Tashkent-Vientiane Challenge

Our overland journey took eight weeks to get from Vientiane to Tashkent with our return trip taking only a fraction of that time at two days.

Our bikes were shipped by DHL with Uzbebistan Air on Monday 20th June with Horst, Boris and I on the following flight Wednesday 22nd June. It took the lads until late afternoon on Thursday to finally get the bikes back out of customs in Bangkok when we realised a box was missing. It was the box with Horst's riding gear. A short phone call to Tashkent revealed that 'oops, yes, there is one box still in the office here'. With Horst's protection missing and a severe rain storm pouring down on us at the airport we decided to load the bikes up on a truck and hop into the back of a fancy van. This all was generously sponsored by DHL Bangkok who again proved to be a well run professional team. We then raced through the night to Nong Kai.

On Friday morning then (24.3.2011) we took on the last short drive to the friendship bridge over the Mekong into Laos. Some last minute minor problems arose because we apparently did not have the right paperwork for our bikes to bring them into Laos again. It took us, or rather Horst with his advanced negotiation skills, an hour to resolve the problem and involved Boris and Horst driving back over to the Thai side, getting the exit stamp in the international transport booklet so that the Lao officials could then stamp us in. - Bor pen yang!

For us three, Horst, Boris and me the adventure which a year ago was still a rough plan for a very crazy and exotic trip, is now over. It seems as it was only last week that we headed out! While we get back to work, Simon on his Jolly Jumper is now continuing alone through some more "Stans" and further countries with the aim of reaching the Swiss alpine homelands in August. Check out http://www.laosuri.blogspot.com to stay posted on his journey.

Traveling by train in Uzbekistan

As we had left our bikes in Tashkent for the preparation of the shipment back to Bangkok we took the train to travel between the historic cities. The train system of Uzbekistan is really great and quite efficient. I would not say that booking tickets was easy as most people working at the ticket offices do not speak any languages we do, and train timetables are certainly not as reliable as in Switzerland, but we had a fun experience traveling first class.

First we took the night train from Khiva to Bukhara. The two of us had a full cabin to ourselves with beds that were even long enough for Boris to stretch out his legs. The best thing was the radio in our cabin. It had only one channel and you could listen to a best of collection of eighties songs mixed with modern Russian techno pop. Fantastic. And it played all night full power on the corridors too.

Getting onto the train from Bukhara to Samarkand was quite difficult. Bukhara basically has two tracks running through the train station. Our train happened to stand behind another train that had arrived a bit earlier. So in order to get on our train we had to get right through the other train, which had the doors open on both sides. Easy, in theory. But Uzbek people are probably the most pushy species on Earth and they cannot, under any circumstances give way. Hence, if you have people wanting to get off a train and at the same time others trying to get on that particular train things become a little bit difficult. Especially if at the same time there are also bred and drink vendors hanging out at the train entrances as long as the train is standing in order to sell their goods. In short: total chaos. But once your rolling and the air-conditioning starts to work every thing is fine.

Monuments, monuments, monuments

Uzbekistan's ancient cities are just AMAZING! On June 17th we arrived in Bukhara coming by train from Khiva. Bukhara is "same same but different" to Khiva. It has a well preserved old town filled with many ancient mosques, minarets and medressas. Boris and I were absolutely impressed by the area around the Kalon Minaret. Standing in the middle of the small market square we looked up at the immense Kalon Mosque to one side and the Mir-i-Arab Medressa to the other side and felt like small ants. Bukhara was once the most important Islamic Center in Central Asia. And the Kalon Mosque was designed to be big enough for 10,000 people. The Soviets then turned it into a warehouse during their occupation. It´s really huge but today not much in happening here.

The Kalon Minaret was also impressive for us. First of course because of its great height of 47m and its wonderful design with many ornamental bands. It was constructed 1127 or so and is totally out of brick and mortar. Thanks to its 10m deep foundation, it has survived many earthquakes. Later on it also survived the Russian artillery bombing. On some historic photos we saw that the Minaret looked like Swiss cheese with lots of holes in its upper part.

Finally we were fascinated again by the blue tiles used for the roofs of the minarets and mosques and by the overall friendly and welcoming impression these tall monuments radiate. At the time these inspirational, advanced, light filled buildings were constructed (around 1200-1500 AD) we had quite some dark centuries in Europe leaving behind rather scary looking cathedrals and domes.

Rather scary looking here was however the ancient prison of Bukhara. It was a dungeon of around 11m of depth, of course without light. You could get thrown in here for a multitude of reasons such as not going to prayer at the mosque or not paying adequate respect to the Emir of Bukhara. This happened to the Englishmen Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly in 1842: according to local lore they had neither presents not an official letter from the Queen for the Emir and he felt a bit bit dishonored. Interestingly enough the cell was named the "bug pit" and the mere sight of the dark dungeon sent shivers down our spines.

Bukhara is different to Khiva because it is not as compact and not so museum-like. To our pleasure it was much more lively. In the evening hours when the great heat of the day begins to cede, the plazas of the old town starts to fill with locals chattering and eating in the local restaurants. We of course participated in this tradition. We met up with the Shashlyk-Brothers (Horst and Simon), who had come to Bukhara directly from Tashkent. They had of course already discovered the restaurant serving the best kebab skewers.

On the morning of the 19th June Boris and I continued to Samarkand for a 24h look around before heading back to Tashkent. Again we visited some fantastic monuments. Our favorite site here was definitely Shah-i-Zinda, the avenue of mausoleums. It started with the grave of a cousin of the Prophet Mohamed, who is said to have brought Islam to Central Asia. Later Timor, the dictatorial ruler of Samarkand and his successors constructed a monumental complex with cool caves holding the tombs of their families and favorites. All the mausoleums are decorated with ornamental paintings and blue tiles.

Later in the evening we went to see the Registan, the most renown sight of the city. This was once Samarkand's commercial center and consists of a big Plaza framed by three giant Medressas, somewhat ancient business and trading centers.We had the privilege to climb the minaret of the Ulugbek Medressa on the western side. The monuments normally close at 7pm, but in Uzbekistan there are always a police officer running a little secret business with his gang of working colleges. We took his offer of 20 USD to climb the minaret tower, which is currently under construction just to have a good view onto the Registan in the light of the sunset. And the friendly policeman also offered us to have a look around in the Medressa afterwards - but no longer than 30 minutes :)

Khiva

The history of the Uzbekistan desert region is complex – too complex. There were the ancient Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Western Turks, the Arabs, Genghis Khan, the often forgotten English Empire and finally the Russians, all left their traces. These foreign powers changed the political boundaries and influenced the rivalry of the Silk Road cities. It will take us a while to understand it all. In the mean time we stick to William Cowper’s quote ”a dunce that has been sent to roam excels a dunce that has been kept at home”  or “Ein Dummer auf Reisen wird manchmal zum Weisen, ein Dummer zu Hause bleibt sicher Banause” and enjoy the historic sites. 

And Khiva is indeed amazing, and we understand why the Italian fellow we met back in Tashkent raved about it. The old city is well preserved. It is walled by a thick, high clay wall running all around it with decorated gates to all four directions. Of course the West gate, which points to Mecca is the main entrance and most decorated. The whole city is built of yellow mud bricks and the mosques and ancient madrassas are decorated with blue tiles varying from deep ocean blue to bright turquoise. The most prominent of all monuments is the Kuhna Arc, a fat, turquoise tilted minaret. The story behind this emblem of the ancient slave trading outpost is pretty funny:  The minaret is actually unfinished. It was supposed to become the highest minaret in the Orient permitting the ruling khan to see all the way to Bukhara, some 7 hours away. But when the khan died so to did his wealth and hence it became the world’s most famous (and probably the only) stumpy minaret. The advantage of its current form of course is that it fits on all postcards. 

 

Frozen in time amid the desert Khiva reminds us of an open air museum, which becomes a bit lifeless in the evening hours, once the tourist busses have left. These are the hours when Boris and I get active. From 11am to 5pm it's siesta time. The sun burns down so hard that it is absolutely impossible to wander around outside. But when the sun lowers its stand we start hunting: For best rugs at best prices, for the most famous monuments, for the best photo shots and afterwards for the best dinner. We found some really nice small, local places, which serve super Uzbek food in a cosy atmosphere.

Ancient forts of Khwarezm

Remembering that we are actually still traveling along the ancient Silk Road, Boris and I headed out to the visit see some of the ancient forts in the desert. The ancient highway running from Southern Europe to China is quite amazing: so many goods, religious and cultural ideas, and scientific knowledge have traveled along it. Silk and the art of paper making traveled from China to Europe, while horses, Buddhism and Mediterranean colored glass traveled from West to East.

In the middle of the ancient super highway lays the Khwarezm, a large region south of the Aral Sea bordered by the Kyzylkum desert and Karakum desert. Khwarezm is desert like, very hot and dry but it is full of small oases. They made it possible to travel through this region. A number of forts were operated here in order to provide nightly shelter and security for the travelers on the Silk Road. They were constructed around every 40km as this is the distance a camel can travel in one day.

Today the ruins of numerous forts and the castles of ancient kingdoms can be visited. Boris and I took a taxi from Khiva and drove around in the area for some hours, spotting not only ancient ruins, but also quite some wildlife. Even tough this region seems so life-forbidding we are able to sneak up on lizards, bugs and birds (or they sneak up on us). This little lizard was particularly cheeky. Full of self-confidence he rand towards us, stopped and bounced up and down standing only on his forelegs, and showing of his frightening black-and-white tail. Some of the ruins today provide ideal nesting for wonderfully colored birds. For us this little excursion was a welcoming change from traveling between the ancient towns of Khiva and Bukhara.

Planning a short trip within Uzbekistan

After two days in Tashkent sorting out bike logistics and airplane tickets Boris and I decided to leave the city and visit some of the ancient Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan. A stylish Italian business man staying at the same hotel shouted out “Khiva! You have to go to Khiva, it is the most beautiful of all”.

Trusting his advice we booked a flight to Khiva for the next evening. We also booked a flight further on from Kiva to Bukhara, but we later noticed that the dates were not correct. The travel agent had booked and printed 19th June instead of the 16th June. We went back to correct this mistake, but in the meantime all flights before the 19th had been cancelled. Because of high-ranking politicians visiting Tashkent we were told, apparently. And of course, as this was clearly our fault, we had to pay a cancellation fee for this flight.

The domestic airport was yet another weird experience in Uzbekistan. The lady at the check-in could not speak a word of English, but was happy to assist us in choosing our seats by showing us her pre-historic two-color computer screen. It displayed the airplane in a combination of the letters x, i and o for free, occupied and whatever seats. With such systems it is no wonder everything takes ages to get processed by the authorities! The lady would also have been of assistance for changing dollars into sum and giving us quite a good exchange rate. When it comes to money, and money changing Uzbekistan is particularly funny. There is a black market where you get pretty good exchange rates. But this market is not as clandestine as we imagine it; in fact everybody seems to be participating except the travel agencies.  Even the lady behind the official money exchange bureau in the airport (next to the police station) is surprised that she gets customers and that they want to change 200 USD in the official way. Uzbek Sum is worse than Lao Kip! For 1 USD you get about 1,725 to 2.400 Sum depending on the nature of the change (official or otherwise). And the biggest note is 1,000 Sum. This leads to literally carrying around bags of money. And money counting is an art that we are slowly mastering from the locals who are extremely fast at it.

Also not so lucky was the attempt of Boris to book the missing air ticket from Kiva to Bukhara at the airport. We wrote down all the details for the agent, she checked for availability, nodded and made us pay. Five minutes later finally understanding what the paper ticket actually stated we realized that she had booked Kiva-Tashkent for us and it took Boris another 20 minutes to resolve this error. We decided to catch the train for the way back:)

In the end all worked out well and we boarded a new Airbus A320.  Great flight with friendly hosts.

Rosie made it across the finish line

… and so did Horst’s black stallion: We made it to Tashkent! Yesterday evening (12. June) we rolled into Tashkent, after a hot day of riding from the Fergana Valley over the Kamchik pass into the well-watered plain that surrounds Uzbekistan’s capital. Especially on the last stretch of our ride it was very hot and along our route people jumped into the waters of irrigation channels or reservoir lakes. Quite tempting for us to join them, but somehow we could resist, we just had an urge to reach our final destination without any road incident at the last moment.

That said Uzbeks drive like complete lunatics! With people piling up in the back of their cars, they speed along the highways where overtaking is the absolute must-do if you want to be cool. The roads of course also make it possible as they are usually wide and in good conditions with separated lanes. Our bikes were truly exotic here and so the car drivers slowed down while overtaking us and in order to have a good close-up look they sometimes came so closed that we were worried about collision. But the car passengers always loved it, giving us big smiles, the thumbs-up and waving frantically out of the windows. Many even played the game of overtake and be overtaken again by us to get the most fun out of it.

However the greatest moments of fear in street traffic ever on this trip we all had last night sitting in a taxi coming back from dinner. That guy nearly drove into to car in front of him at the red light. We have no clue why he chose to break so late because it was obviously a red light. With a mm to spare we escaped without incident and the driver took it all in as a normal event.

Anyways, back to Rosie and the other two bikes. They all made it to Tashkent without any major incident. Rosie had this ticking sound of the motor all along the way and leaked a little oil. It worried us at first, but after we made it over the Chinese border we figured it might as well be fine for the entire trip. Horst's bike had a few electric problems like the handle-bar warmers not working (a luxury that Simon and Boris enjoyed very much up in Tibet), the front lights passing out in Shangri-La, or the trip computer which met his mark in Tibet. Simon's Jolly Jumper developed a severe drinking habit and consumed a lot of oil for a while and he is the most intolerance towards Central Asian dirty fuel. These minor issues gave the boys ample of opportunities to fiddle a bit around the bikes, which they love of course. They also gave us the change to meet nice people: every time we needed the help of a mechanics we found very competent people who were happy to help us out, let us use their tools and give us addresses of their biking friends in other cities along our way.

All in all our bikes now did about 12,300 km on this journey so far – more detailed stats to come when we are back to Vientiane. The road causality count is 3. Horst rode over a chicken back in Laos and caught a bird. Reacting like a stag-hound, after he hit the chicken we could witness Horst trying to get several more chooks under his tires. These bloodthirsty attacks gave him the nickname "the chook killer" thereafter. Boris also hit one very stupid bird and Simon got away with a handful of almost-collisions with dogs and an occasional sheep. We are happy that it stayed at the stage of almost-collisions and that nothing happened as we are not sure who would have won theses battles.

Horst and Boris are now organizing the shipment of their bikes back to Bangkok, Simon is preparing for the ride on to Uri, Switzerland and I am trying to update this blog which has been neglected over the past two weeks. As our bikes have to be left with DHL several days before shipment we are planning to visit some of the famous Uzbek cities by plane and train in the coming days.

Kyrgyzstan - land of yurts, horses and gold teeth

Lake Karakol

Bazaars of Kashgar

Bishkek in summer fashion

Bishkek we love you! Such a beautiful small and cozy country capital you are! It reminded me a little bit of my hometown the city of Biel in Switzerland. The first impression is not so good: a few big, ugly, rundown industrial buildings, concrete apartment blocks and some marble-faced government buildings in a damp 70ies style. But aside of these beauty spots the city is far from boring and it seems to have just awakened after a long sleep and is now out in the bright sun for all to see. Bishkek has wide streets flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels carrying fresh mountain water. Innumerable trees along the streets provide shade and separate the cars lanes from broad pedestrian walkways, children playgrounds and cycling paths.

In Bishkek everyone seems busy and innovative in the quest for making a living. The lovely family running our B&B for example also runs an Italian bakery and a car repair shop. It seems people do not fear new ventures and generally operate with a "have a go attitude'. That also includes cloths. The summer fashion must have arrived just a while ago and while lunching on Durum Kebabs we watch the chic business ladies pass by on the alley ways. The elder ladies, "big mamas", wear light skirts with flower motives - "Voegele Mode" at its best. We also witnessed many serious fashion crimes, topping even the best we had previously encountered in SE Asian cities. We see funny combinations of headscarves and super short skirts or an occasional belly bottom free top. High healed stilettos are an absolute must even if they make walking almost impossible. In the late evening hours everybody is out in the streets lined by cafes and stylish restaurants. They are backed up by rows and rows of Russian techno blasting night clubs where you can party on until the morning hours.

We didn't go and party but enjoyed fantastic Syrian food at a posh outdoor restaurant and exchanged travel stories with Chriggi and Koebi, an adventurous couple from Safneren closed to Biel who we met near Lake Song-Kol. Now traveling in a Landcruiser they have traveled the world on a motorbike 20 years ago and had some funny tales to share with us.

Cars and trucks of Kyrgyzstan

Do you live in Germany or Switzerland? Have you ever wondered where your old car ended up when in no longer passed the safety standards? When I turned in my beloved 1984 Volkswagen Golf the car dealer said two things: “Sorry, I can’t give you a reduction on your new car, but I will not make you pay for the old car, you are lucky” and “We’ll ship it to the East, probably Romania”.

Well, it could as well have been that my Golf was shipped even further, all the way over to Kyrgyzstan! What a change from China, where we saw only new cars and brands included many unknown ones from China itself, South Korea, or an occasional Toyota Hilux. Here in Kyrgyzstan we see old to very old cars, the former category made up by Volkswagen, Audi and BMW while the latter category included unknown Russian brands or of course Ladas.

The entire national overland-bus fleet seems to be made up by old Mercedes 14-seater minibuses, which are of course filled up with lot more people than there are seats. The origins of minibuses, small lorrys and also large trucks are unmistakably Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. This we quickly derived from the old advertisement-stickers which were never removed from the sides of the cars and windows. We see slogans like “Liebe Gruesse – Ihr Blumen Giesse”, or “Fenster-Scheiben-Tueren”, quite amusing for us of course. In Karakol we visited the local car market, situated right across the livestock market. There one can not only buy old cars, but also old to antique car parts. Every town in Kyrgyzstan in fact seems to have a small market for buying old European cars. 

With the proximity to China selling cheap new cars we were quite surprised to see so many European cars and yet so little Chinese ones. A Russian lad running the sauna-spa near Karakol explained this phenomenon in his own words. Apparently the new Chinese cars are not good, because the “klapper-klapper … boom-boom big problem”. So you start having a small problem which eventually develops into a big problem. Russian cars are much better. “Russian cars is always problem. But small problem. No big problem”. There you go, reason enough to go for the Lada 1600.

While pottering along the country roads we saw many vintage cars and tractors which almost belong into a museum rather than on the road and I was always looking out for that car holder with wet feet getting out of a Mars-red Golf with sunflower stickers in excitement to have a reunion with my beloved water leaking old car.

Feasting in Karakol

On the 4. June we reached Karakol on the southern side of lake Issyk-Kol. Karakol was another major milestone for all. We had read about so many different outdoor activities here in the beautiful mountainous setting that we planned to stay for a full three days. 

Karakol itself was already wonderful to hang out and relax. It’s quite a laid back little town where you have to search hard for the center. Some people say it is just another standard issue Sovjet town, basically a grid of broad streets and empty squares. That's partly true, but there is quite some beauty to it. The whole town seems like an accumulation of cute little white houses with sky-blue window frames set into large compounds with old fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The wide streets are bordered by huge old trees and colorful wild flowers. We stayed in a lovely slightly outdated B&B run by a resolute but very hospitable mama who cooked fantastic goulash soup for dinner and hearty breakfast. 

The best part of course was that we arrived in time for the season of apricots, cherries and strawberries! We bought about a kilo of each on the local market and consumed all in one sitting, so super tasty were the fruits. Boris now holds a new record for the amounts of non-tined cherries consumed in one session.  

While Horst and Simon decided to go up one of the famous valleys which led to a small resort where the combination of hot springs with cold mountain streams creates a natural sauna set up, Boris and I hopped back on the bike and headed for the other famous valley to visit the famous Jeti-Ögüz rock formations and to camp further up in the valley.

On the way up we detoured to hike to a beautiful waterfall. To get there we rode to a former cosmonaut rehabilitation center set in the lovely surroundings of a lush alpine meadow. As it was Sunday many Kyrgyz families also went for an outing in their old cars and we saw happy picnic groups all along the way. We also got held up by a bunch of totally drunken forestry guys who were celebrating the World Forestry Day. Concentrating hard on their words and posture they explained their activities in the surrounding forest plantations to us and invited us to drink with them. We fortunately could escape. It would have been hard to catch up to their alcohol level not to mention to keep up with the amounts they were drinking. We passed a number of yurt camps which were being set up for the summer season and found a beautiful camping spot along the river. Here our feasting continued with roasted chicken, fresh bread, and of course another round of fresh fruit and a most classy kitschy campfire.

Riding along the Taklimakan desert

For the last few days (25.5. to 28.5) we were riding along the northern edge of the Taklimakan desert. This was a real change to the environments we were riding in before: Hot, mostly flat and straight roads. These were long ridding days! In their course, Go-West-Strategy, aimed at the exploitation and development of the far western parts of the empire the Chinese are now building a new highway leading to Kashgar. Hence, sometimes we could cover quite some distance riding on perfectly straight and new roads. At other times however we were forced to ride through the construction sites. 

It's flat now!

Chinese highway construction seems really funny to us. On some stretches it is built right on top of the old road and there is no alternative but to go straight through the construction works and snake left and right along the building sites on bad dusty roads. There are neither signs which would lead the direction, nor workers or traffic lights to control the one lane stretches. Basically you have to find your own way through the labyrinth and watch out as there is only one fundamental rule: Trucks don’t give way to motorcycles – even if they come straight at you on your side. 

Yet sometimes we couldn’t ride too far despite perfect roads. It was the heavy storm like head winds which made riding very difficult, tiring and never ending. At 95 km/h ground speed and with 40 to 60 km/h head wind our communication system struggles, so we can’t even chat or listen to music – boring! Why did we speed up that much over these last days? Well, because we didn’t want to miss the livestock market in Kashgar. It is held every Sunday and seems to be a true attraction. The thought that we might only reach our final milestone in China on Monday was unbearable for us, so we had to speed up. Having said that these were rather looooong days on the rooooaaad along the desert, the road side attractions also became a little less frequent. There was not one highlight after the other like in Yunnan and Tibet, but there were very little curiosities along the way:

Dust devils! These strong whirlwinds twisted around along the horizon as well as along the road side. Pretty fun to watch them spin around dust and small objects like pet-bottles or Styrofoam pieces. But we had to be careful not to ride straight into such a devil when it blazed across the road as it could have shaken us off the bike.

Our road basically followed the foothills of some mountain ranges (first the Bogden Shan and then the Tien Shan range) to the right hand side. In the evening was therefore the best riding time as the sinking sun illuminated these ranges in stunning colors and made their funny shapes visible. Besides these dominating ranges we passed by other, smaller bizarre looking rock masses which emerged from the otherwise flat desert landscapes. Before the desert city of Turpan there was an outstandingly beautiful range. It looked as if the small pinnacles were just being carved out of a massive junk of sand stone by the constantly blowing winds. 

What made the sight even more interesting was the foreground. We had landed in grape country. There were massive grape plantations all around us with their lush green colors making a nice contrast to the otherwise red and yellow landscape. The grapes are not planted to produce wine here, but for making raisins and sultanas. There were thus traditional grape drying sheds lined up all around us. These sheds called Chunche are constructed out of clay bricks with lots of holes in their walls. In these shady sheds the grapes can be be hung up to dry quickly by the warm wind which can sizzle through the holes. Amazingly easy technology which seems to work well considering the huge piles of raisins found in the markets.

In Turpan we set a new altitude record – this time on the negative scale: after a long drive down we arrived in the Turpan depression which is a fault-bounded trough located around and south of the city-oasis of Turpan. Besides being the third lowest exposed point on earth this depression is entirely below sea level and it is apparently also the hottest and driest area in China. We didn’t stay long, a quick lunch and we continued.

We usually traveled on the highway, but sometimes we made a detour through the rural villages along the way. These towns were all small oasis with lush green agricultural fields surrounding them with huge poplar trees protecting the fields from the desert winds. It was fun dashing along these alleys of trees and watching the hustle and bustle on the fields and in the small town markets. We realized that we are in the traditional Muslim communities of the region now. Not like in the big, modern Chinese towns along the highway. Here we did not have to watch out for dogs and pigs running across the road anymore, but we saw men with long beards and small white hats, and women in colorful headscarves instead. And the local fruit we sampled (surrounded by crowds of people of course who came to watch the foreigners) where just super tasty!

Heading into the desert

Yesterday (24.5) we left Dunhuang to tackle our long east-west ride to Kashgar. From now on our bags would be more stuffed again as we could finally store away the layers and layers of cloths. As usual the first task of the day of course was to fuel the bikes. Well, easily said then done. In China there is a special rule for fueling up motorbikes. It does not at all speed up the whole process and, to our disgrace this rule is very closely followed in Xinjiang Province. The law says that motorbikes cannot, under any circumstances (no, not even big bikes with four aliens on them) get close to the fueling hose. Instead they have to be parked in considerable distance of around 20m away. You fuel them with a traditional Chinese tea pot, which of course you have to usually pay in advance, because the fuel station staff are extremely scared that you would otherwise leave without paying, and of course you have to shlep these teapots back and forth yourself.

That done we had our first ride through the dry and hot region. We spotted another herd of double humped camels, Boris' favorite animal so far  on the ride. It was funny to see them loose their warm coat. The ones we had observed previously, further up north looked much more fatty and big. But now we knew that this was only because the thick fur. These double humped camels are funny things with their slobbering lips and huge heads.

We stayed the night in Hami and enjoyed another delicious dinner on the local market. While we would walk right into the kitchen in Yunnan and pick the food we like to make some delicious dishes (and this was by the way not at all rude, the chefs loved it and everybody does this), here the set up was a bit different: Here everything takes place in the open space of the big main square of town.

Numerous little barbeque stalls are lined up around a sitting area of plastic tables and chairs. You go around these stalls and pick what ever you like to be thrown on the grill: Chicken or mutton, bread and vegetables. All is prepared on small skewers and served to your table. A fantastic easy going atmosphere. Unfortunately all skewers are usually marinated with the same spicy seasoning. Boris has already enough of them and I am also reaching the limits, not last as my stomach does not handle this spice mix all too well ... and mutton is not my favorite. Luckily in some of these eat-and-drink bazaars there are also other dishes like stews or dumplings.

Of dried fruit, Buddha caves & sand dunes

On the late evening of 22.5 we finally completed the lengthy and cold Xining-detour. We arrived in Dunhuang, unfortunately missing Horst's family who just departed on their own journey. Dunhuang is a buzzing, lively, lovely tourist city. It felt like x-mas riding downtown as the streets are decorated over and over with colorful lighting strings. Finding a hotel was not easy: not too cheap – as usually filthy and dubious, not too fancy and expensive, good parking for the bikes, proximity to pedestrian zone, … jaja, we know what we want! 

Why was it not easy to find accommodation? Because Dunhuang is very famous. It is located at a crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. In the era of hooved transportation (here mostly camels), this rich oasis was once a major stop and strategic position between Lhasa and India to one side, and Mongolia to the other side. Dunhuang has a fantastic market for dried fruits and all kinds of nuts. Here’s where we stocked up with snackies for the road and afterwards enjoyed dinner in the market.

Dunhuang is also the “base camp” for visiting the nearby  Caves of the Thousand Buddhas or Mogao Caves, making it not only a strategic stop, but also a cultural and religious crossroads. Legend says that a Buddhist monk travelling on the silk road had a vision here around 366 AD. In the sunlight he saw a thousand Buddhas coming down from the sky in front of the conglomerate walls. Hence he started excavating caves where he had had his vision and retreated there for meditation. In the centuries thereafter more and more meditation caves or grottoes were created.  Great to visit these caves, which are equally research site and the prime destination for streams of predominantly Thai worshipers. The caves contain very fine Buddhist murals with tails from Buddha’s life or sceneries from the silk road. Depending on the age of a mural – and the period of creation, the characters in the paintings had western, oriental, or rather Chinese features and where decorated in completely different styles. We had a very good Chinese guide, who knew her script very well and was able to explain many things to us. It’s amazing what can be read from these murals, but also from the huge Buddha statues (Over 32 meters tall and the second largest Buddha statutes in China), and also interesting to hear what treasures were destroyed or robbed by western expeditions and “the great earthquake” meaning the Cultural Revolution.

Later in the afternoon Boris and I took a ride around Dunhuang, for once with an unloaded bike. Just behind today’s busy “City of Sands” streets we discovered another Silk Road feature and today tourist attraction: Sand dunes! A big sea of them. We discovered the original oasis with its Cresant Lake, where caravans used to come for drinks and shelter. In order to escape the tourist hustle Boris and I climbed the first big sand dune and quickly got into a very secluded area. But climbing the steep sand dunes was absolutely exhausting. Two steps forward and one step back! We explain this not with the lack of fitness but with reverse altitude sickness. There’s just too much oxygen around for us now, coming from the Tibetan plateau. We enjoyed jumping around and sliding down the dunes and went for another creative photo session before heading back to town to meet up with the lads for dinner.

Dashing across the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan plateau is huge. Its is approximately four times the size of France, or about the size of Western Australia. We left Nam Tso with the aim of crossing the Tibetan plateau heading north towards our next milestone, Goldmud. It took us two long riding days to cross the elevated plateau with its average elevation is over 4,500m. Despite the altitude and the cold weather the ride was very enjoyable. At times we travelled through fantastic vast grassland plains which were met by high snowcapped mountains. At other times the landscape looked desert like with rocks displaying stunning yellow to purple colors.

We were absolutely fascinated by the Chinese engineering work. When it comes to building of infrastructure the Chinese are absolute experts, it’s really amazing.  The entire two days of travelling over the plateau we followed the Qingzang railway which was built in 2006 and connect Lhasa with Xining in Qinghai Province. It is the world’s highest railway track and there are countless tunnels and bridges. The tracks rarely deviate from a straight line regardless of what hills or mountains surround.

Our road was also in near perfect conditions and it felt like we were flying over the roof of the world. As if Chinese engineering was not impressive enough, a new power line was under constructions as we dashed over the plateau. It was fun to watchthe lines being constructed. We were amazed by the small amount of heavy machinery that was used for building the power line. Instead there were countless workers who were sitting on the half-finished poles attaching the cables or screwing missing elements onto the existing steal structures.

We were tempted to label any of these technical achievements, the railway, the road, or the power line as “the New Great Wall of China”. What fascinated us most about all of these constructions was the fact that everything had to be laid on permafrost, which caused technical difficulties of building the railroad tracks as well as the road and the power line. The Chinese overcame this challenge by building the road and railway on elevated tracks of around 2m of height consisting of thick gravel. For the railway they apparently also inserted cooling pipes in various places to help keep the boggy ground frozen in summer.  Dashing past old sections of roads we could see what happens if such techniques to withstand the permafrost and the frozen rivers were not applied. We saw massive cracks of up to 10cm running across the road and bumps which could well throw you off the bike alongside of collapsed bridges.

Despite the high-tech infrastructure development we realized soon that were travelling through some very remote parts of Tibet. In every town we stopped for fuel a big crowd of people surrounding us and the bikes would quickly form. The Tibetans were often dressed in their traditional cloths, the men wearing their traditional long hair with red strings braided into the hair. The women were wearing their typical long skirts or they were dressed in modern (in our eyes absolutely ugly, bitchy looking) Chinese fashion.  Getting the opportunity to see foreigners was very special for them, so while having lunch in a local Tibetan restaurant we had a crowd of at least 10 people pressing their faces against the window from outside.  The absolute highlight of three little grubs was Boris going to the local public toilet. They followed him all along and did not leave even when we wanted to have some privacy and waved them to go outside. Instead they stood there and watched him do his business all the way.

Nam Tso

On the 16^th of May we got on the road again. We travelled from Lhasa to Nam Tso, a famous lake that we absolutely wanted to see. On the way to the lake we passed over the Kyang-la Pass. It was a very steep climb up to the pass and Rosie was at the maximum in second gear as we slowly crept up to the top of the 5240m pass. We again beat our altitude record with the detour to Nam Tso! Wanting to go even higher for the good view on the lake Boris, Simon and I climbed a nearby hill. We went up only about 50m more or so, but every step was absolutely exhausting. Luckily the way down was easy and fun as we could slide down a big snowfield.

The ride down to the lake was awesome. This was exactly what we had expected of the Tibetan plateau: A good road over a vast grass plane, with yak and sheep grazing around us and once in a while passing a small camp of nomad herders. The view of the gigantic lake in front of a snowcapped mountain  ridge was stunning. Nam Tso is one of Tibet’s sacred lakes. It is the second -largest saltwater lake in China and truly one of the most beautiful natural sights in Tibet. We drove directly to its shoreline for a look around and to explore a peninsula for the possibility of camping. As the lake is holy of course so are the small mountain and its surrounding cliffs on the peninsula. However a local monk who came down to the lake to admire our bikes and to have a look through our binocular permitted us to set up our tents.

Leaving Horst who was not keen on camping at over 4700m at a nearby guest house where we enjoyed a local dinner Simon, Boris and I headed back to the lake to find the ideal camping spot and set up camp. The days are very long up here. Coming from Laos we are of course not used to sunsets at 8:30 any more. But it’s great to have daylight for so long and watch the sunset after dinner. We went for a wander around the peninsula and had a spectacular sunset on one side and the rising of the full moon on the other side. It was a fantastic opportunity for Boris and Simon to play with their good cameras. 

Along our hike a Tibetan shepherd dog suddenly joined us. The dog was very friendly and playful and as we went back to the camp to go to bed the dog curled up outside of our tents. He made it his duty to protect us from anybody how came near the camp. So the next morning we were woken up at around 7am by his barking. It turned out that we had set up our tents about 20m off the kora (worshiping trail for Tibetans) around the mountain. Every local who went on his morning walk around the mountain of course stopped at our tents to examine the strangers and our dog did not like this at all. While packing up our tent and getting ready to leave again, Boris or I had to constantly calm down the dog so that he would not chase after the curious locals.

Bus excursion to Shigatse

After two days of exploring around Lhasa Boris and I would have liked to get out of the city for some hiking. Or we would have liked to jump on the bike and explore the surrounding. This however is not easily possible in Tibet, not even around Lhasa where foreigners are allowed to walk around freely. As soon as you want to go a bit outside of town, you need a special permit from the Chinese government. Whatever you intend to do: hike, take a local bus, visit another monastery, you need a permit and possibly a guide.  As we were not aware of this we decided to join Horst and his family to travel by bus to Shigatse and back. What a good decision, this turned out to be a stunning, fun bus ride through spectacular scenery.

With a driver - who we though undertakes his first bus drive after changing over from Yak riding - and our two guides (our tour guide and the one of Horst’s family) we pottered along the Friendship highway. From the over the 4700m high Kampa-La pass we had a fantastic view down on Lake Yamdrok-Tso. It is one of the most holy lakes in Tibet and one of the most stunning ones that I’ve seen so far as well, with its fabulous deep turquoise water. We drove along its edge for a couple of hours and then again over the next high pass. The landscape up ion these high passes, but also in the wide river valleys is very barren. Rocks dominate; there are no trees only a few bushes and grassland plains. Every time we pass a small Tibetan village we wondered:  How do people survive here in the cold? What can they make a living of, when it is too scant to grow only a minimal amount of crops? 

The colors of the landscape were stunning and changes from one minute to the next as clouds drifted passed the sun.  Boris with his eye for wildlife spotted a herd of Tibetan antelopes and again some giant vultures circling in the sky. My attention was drawn more to the geology and to the geomorphology. Because there was hardly any vegetation we could see the different layers of rock how they were stacked over each other and folded into bizarre forms when the Himalayan Mountains formed. As learned from the study books (it’s been quite a while) we could see how the landscape was shaped by the large glaciers that covered the plateau longtime ago. We could also see how the processes found in this permafrost region leaves behind frost boils and stone rings. Fantastic to see all this in such great dimensions.

On our way to Shigatse we stopped at Gyantse - Tibet’s third city, behind Lhasa and Shigatse. Here we visited the Pelkor Chöde Monastery. The town and its historic sites were a pleasure to stroll through as the atmosphere was much more relaxed as in Lhasa were everything seems quite restricted and one feels constantly watched by the omnipresent military guards.

Before leaving Shigatse the next morning we of course dropped in to Tashilhunpo Monastery, one of the few monasteries in Tibet that was not affected by the Chinese Cultural Revolution and today remains relatively unscathed. Shigatse has been the seat of the Panchen Lama, and this seat was traditionally based in the monastery. Hence we got to see the opulently decorated tombs of the past Panchen Lamas.

On our way back we had the pleasure of seeing the stunning landscape again, coming from the other side. It was a long journey back, about 8 hours of sitting in the bus and Horst, Boris and I already missed having our own control of the street. After passing again over Kamba-la Pass the rode was blocked due to construction. Instead of sitting and waiting Boris and I decided to run down the mountain slopes and let our bus pick us up when bypassing – we still have sore legs from this spontaneous action. Shortly before reaching Lhasa we passed a snow-hail-rain storm which created a wonderful rainbow of enormous color intensity. It guided us right back home and made the last stretch of the journey very entertaining for the whole bus-gang.