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!