Day 116 Guazhou – Qiaowan 88 km
Day 117 Qiaowan – Qingquan 113 km
Day 118 Qingquan – Qingshui 141 km
Day 119 Qingshui – Zhangye 144 km

In my previous post I told about our decision to catch a bus 450 km to make up for the time we had to stop to service our bikes and make back up plans for our visa situation. Our initial intention was to cycle all the way and avoid public transportations, but the circumstances forced us to take a bus. In retrospect it feels that the only disadvantage with going by bus is that we won’t be able to say that we have cycled ALL the way to Bangkok – this cheat and the two previous ones will make up about 3-4% of the toal distance.

If there was one disadvantage to go by bus there were a couple of other advantages. One was that we could skip a boring section and the other was that we could catch up with our Polish friend Bartek who was riding 3-4 days ahead of us.

It was a dear re-union and we quickly decided to not leave Guazhou the same afternoon and instead stay there that night. Bartek had stayed in a cheap hotel and offered us to stay in his room. Wang – our MTB riding friend in Hami – had told us that his friend runs a hotel in Guazhou and if we needed anywhere to stay we should just let Wang know. After exchanging a few text messages Wang said that we could stay for free in his friends hotel.

Initially we couldn’t find the hotel and had to ask quite a few people about the way there. It then turned out to be almost opposite to the bus station. We had expected it to be a cheap local hotel but when we finally found our way there we discovered a brand new 4 star hotel.

Wej and I went in and told the front desk staff that we were friends of Wang. They then said ”welcome – here is your key”. When we handed over three passports they were a bit confused but soon after Bartek got a key to a room on his own too. We were prepared to stay together but we were treated like VIP:s and a hotel worker soon came with a large tray of fresh fruit to our room. Not knowing where we will stay the next night is one of the joys with this kind of journey. It can be in a culvert under the road or it can be for free in a 4 star hotel.

The hotel was wonderful and the breakfast buffet was the best so far. It is amazing how nicely we are treated – we have only met Wang for a few hours and he has already hosted us for dinner and made his friend host us in his luxury hotel. Unfortunately we never met Wang’s friend who owns the hotel and couldn’t thank him properly in person.

I have read that most of China’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants and we have cycled past many of them. We have also seen that China invests heavily in renewable energy. In the Taklamakan desert we saw a couple of wind turbine farms that consisted of thousands of turbines and when we came to the city of Guazhou located in the outskirts of the Gobi desert we passed some more wind farms. The city also has a factory building wind turbines and a very common sight on the highway was the enormously long trucks carrying the rotor wings or sections of the towers.

As if it wasn’t enough with wind power it also seems that the Chinese are investing heavily in research and production of solar cells. We have passed hundreds of masts with antennas to the cell phone network and all of them are surrounded by solar cells that I believe is providing electricity to the antenna.

When we left Turpan we passed a suburb with newly built apartment blocks and the roofs of those buildings were covered with solar cell panels to generate electricity.

A very simple way to make use of the sun’s power is to let it heat water for domestic use. In every city and village we see the solar collectors on the rooftops of all sorts of buildings. They can be seen on top of large apartment blocks but also in small houses on the country side. The hotel we are staying at here in Zhangye has a number of solar collectors on the roof and every morning we can take a sustainable shower.

Both thai and chinese cities have a lot of motorcycles. In Thailand they are noisy and contribute to the bad air in the towns. In China the motorbikes look like scooters but are powered by electricity. They are soundless (dangerous when walking…) and they produce no exhausts. Of course there are exhausts from the coal fired power plants, but they are outside the cities.

Thailand has a lot of sunshine and I hope that she one day will make use of the sun’s energy in the same way as China does. Thai cities would definately be much more pleasant to stay in if electric scooters were to become as popular as they are here.

The day we left Guazhou was a day which slowly took us uphill. The climb wasn’t as annoying as the headwind and riding by thousands of wind turbines that all face towards the direction we are cycling is directly de-motivating.

The weather forecast for the day when would leave Guazhou was headwind from around 11 AM so we should actually have started early, but it is difficult to get started early when you stay at a luxury hotel… 😉
The road was rather boring and it was the same sandy landscape that we have got used to the last couple of weeks. However, it was much easier to ride in this landscape now since we knew that in only a few days we would leave the sand and get into greener areas.

We had seen on google map that there was a service area some 60 km from Guazhou. It was signposted all the way but when we finally arrived there it turned out that the place was under construction. Neither food, nor water was for sale and the workers told us that the next place where we could eat was 20-30 km away. There was nothing to do than to head out into the headwind again and pedal those kilometers.

After 25 kilometers we arrived at a small village that has a tourist attraction consisting of some very old ruins. There was a restaurant behind the museum where we could have both a dinner and get a hot shower. The plan was to ride on another 2-3 kilometers and pitch our tents, but there was an enormous amount of mosquitos so we asked if we could stay at the petrol station in front of the museum. Unfortunately there was no room for us there but the staff helped us to find another room and we ended up sleeping in the museum guards’ room.

On day three after leaving Guazhou we finally left the desert. The surroundings turned green, we had downhill and tailwind and if it wasn’t for two flat tyres it couldn’t get any better. It was a wonderful feeling to look at flower fields after having seen almost only sand and rocks during the last month.

We have entered an area where there is much more agricultural activity going on than what we have previously seen in China. The photo below shows farmers harvesting onions.

After three days of cycling from Guazhou we reached a small town named Qingshui. We were not sure if there would be any hotel there but we went in to have a look. The locals showed us the way to the only hotel which, as we already expected, had no license to host foreigners. The nice lady who runs the place then made a phone call to the police to ask for permission to host us. The permission was granted but we needed to go to the police station in person to register. The hotel staff drove us there in a car and 10 minutes later we were on our way back.

I don’t understand this thing with all these registrations of foreigners movements. It is allowed to camp without registering, but the authorities want to know if we stay in a hotel. If they wanted to konw where we are all the time – why then allow wild camping???

The weather is great now. It is never hot during day time any longer and the evenings are pleasantly cool, almost a bit cold and we need to put on sweaters or our jackets. It feels very much like the early autumn in Sweden with clear skies and fresh air.

The last day of cycling into Zhangye started with a clear sky offering great views of the snow capped mountains on our right hand side. We stopped many times to take photos, but a few hours later the sky got cloudy and it started to rain heavily. The temperature dropped to 12 degrees and when I asked Wej about where we had this kind of rain last time she immediately replied ”in Sweden….”.

There was nothing to do but keep riding. We discussed the weather we had experienced during our way here and remembered that the last day with cold rain was when we cycled into Krakow in Poland in March – after that it has been either snowstorms, sandstorms, terrible heat or only light rain….
The rain stopped after only one hour, the sunshine came back and the temperatures rose back to around 22 degrees. and our clothes got dry again as we rode the final kilometers on the highway before turning into the city of Zhangye.

We soon found a hotel and when we had showered and were sitting in the room waiting for our friend Bartek to arrive it started to rain heavily again. We were happy to be safely inside and felt pity for good old Bartek who had to fight in the cold rain all by himself.