying out all the different ways of setting up the tent too, ‘which door shall we use tonight Pete…?’ Shall we dine in the porch or out on the veranda?
At each stop we made along the highway we were always greeted with intrigue and fascination from the petrol assistants, the other car passengers and the restaurant staff. As my chinese hasn’t progressed beyond hello and thank you yet, maps and a big smile are my two tools of the trade to please the gathering crowds. After lots of looking at the chinese map I would normally flip over the case to show, with its little red line wiggling further and further across it, the map of the world. It’s at this point that the ladies hug and pat me and make lots of ‘AAhhhh’ sounds and the men take a long draws on their cigarettes, exhale slowly whilst looking me up and down and eventually allowing their eyes to stare at my thighs, ‘That’s right’ I say, ‘all the way from Guernsey using these legs of mine!’. Boy do the chinese LOVE to stare!

We’d travelled just shy of 2,000 kms on the G30 highway before we finally got stopped by two traffic police who were in no mood to allow us any further on it. No smiles, just the motion that we were to follow them off at the next junction and they would lead us to the national road. This was incredibly frustrating as the national road in comparison to the highway was little more than a crumbling, potholed road fit for farm vehicles and mopeds. There was little we could do, and after venting we concluded to make the most of the new situation and as it was the end of the day we stopped to make camp up in the hills with the G30 far off in the distance, and a wonderful quiet camp it was too. The stars were astonishingly bright when we climbed out for our midnight ‘stroll’, it was beautiful. Next morning we peddled into a small village where we encountered an incredibly fun bunch of locals, stocked up on fresh veggies and other goodies (campsite ‘sniffders’!) and shortly after that we had snuck back onto the G30. We had no other misfortunes with traffic police until our penultimate day to Lanzhou, but Pete flashed his own smile and charmed the ladies at the barrier, they called him beautiful, took his photo and waved us on our way.
Pete and I were euphoric as we freewheeled over the Yellow River into Lanzhou, even more happy to know that our old friends Ramon and Hanne would also be there ready to share in some celebratory beers with us. Joy and Happiness.

Fifteen days from the Kazakh/ China border and we’re now about six hundred kilometres from Lanzhou, our first major goal in China, marking the completion of the first two thousand three hundred of the six thousand kilometres that we need to cover in order to cross this epic country. This first leg of the ride across China is one that many people decide to skip, and jump on the train from Ürümqi to Lanzhou. We seriously considered the train option, as it would have meant that we’d arrive in Southern China, specifically Sichuan Province, before the weather put’s on its winter jacket and develops an attitude. The idea of breaking our line gave me nightmares and cold-sweats for about three days. I kept thinking to myself that we might as well have just gone on a weekend mini-break to a spa resort in Devon if we were just going to start training vast chunks of our ride east. So here we are, sat in our tent, bellies half-full of a delicious petrol-station dinner: pot-noodles gastronomified with horrifically low quality hot-dog style sausages, that could easily be made out of plasticine, and pre-packaged pickled eggs. I’ve been struggling to read Duff McKagan’s (ex-bassist from the original Guns n’ Roses line-up… it was a nostalgic choice for easy bedtime, or on the toilet, reading) autobiography on the iPhone Kindle app, but I’m so knackered after todays one hundred and sixty kilometre ride, all my eyes want to do is crust over with tiredness and close the curtains for a deep sleep. I’ve decided to play the age old camping challenge of trying to convince myself that I don’t really need a wee and of course I can make it until the morning before relieving my bladder from the pressure of the countless litres of water I’ve drunk throughout the day. It goes without saying that I won’t complete the challeneg, and that I’ll have to drag myself away from the cosy cocoon of my three-season sleeping bag multiple times throughout the night… Take that bladder! Take that unbroken nights sleep!

Sunset from our campsite a few kilometres from Jiǔquán, Gansu Province. A truck giving another truck a backie.

We still haven’t quite mastered putting our new tent up perfectly. The wind’s been changing direction all day, from amazing tail-winds sending us hurtling down the G30 highway to soul-destroying, energy-zapping headwinds that make it feel like we’re cycling with flat tyres made of concrete, and an extra coating of wet bread dough. The sides of the tent are flapping just enough to cause the zips to jingle around. I would put my expensive, custom ear-plugs in, but since we woke up (I didn’t… it was our friend Tobias who woke the rest of us up) to find some young Uzbek kids riffling through our stuff a few months back, it’s probably best to be able to hear what’s going on outside the tent in the night. Some how I’ve still got the energy to let the rattling zips get on my nerves. My brain seems to suddenly have developed the ability to translate the rattling noise into English… there might something lost in translation from ‘zip-speak’ to English, but I’m pretty sure the zips are trying to remind me not to forget that my bladder’s extremely full.
We’ve set up camp about a hundred metres from the highway. The ground is hard and flat. Flat enough to be comfortable, slightly too hard to be able to sufficiently hammer the tent pegs in. We had just about managed to get everything setup before the sun went down, even though we decided to start looking for a place to camp at about six o’clock. There’s a continuous barbed wire fence that separates the highway from the surrounding landscape. It seems like a ridiculous thing to build. For the last one thousand seven hundred kilometres the fence has separated the highway from nothing but empty desert. It’s also pretty bloody inconvenient when it comes to searching for a place to camp, as we’ve got to keep riding, sometimes for an extra half hour, just to look for a hole in the fence.

Couldn’t find a gap in the bloody barbed-wire fence, so we set-up camp on a bank on the side of the highway. Little boxes of obnoxiousness.

Not far from our campsite are three clanky old trucks parked on the small road parallel to the highway. The truck drivers are chatting, hacking snotty spit onto the ground and tinkering around with their trucks. The G30 is one amazingly busy road. A torrent of trucks and cars pass us continuously throughout the day, the road seems is even busier throughout night. Maybe the toll price is cheaper when it’s dark? Huge trucks carrying even bigger loads; wind-farm windmill blades, large sections of factory machinery, cars upon cars upon cars, hundreds of tonnes of cotton, chillies and coal. The tangled, heavy loads of cogs, pipes and framework could be on their way to become part of a new Chinese space station or some security device to be fitted onto a watch-tower on the Great Firewall of China… although they’re more likely to become part of a Kinder Egg toy production facility or chicken foot removal processing plant.

G30 highway and yurt. Mary and the Village People. Chillies drying in the sun.

Actually this whole post has been a bit of a lie. I’m not really sat up, all cosy, full of pre-wee-water in our torch-lit tent somewhere along the G30 in middle of the bleak, atmospheric plains of the northern Gansu Province. I’m actually sat on our slightly too firm double-bed, in our private en-suite room in the International Youth Hostel (not actually affiliated in any way with the YHA). It’s a slow, relaxing and indulgent Sunday morning, three days into our five days off the saddle here in Lanzhou. I’m washing down my porridge, made with imported Australian oats, with my third cup of Nescafé, all bought from the near-by hyper-market at ridiculous imported goods prices. It’s not that I lied to you, all of the above is a combination of factual events. During the countless hours of head-space we cycled through on our way across the desert plateau to Lanzhou, I was thinking of things I wanted to write about. I wanted to write something authentic and live from a campsite in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to write about the flotsam and jetsam of the flowing tide of traffic; the piles of smashed glass twinkling in the sunlight on the side of the road like mounds of diamonds waiting to encrust the next unsuspecting tyre, the jet-black peelings of rubber, shavings from blown-out truck tyres, and of course what would a list of roadtrip similes be without a mention of the long and winding asphalt ribbon of thousands of miles of highway, or as we’re in China, maybe it’s more of a grey mung bean starch flat pulled noodle.

Celebrating the first chunk of our ride across China.

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Our route across China… so far

15,800kms down the line and we’ve made it from Guernsey (or at least Saint Malo) to China! It’s 8.30am and we’re sat in our room at a hostel in Urumqi, a huge and surprisingly cosmopolitan city isolated like an island in the middle of a huge desert (a desert island) of north-western China. We now have twenty three days left of our thirty day China visas and in that time need to cycle 1900kms east (with no more days off the saddle) from Urumqi to Lanzhou where we’ll hopefully arrange a further thirty day extension before heading south. We’ve been in Urumqi for three nights and were meant to leave yesterday, to keep to our visa/km schedule, but decided as it was Mary’s birthday on the 24th we’d give ourselves an extra day off to relax and do a bit of mooching… if the winds are as kind to us as they were on the way to Urumqi, we’ll easily make up the time.

On crossing the border from Kazakhstan, that marked the end of the Central Asian leg of our trip, and into China, we had an unexpectedly warm welcome into the nineteenth country of this extended holiday (of course I mean extraordinarily brave and epic World adventure) by the very friendly Chinese customs officers. Passports stamped, customs officers rated (there is a selection of buttons in the form of faces, ranging from happy to sad, that you are encouraged to press as an evaluation of your customs-er service). As we walked through the passport control one of the officers whispered to me “I would do anything to come with you”… not that surprising having just been told that they have to work ten hour shifts, seven days a week with no holiday for the first three years. I was reminded of my own life as an extremely driven work-horse back at home, slogging through a gruelling three and a half day a week with only twelve weeks holiday a year.

Not too much to report about our China adventure yet. The ride from the border to Urumqi was some of the fastest yet, averaging 140km a day for five days. Except for the six punctures caused by small bits of wire, the roads in China are so much better than most we’d experienced in any of the Central Asian countries. Even the driving seems a tad better, drivers seem a little more aware of cyclists… I guess there are a billion of them. The wild camping has so far been easy and plentiful. We even spent one night in a traffic island J.G.Ballard style… although we didn’t get lost and die. So, this was brief, but the increasing volume of the traffic outside our window is reminding me that we’d better get our asses back on the saddles and begin chipping our way through the desert kilometres.

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Our route from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Urmuqi, China I’ve written this post on our iPhone… So I’m not sure if the map will display correctly. If you can see the line of our entire route just zoom in to the far right section for the latest… I guess that’s obvious, as we’re cycling east.