Times are Desertic

Hello there,

China is BIG...We are currently in Jiayuguan, what is supposedly known as the mouth of China, the historical entrance to the country from the wild western reaches of what is presently part of the country but has so much more in common with Central Asia and Turkey. If yet another visa extension comes our way which indeed under the present law we shoulden't get , we will get to discover this western region that goes by the name of Xinjiang and whose people are called, the Uighur who are basically of the Muslim religion. They used to be of a distinct majority, up to 90% of the province's population but the influx of the Han Chinese from the east has made sure that they are no longer in control. I wish to find out more. I wish to ride among the camels fighting against the sands!! Infact we are already in the desert and we had a small sandstorm the other evening which was not soo bad because we were not so far from an oasis and only half an hour from finding a place for the tent and some water. It was mostly made up of wind bang in our faces and l settled behind Dorothee's behind which doesen't give too much protection considering l am much bigger but it was OK for a short period..

Since Lanzhou, over 800 km's back east it has been much drier. The valley's are often green but the mountains are very arid and now, well, it's just total desert. We are still surrounded by mountains, this being the entrance to the Hexi corridor, another silk road term which extends back towards Lanzhou. The mountains are snow capped and reach up to nearly 6000 metres whereas we are at around 1600 metres. I have a new term. It's called a chinese gradient. This is a term coined because since leaving Lanzhou which was in itself at 1600 metres we were wondering why we were finding it just a bit hard going. On the fourth day we climbed over a small col and noticed some nomads living in tents and lots of Yaks munching and wandering about. I knew from reading books about the Himalaya that Yaks were only found above 2500/3000 metres because otherwise they are liable to overheat with their thick coats. Yes, this is true. We did indeed find out later that we had climbed up and over 3000 metres. We had been climbing very gradually it seemed for over 3 days and more than 180 km's. Hence a chinese gradient is one that is just a little bit more uphill than a false flat. You will not realise you are climbing really, just that's it's a continual hard grind and you cannot free wheel or else you'll go backwards. Get's slightly boring after a while. Maybe only a cycle tourist can understand this pulling a mobile home around. Oceanne, will tell me it's climbing which is comforting. Actually l tell her to tell me it's climbing but after a while Papa just needs a rest. And then it went down for 100 km's on a positive chinese gradient. Yes! It is like this constantly but l believe we are strong!

We will soon leave the brooding mountians behind and be surrounded by chinese gradients all around and then very large dunes near the Gansu and Xinjiang province border, The Gobi desert spreads away to the north and the northern border of the Tibetan plateau will soon disappear to our south. I do have another term, the migration of Combine Harvester's! I did say China was big at the beginning of this e-mail. Well because it's so big and because they grow wheat everywhere and maybe because there is a shortage of Combine Harvester's we get passed by large convoys of these machines all across the country. The climate, altitude and environment changes so much in this country yet they find a way to grow wheat either by irrigation or simply by the right conditions. We have ridden for nearly 3000 km's in China already and the wheat has never been ready to be cut at the same time so these Combine Harvester's are basically on the move all the time looking for wheat to chop. It is a strange sight when your're up high in the mountains camping as the sun goes down with the earthen Great Wall over the other side of the highway when you hear that familiar sound of four Combine Harvester's slowly moving along our rutted road as they have no right, like us, to be zooming along the newly made autoroute that is bringing lot's of richer Han Chinese to start business's in the supposed backward west. They may be slightly backward but who needs modernisation when their food is cracking and it just causes fights between each other anyway.

Another thing about China is beer and how the Chinese are always drinking. Local beer is a little over double the price of water and is cheaper than coca-cola. It's magnificent and the Chinese are often pissed it is true but none of it causes any trouble. Everyone has a good work ethic, this is China after all and l don't believe alcoholism is a problem. Drinking games after work in restaurants and on the plastic tables and chairs outside shops that are everywhere in the west, you will often hear the shouting of number's out loud to make simple mathematical additions while drinking go well on into the night. Not too late infact as Chinese people are good at going to bed early and getting up early. Timing is very important it seems. There is an hour for everything and the Chinese show this by eating very quickly and often loudly before leaving and paying and still munching all at the same time.

Oceanne is on top form and could well be progressing on the nappy issue. We have had progress which is great news. On the other hand she has bad reactions to mosquito bites and continues to itch her bites for weeks on end so not all is perfect. She must have at least 20 bites on the go at one particular moment but it is not as bad as it sounds. It annoys her parents more than her l think.

I think l last wrote in Xian and we have ridden more than 1400 km's since then across many roads, chinese gradients, pot holes, some tunnel's, sometimes an autoroute before getting told off, through the Great Wall and also a road where we were quite simply removed by the police and a supposed minister of foreign affairs.

Leaving Baoji on our merry way to Tianshui, we had just gone up a difficult and bad section of road before going through a tunnel and down again before a police van swerved across me. My brakes were not good as l only had the front attached due to my failing back wheel. I stopped just in time in front of what seemed to be a SWAT team. I wondered what l had done wrong. Some of them were in police clothes, some were not. After introductions and being told not to get too excited, which l wasn't, by one of the younger plain-clothed men we were then turned over to the control of the foreign affairs guy who didn't speak a word of English and his boss who did. We were basically on a road that we were not allowed to be on, as tourists. Funny as we know for a fact that two years earlier, a French family had passed by here on bicycles. Two years may in fact be the difference as the road seemed to be on the way to be abandoned as an inter city route as there was a new autoroute recently constructed that followed the same route. But what for cycle tourists heh? We will never know the real reason. We were just told that we shoulden't have passed the large statue of Mao at the exit of Baoji which ironically held his hand out in a stopping gesture before being put in a truck of a local and transported first to the police station for photocopies of our passports, questions and a verbal warning and then to the train station for a train to Tianshui. There was only one train at 22h and l was having none of that as it was only 2 p.m and it would mean arriving in the middle of the night. I was already incensed at missing 150 km's of what was a beautiful road through the green mountains along a river valley and through many a tunnel without too much of a gradient. They eventually found us a bus which was decent of them and which left in a couple of hours. We followed often close to the road that we had missed by taking the autoroute and although it was sometimes in a bad condition it was no worse than some of the roads we have taken since and was definetly manageable. It seems the police wherever you are in the World are simply a bunch of idiots. Panama, Peru or China. Simply a bunch of twits. Foreign minister my bum. Mao may be long dead but with his statue, he's still calling the shots. It also seems that the new autoroutes that are spreading West and South to Tibet are being built at the expense of the smaller roads especially in the mountains where we were often diverted across sections that were badly unpaved. Either there is not enough traffic for two roads or not enough money. The autoroute is a toll road and there are often heavy trucks on the smaller roads avoiding paying the fee which doesen't help the state of the road either. Frustrating for us sometimes, in our little bubble of a cycle touring family.

And so to the weather. Leaving Xian, it was hot, hot and hot and very humid. I became a big fan of irrigation canals with their cool gushing water to soak my shirt, head and feet. A big fan of iced tea and coca-cola as well. We then ascended into the mountains and quite a few cols over 2000 metres and although it was still hot, it was much better. Since we are now in the desert, it is hot but a least it is not humid and there is always a wind blowing. We just always hope it is in our backs which it sometimes is and sometimes isn't! I told you last time that Georgina had a problem with her back wheel. The cracks got much bigger before Lanzhou and she needed to be ridden very carefully. Then a day before arriving in the city and collecting a wheel that had been sent via ebay, a spoke pulled itself out of the rim pulling a large part of the rim with it. Surprisingly the wheel got to Lanzhou with the help of tape even though it was badly bent, missing one spoke and with no back brake. The amazing person who sent me the wheel from Colorado still hasn't been paid and offered me the wheel free of charge with me just having to pay the postage after hearing our strange story. I can't pay him for the postage until l get back to Canada and paypal froze my account on the account that l had logged on from China. Too clever for their own good. He sent it on trust which is fantastic when you think that trust is sadly lacking in today's society.

The Chinese people continue to be amazed by us or mainly Oceanne. It is still very normal to be surrounded by 50 observers whenever we stop. Sometimes it is suffocating but it's best just to laugh about it and wonder at how they are so different. They will do a lot of things in groups like dancing or exercising on the city squares following the lead of somebody. Especially the older citizens. Following a lead may have come from communism and having a leader telling you how to live your life or it may simply be ingrained in their make up. Who knows. In all cases it is fascinating to see their reactions and their absolute amazement in everything we do, what we eat, Oceanne's skin and hair etc etc. It also explains why they are in such good shape. The children as well. In the country it is normal to bike 10 km's to school. With the return journey for lunch that makes 40 km's for a primary student? We sometimes bike with the students if we pass a school at lunch hour and we also spent time with the class of our new friend Mr Wan of Yongdeng who took us out for supper and showed us around his English school that completes English learning outside normal school hours.

We decided to stop here in Jiayuguan not only because we have to stock up on supplies to cross the desert to Dunhuang but to visit the end of the Great Wall and the Jiayuguan fort which are both beautiful out in the desert above the oasis and beneath the big icy mountains. The wall has been reconstructed here as in parts near Beijing but it is completely different made primarily of earth and not stone. We rode alongside it for quite a bit before Zhangye where it had not been rebuilt and rode through it at one point and it is quite amazing that something made of earth and over 500 years old still exists and is still well over head height where it hasn't crumbled to dust. I shall go now l think!

All the best from the west, Rupert.

9332.7 km's and 18 flats