Day 116-119 (Guazhou – Zhangye)

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.

Day 120-124 (Zhangye – Minhe)

Day 120 Zhangye – Minle 69 km
Day 121 Minle – Ebuchen 62 km
Day 122 Ebuchen – Menyuan 97 km
Day 123 Menyuan – Ganchankou 106 km
Day 124 Ganchankou – Minhe 120 km

After having spent a month in the chinese deserts of Taklamakan and Gobi we have now entered the mountainous areas of Qinghai province in central China. Gone are the dry days with only sand and stone and now we have started to enjoy high altitudes, rain, cold weather and steep climbs. 

The landscape that we have passed the last few days have been absolutely stunning and there are not words to describe how beautiful the sceneries have been. The saying that a picture says more than a thousand words is what comes to my mind so I in this blog post I will let the photos speak….

Day 120 Zhangye – Minle
One of the advantages with going by bus for 450 km was that we could catch up with Bartek from Poland whom we cycled through Kazakstan and most of Uzbekistan with. We stayed at the same hotel in Zhangye and since he is going to Singapore we will be riding pretty much the same route all the way to Bangkok. We don’t cycle together during the days but try to get to the same place in the evenings. 

As we left Zhangye we cycled past some buildings that looked very traditionally chinese.

The areas surrounding Zhangye seems busy with all sorts of agricultural activities. After a month in the desert we highly enjoyed seing colorful flower fields.

Zhangye is situated at about 1500 meters altitude just north of a mountain range. Since we are heading south we would have to pass those mountains and the road out of Zhange would take us slowly up to 3700 meters in 100 kilometers.

The gradient from the city to the mountain pass is not steep at all. The road is straight and only slowly uphill and it would definately be possible to go straight from Zhangye to the pass at 3700 meters in one day if it wasn’t for the altitude related problems such a quick ascent would cause. Our plan was therefore to stay at the town of Minle which is located around 2300 meters above the sea level.

About half way to Minle we caught up with Bartek who was eating a light lunch at a shop in a village. We joined him and had a delicious lunch consisting of instant noodles and some chocalates…..

When we arrived in Minle we discovered a rather big town that would definately be called a city in Sweden. When we cycled past Bartek we made a plan that we would go ahead and look for a hotel and if we couldn’t find any we would send and SMS to him and then go and find a good place to camp outside the town. 

Fortunately we found a good and very priceworthy hotel. We paid the equivalent of 18 Euros for a room for all three of us that had a nice bathroom, good beds and a proper internet connection.

Day 121 Minle – Ebuzhen
The mountain pass above Minle is actually a double pass. The first pass is slightly below 3700 and the next one 30 km later is almost 3800 meter high. Our plan when leaving Minle was to get past at least the first one and if possible also the second one. 

We were a bit concerned that this would be a too quick ascent that could cause us altitude related problems. During our trip in Pamir two years ago we both suffered swollen faces and in Kyrgyzstan a month ago Wej got a swollen face while we both had light head aches. 3800 meters is not very high but it seems that both of us are a bit sensitive to high altitude but we hoped that our recent stay in Kyrgyzstan had made us at least a bit aclimatized to the altitudes we were now going to spend time at.

The ride out of Minle was wonderful. It is late summer or early autumn here and everywhere people were busy harvesting whatever they grow in their fields. The tailwind that pushed us up to Minle the day before wasn’t as strong this day but it was an easy uphill ride.

Bartek had left Minle almost two hours before us and when we got a glimpse of another cyclist far ahead of us we were quite sure that it was him. When we got closer it turned out that it wasn’t Bartek after all, it turned out to be a chinese cyclist who introduced himself as ”Fisher”.

Fisher spoke very good english and we stopped and talked to him for almost half an hour before we continued. He told us he has an education in computer science and worked with software development for three years when he realized that he wanted to travel around China by bike. 

When leaving Minle we cycled past farms and fields for a few hours before the landscape got more barren and steppe like. The views resembled those we enjoyed in Kyrgyzstan a few weeks ago and instead of enjoying colorful flowers we now had to enjoy the views of Yaks and sheep in their summer pasture.

It turned out that we had no problems with the altitude and when we later caught up with Bartek he seemed to be doing just fine so we cycled ahead of him. Two hours later we stopped to wait for him 300 meters below the pass and when he arrived he was feeling bad. He had troubles with his stomach and had got a fever. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that it was altitude related and we stopped for half an hour so that he could get some rest before deciding whether to go back or continue forward. Meanwhile, the chinese cyclist Fisher arrived and joined us. Bartek said he felt better and we decided to continue over the pass and down to the next village where we believed we could get some indoor accomodation. 

The temperature dropped and when we finally arrived in the little village of Ebuzhen it was only 6-7 degrees and very windy. Fisher immediately started to run around to find accomodation while we and our shivering Polish friend who had a fever could do nothing but wait. 

Day 122 Ebuzhen – Menyaun
Everytime we plan to enter a place we think will be a small town we run into a very big city. With Ebuzhen it was the other way around. We thought it would be a small town but it was only a medium sized village. The room Fisher had found for the four of us was just a simple room with two beds so Wej and I slept on our own mattresses on the floor while Fisher and Bartek had a bed each.

As we prepared to leave I got to witness where Yak meat comes from. I saw how two men led a yak into the backyard behind our guesthous, put it on the ground and cut its throat over a big bucket to collect its blood. I haven’t seen such a big animal being slaughtered before so I watched the process with interest.

Some of you who follow this blog might find this pictures disgusting, but if you are a meat eater, then remember that all that meat on your dinner plate have gone through this process but maybe under more hygienic conditions.

Apart from watching a yak being slaughtered I also had to repair both my tyres. I knew that my rear tyre was leaking but I didn’t know there was a leak in my front tyre as well. If there is something I don’t like with this trip, then it is all the flat tyres and the number of flats has risen sharply since we entered China.

The landscape around Ebuzhen towards the next pass offered great views of snowcapped mountains. The area is very green and there are small farms along the road. I am not quite sure but it seems that there are Tibetans and Wei Muslims as well as Han Chinese living in this area. Many of the houses have very nice decorations but I am not sure which of the ethnicities that lives in this kind of house.

Bartek felt better this morning, but instead Fisher was feeling ill. He had to cycle very slowly and we didn’t want to leave him behind in that condition so we cycled with him to keep him company and be able to assist if needed. When we reached the pass at 3767 meters altitude after some 25 kilometers he had recovered completely and could go on at normal speed.

Just like all other uphill struggles this one also had a downhill joy on the other side of the pass. We quickly descended on the nice road and soon we left the grassy mountains behind us and entered into a valley with lots of people who were busy harvesting their fields.

We had all got split up during the day and Bartek was cycling in front of us while Fisher was behind. Fisher was going towards the city of Xining while Bartek and we were going to turn left for the city of Minhe some 100 km west of Lanzhou. 

The weather got worse with increasing windspeed and dropping temperatures so Fisher decided to change his plan and ride with us instead. This would be a detour for him but very positive for us. Besides the good company Fisher could also manage to get us into a simple and cheap but very nice hotel that wouldn’t otherwise have been able to host foreigners. The situation was solved by Fisher renting a room and the staff turning a blind eye to him having three guests staying overnight in that room. 

Day 123 Menyuan – Ganchankou 
When we were cycling in the heat in the Kazak and Uzbek deserts we discussed if we would be able to get past the Taklamakan desert and get south before the arrival of autumn or if it would eventually catch up with us. Now we know the answer to that question. The autumn is here and the weather we are enjoying right now is very much like what we would expect in Sweden at this time of the year. 

The alarm clock in the room that the four of us shared woke us up at 7 AM. Bartek went up to have a look at the weather and told us it was raining heavily. That was bad news for all of us but maybe mostly for Wej and me since we had decided to send home our rain gear and warm sweaters. Once outside it turned out to be 7-8 degrees, rain and windy. The only good thing was that the wind was on our backs. 

Wej and I went to buy an extra sweater and long johns and when we were ready to leave the rain had already stopped, but it was still cloudy and cold. Even if the day started badly this was going to be one of the finest cycling days so far. A slow downhill, tailwind and a marvelous mountain scenery made this day a day to remember. We hope we will have plenty of days like this one during the coming month when we cycle through central China. 

Fortunately the weather got better and we got some stunning views. We stopped very often to take photos and the pictures below are just a few.

Riding with company means that we can get some photos with the two of us in the same picture.

The little village of Ganchankou has nothing more than a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and an intersection. The next morning Fisher would turn right towards Xining while Bartek and we would turn left towards Minhe and Lanzhou. 

Day 124 Ganchankou – Minhe
After four people riding together for two days it was inevitable that someone sooner or later would get a flat tyre. Guess who was the lucky one to find a flat rear tyre in the morning…… At least I could sit inside the glass covered verandah to fix not only this puncture, but also the previous ones that hadn’t yet been repaired.

With bikes loaded onto bikes with tyres that hold the pressure we went to have breakfast which would be the last meal we shared with Fisher, at least on this journey. We hope to cycle with him in Thailand or in China some other time.

The last day in the valley between Menyuan and Minhe was just as beautiful and today we could even enjoy some nice weather with a clear sky and nice temperature. When I say nice temperature it means neither cold like yesterday nor hot like in the desert – it’s just pleasant and we can ride with a thin long sleeve shirt. 

When we cycled along the Taklamakan desert we didn’t see how the local people live. The reason for that was that there were very few villages and that we mainly stayed on the motorway. This made us to see too much sand and rocks and too little of how the locals live. We have now left the motorway and cycle on very small roads and pass numerous villages and it is very interesting to see what they look like. 

Some 40 kilometers before Minhe there was an abrupt change from a beautiful small road in a narrow valley to first a 20 km long section of dusty road work and then to busy suburbs with hundreds and hundreds of trucks carrying sand, rocks or coal. It was so dusty that we had difficulties seeing the road we were traveling on.

When we arrived into Minhe we were denied to stay at the first hotel we tried at. Our luck was better at the second one. Unfortunately the hotel has no luggage room so we had to bring our dusty bikes into the lift and park them in the room.

Day 125-128 (Minhe – Gannan)

A tale of rain and hills

Right now we are in an intensive cycling period and we try to cycle as much as possible and avoid any long stops. There are two reasons for this and one is that we want to get south and away from the autumn as fast as we can and the other one is that we need to think of our visa extension which need to be done somewhere around Chengdu by the end of this month or early October.

We try to not have any rest days now, but put in some days with easy cycling or days with only half the normal distances. The day when we left Minhe was such a day. We checked out from the hotel at 1 PM and started cycling at 2 PM. It was downhill and tailwind on good roads and to cycle 66 km under those circumstances was just like having a restday. The ride was not very exiting and after the last few days of cycling in a fantastic landscape there is really nothing comparable to say about this day’s ride. It was 66 pleasant kilometers on a busy road without any exiting sights along the way.

Our Polish friend started before us and we didn’t expect to catch up with him the same day. Later that day we learned that he had made an navigational error and were 40 km behind us instead of the same distance ahead of us. Taking the wrong turn is never fun and it happens to all touring cyclists. Our most recent experience was when we lost some 50 km due to a wrong turn at an intersection in Uzbekistan. 

In the late afternoon we finally reached the banks of the Yellow River. We crossed it twice in two days but the second crossing was on a much more spectacular place than the first one and we count this as our midpoint on our way through China. 

For those of you who check our daily map section we have now split the maps in China part 1 and China part 2 because there would be too many maps under one single country. The split was planned to be done when we reached the midpoint, i.e. the Yellow River. 

We have now camped three nights in a row. Our first camp site was right outside a sleepy village on the shore of the Yellow River and just at beginning of the first of the two major climbs we were to deal with the coming day. 

Finding spots to pitch the tent is still easy and this one was one of the most convenient so far. It was on a little hill behind an abandoned house and although close to the road it wasn’t visable. 100 meter away there was a little stream of clear water that we could use for washing ourselves in.

The next morning we woke up to the sound of rain falling on the roof of our tent. It is never fun, especially when you camp on a dirt hill which would be very muddy when it rains. We stayed in bed half an hour extra and when we finally got out the rain had stopped. After having cycled for about 1 km it started again and we did the 10 km climb of 600 meter in heavy rain. Not very fun when we have sent our rain proof jackets to Bangkok….. 

At the top of the climb there was a short tunnel and on the far side of the tunnel we found a little shop where we stopped to ask for hot water in which we poured instant coffee. We were soaking wet and didn’t really look forward to the 17 km downhill speed. Wet clothes, cold weather and high speed is a freezing combination. But it was a joy to roll 17 km without having to turn the pedals even once.

We were now back at the Yellow River and went in to the city of Yongjing to find some warm place where we could eat and dry our clothes. To our great satisfaction the rain stopped while we were having lunch and 7 km beyond the city center we came back to the Yellow River which here had very high banks and the bridge spanning across the river was very high. 

Immediately after crossing the yellow bridge over the Yellow River we started climb number two this day. This climb was a 20 km long and took us up almost 900 meters along the sides of the mountains with an endless number of terraces. It was still cloudy and sometimes a bit foggy and the photos we took didn’t come out very good.

Once we had got up on the mountain we thought it would be a smooth ride, but no….. There were lots of very small climbs and after all previous climbing that day they felt like killer climbs. We actually prefer one very long climb where we can keep our pace for a long time instead of many small ones where it is necessary to change speed, gears, cadence and everything else that breaks the rythm.

Our aim was to cycle 130 km and reach the town of Linxia, but after having cycled almost 100 km and climbed 1900 meters it finally got dark and we had to find somewhere to camp. This time it turned out to be a flat area just before the last village the start of the descent down to the city. We were close, but riding on those roads in darkness is a bad idea so we had to stop.

The following morning we woke up to the sound of……. raindrops falling on our tent…..
Fortunately it stopped and we could pack our gear and rush the remaning 25 km into town where we bought some ponchos and had a long lunch break. When leaving town we came to a roundabout that was very muddy due to ongoing roadworks. There were lots of traffic and in the midst of all this Wej got a flat tyre on her rear wheel.

We had already done 30 km and it was another 100 km and 1200 meters climb to the next city (Gannan) which we knew was too far for us so our intention was to camp. In the middle of nowhere we suddenly found a tourist information office along our way. We stopped and went in and since it was raining again (now we had ponchos so it wasn’t a problem) we asked for nearby hotels. The staff told us there was one 30 km further on and we rushed there only to find it was a simple and dirty guesthouse that was closed. There was nothing to do but to pitch our tent beside the streem a few hundred meters away.

This time it rained when we went to bed and it still rained when we woke up. The surrounding hilltops were completely covered by clouds that poured out its content over us. It was 35 km and 500 meter climb to the town of Gannan where we intended to stay at a hotel, take a half day off and do some laundry and dry our gear. It was raining and uphill but we had a tailwind and our ponchos worked like sails…. About halfway Wej got yet another flat tyre, but this time at a very convenient place right beside a tunnel under the highway that is under construction. We could change to a new innertube without having to get wet.

Arriving in Gannan we tried the first hotel we passed by, but it had no license to host foreigners. They informed us about two hotels which have the license, but when we cycled past the first one we saw that it was undergoing a complete renovation and the second hotel turned out to be fully booked. The rain had stopped but after three rainy nights in our tent we were not in the mood for this sort of games and the staff at the fully booked hotel called the police to ask what to do. The police told about a third hotel with license to host foreigners and sent out an officer who was on lunch break to show us the way there.

This afternoon I also got a text message from Fisher, the chinese cyclist we cycled with a few days ago. He sent a message to tell us that there had been an earthquake in Menyuan where we stayed together less than a week ago. It was 5.1 on the Richter scale which is not too strong. Nobody seems to be hurt, but we are glad we weren’t there when it happened.