Day 233 - biking out of Qumalai to Yege Xiang

Start: Qumalai, Qinghai, China
End: Yege Xiang, Qinghai, China
Distance: 99 km
Time: 9'01"
Avg: 10.9 k/h
Max: 31.5 k/h
Total: 10,589 km
Total riding days: 126
Riding hours: 0940 - 2030

Perfect weather - sunny, crisp, no wind. A perfect day marred by ending it in a grot-pot of a hovel covered in yak-dung, empty beer bottles and god knows what, 5 beds draped in stinking rags, no door. I would have been much better off in my tent, but a motorbiker passed me and said I could stay at his house 13 kms down the road. Well, it was 26 kms down the road and I couldn't find him; by then it was dark and too late to get out of this village and find somewhere to camp.

The best of it was that they wanted 15 yuan for the bed. In the end I paid them 10, but that was still about 20 too much. I'm not usually fussy about where I stay, but this place really was something. It is the sort of place Japanese game show contestants have to stay in for two hours to win 10 billion yen. The more I looked, the more disgusting it got. I stopped looking.

But that apart, a joyous day. What is it about riding an unsealed road at 10 k/hthat is so much nicer than riding asphalt at 10 k/h? Although it is jolting and jarring, it is somehow soothing and relaxing, and the time passes quicker. Perhaps because on unsealed roads you are always concentrating - it can be hard, but it doesn't get boring, you're always steering. Good new asphalt roads, like the stretch from Yushu to Qumalai, can be dull to ride.

I woke to a fine morning, silver flecks of frozen angel's breath fluttering earthwards, glinting in the sunlight. Topped up with petrol (no, I don't have a motor, alas; for the stove) and the good folk at the petrol station didn't charge me for it.

Then onto the dirt road out of town. A police tent halfway up the first pass offered me milky tea and a warm break for 20 minutes.

Four passes in total today; the first was the highest, the third scarcely a ripple.

Pikas, giant Tibetan hamsters (OK, not that giant - a fair match for a fair-sized guinea-pig) are everywhere, scuttling fat-bummed between burrows.

In several places the road crosses broad sheetwash gravels which would be tricky after rains; for now, everything is safely frozen up and the gravels are dry. Broad, open valleys; a few motorbikes, no trucks or cars. Road surface not too bad today, not much washboarding. Surrounding hills low and rounded, reds and browns and yellows, snow on north-facing slopes. The sun quickly burns the snow off other slopes.

Beautiful valley between Se Wu Gou and the Se Wu Gou bridge, the hills on the far side folded and knotted in the evening sun and shadow.

Se Wu Gou itself is an eerie, deserted ghost-town, half-demolished, rooves gone but walls still standing, a Tibetan Pompeii.

Antelope on the climb to the second pass. Yak herds all along, wonderful beasts, turning and trotting off with big-bodied grace, tossing heads and tails, horns and hooves held high, great furry bodies like Chinese acrobat-lions.

Day 232 - on a bike from Zhidoi to Qumalai

Start: Zhidoi, Qinghai, China
End: Qumalai (Qumarleb), Qinghai, China
Distance: 54 km
Time: 3'58"
Avg: 13.6 k/h
Max: 42 k/h
Total: 10490 km
Total riding days: 125
Riding hours: 1040 - 1530

A shortish hop down the valley, over the Tongtian He (Yangtze river headwaters) bridge and up the other side.

Qumalai (aka Qumarleb, Qumarlai) is the end of the road, my last chance to turn around. I wind up at the bus station hotel and buy peanuts. I ask how far it is to Budongquan. Estimates vary from "more than 100 km" to "more than 400 km". I buy some more peanuts.

The bridge over the Tongtian He (Yangtze).

Day 231 - Cycling from Rong Po Zhen to Zhidoi

Start: Rong Po Zhen, Qinghai, China
End: Zhidoi (Zhiduo), Qinghai, China
Distance: 120 km
Time: 8'51"
Avg: 13.6 k/h
Max: 40 k/h
Total: 10436 km
Total riding days: 124
Riding hours: 0850 - 1925

Long, hard, killer day, not helped by not sleeping all last night thanks to a snoring room-mate. I was staying at the house of a guy whose wall was adorned with a large portrait of the Dalai Lama, a poster of the Potala palace in Lhasa, and a poster of 2 fat pink naked babies trying to grasp a butterfly between their chubby fingers.

It snowed overnight but the road is clear.

Dog attacks all day. One gets the pocket in my rear left pannier in his jaws and nearly yanks it off. I don't realise until 10 km later, when he has given up chasing and I finally stop. The pocket, luckily, is still hanging on by one clip. Had I lost it, I would be heading across the Tibetan plateau with no spoke key, no allen keys, no bike pump, and no toothbrush. In other words, it would have been suicidal to continue.

Two passes. On the climb to the first one, a bloke hanging at the side of the road demands money; when I don't give him any, he runs after me hurling rocks. And not small rocks, and not half-heartedly. Always wear your bike helmet.

After 60 km I am dead; I stop by the roadside and fall asleep in the sun. A car passes and offers me 'qiaokeli' - chocolate - in a sort of toothpaste tube. You have to suck it out, but it tastes good and picked me up for the second pass.

The second pass was flat. It was incredibly cold, and I hit a blizzard - head-on, naturally. I was crawling at about 6 k/h. Out of nowhere, an electrical storm was suddenly right on top of me. One bolt struck a little way ahead; while I was contemplating whether to try to get down somewhere low (I was protected from being the highest thing on the plateau-pass only by the telegraph poles; otherwise it was featureless and flat; vague recollections from mountain handbooks come to mind - What To Do In Thunderstorms. I remember diagrams explaining how lightning aims for high things, and low things, and things inbetween; don't lie in a ditch, don't stand up tall, don't hide in a cave. Will the air in my tyres insulate me if I stay on the bike?), a second strike hit right alongside. I was going west and the storm going east - I reckoned the best bet was to keep moving and hope we would pass each other without coming to blows. The third strike was behind me, and thereafter they became more distant.

I was super-cold and tired and hungry and didn't want to camp. Zhidoi was visible from 20 km away, but getting there took forever, crawling, inching into the wind, even downhill not getting above 8 k/h. Every time I halved the remaining distance, my speed seemed to have halved as well - I was getting closer in space but not in time.

I creep into Zhidoi, finally, late. There is a beautiful new hotel there, run by a Salar Muslim guy. It is not only clean but also heated. I pay 15 yuan for a bed which stretches my 10-yuan bedding budget, but it is worth it. There is no electricity in town, but I could have paid 30 for a bed in a TV'ed room.

Why does cycling into a headwind downhill at 8 k/h hurt so much more than cycling without a wind uphill at 8 k/h?

Leaving Rong Po Zhen, a bright clear morning after overnight snow. It got worse.

Day 230 - cycling from Yushu to Rong Po Zhen

Start: Yushu (Jyeku), Qinghai, China
End: Rong Po Zhen, Qinghai, China
Distance: 73 km
Time: 6'27"
Avg: 11.2 k/h
Max: 51.5 k/h
Total: 10315 km
Total riding days: 123
Riding hours: 1140 - 1850

Hauled myself out of Yushu, over a 4600 metre pass into the Rong Po valley, with its lake, its black-necked cranes, its trans-Himalayan migratory geese, its relentless chasing dogs, etc.

I didn't get out of town in time. Yesterday's tailwind had turned to become the familiar westerly by the time I got on my bike.

Looking back down the valley to Yushu.

The first pass out of Yushu on the road west to Qumalai (Qumarleb).

Meanwhile

Bond, my undercover agent in Shanghai, writes with the hideous news that they (you know who they are, right?) are assaulting trees in Jing'an Park.

"A group of dust-covered workmen were busying themselves rebuilding a tree. They were plugging the God-given gaps with polyfiller and then painting the bark brown before coating it with a nice thick varnish. I'm sure you've seen its like, but it filled me with rage. What have we come to where the Shanghai Municipal Government deems it acceptable (and necesary) to paint its trees brown. It's like the whole city is a billboard canvas that needs a bit of photoshopping here and there. Of course, the only people batting an eyelid at the spectacle were those who were staring at me, working out why I should be interested in a tree that was only half-built. Of all the things I've seen in this city (bearing in mind that I recently saw a tethered monkeys being led (alive) into the kitchen of my local la mian resturant) this was one of the very sickest. I'm looking forward to coming home."

(Words and picture Copyright (C) G. Bond 2006)

I have to say that I was nauseated by the painted trees, but only slightly: I have been hardened against this sort of minor affront to good taste by the altogether more repellent news that the streets of Lhasa are now lined with plastic palm trees. If the Powers that Be find a way to stoop any lower they should give up pretending to be Cawmuniss¹ and become limbo dancers instead.

-
Notes:
1. Cawmuniss: Communists

Days 225 - 229: Packin' in Yushu (Part 1)

Make your own bike-loading flick-book! Just cut out the pictures and you'll have 100% animated action.

Packin' (Part 2)

Mystery of the Severed Skulls

Richard Spencer recently reported on the Mysterious Case of the Severed Skulls in the Daily Torygraph.

"The grisly discovery of 121 human skulls, many with their tops sawn off, has puzzled Chinese police and caused a frenzy of speculation," he says.

Last month in Dege, I watched the local monastic ceremonial dances, in which, to the beat of drums, around 40 monks danced in a large circle. Each monk held a human scalp in his left hand.

The mystery skulls, sans scalps, were also found in a Tibetan area. Here is a photograph of them (from the Daily Telegraph website):

And here are the Dege monks dancing, scalps in hand:

Holy Cow

See this?

I took this photo this morning, around 9 a.m. Check the shadow, and look at the flags.

Go on, think about it.

Got it? Yeah, an EAST WIND! For the first time in the recorded history of Yushu.

It's not just Neil Armstrong fake fluttering moonflags, either.

See, smoke's doing it too:

Dong feng hong, dudes. I'm outta here. See you in Golmud.

(Asmund, remember, if I don't make it, the dace are yours.)

Deja Vyushu?

Yushu yaklet

That road again

Spring is coming to Yushu, but slowly

Coordination

For the Google Earthers among you, here are some co-ordinates:

Yushu: 33 deg 00' N 97 deg 00' E

Qumarleb: 34 deg 07' N 95 deg 47' E

Budongquan: 35 deg 31' N 93 deg 53' E

Golmud: 36 deg 24' N 94 deg 53' E


Meanwhile, here is some light music.



(i) Going down the bad side of a pass.
(ii) Plenty snow at top.

More from Yushu

Looking west up the Yushu valley. That is the road from Qumarleb; that's the way I have to go; that's also where the wind comes from.


Prayer flags above Yushu (Jyeku) town

Jyeku monastery at Yushu (rebuilt; the original was destroyed during 'Liberation')

Days 215 - 224: Yushu

0 km etc.

Pictures of Yushu town and the moutains around.

Thought for the day

Les meilleurs hotels sont les hotels a milles etoiles.

 

(Thank you to Jonathan-et-Alexandra for reporting that comment from the lips of a 'French senior citizen' in Cambodia.)

He's behind you!

This statue, in Yushu, of the 11th-century King Gesar of Ling, is alleged to be the largest bronze statue in China - though I daresay there are one or two Maos and Buddhas out there who would contest that claim.

Meanwhile

In case Asmund wants to take a day off some time, this might provide the rest of you with some alternative entertainment -

http://f0rked.com/flash/v=endoftheworld

And, or, for the more spiritually inclined, here is the world's largest mani wall, consisting of over 2 billion carved mani stones.

If you want to see it in the flesh, you'll have to visit Xinzha, a village just north of Yushu.

That bus, again

Same bus, better photo. Shortcutting the Que Er Shan pass, Sichuan.

Days 211 - 214: lurking in Yushu

You'll have to add 3 km to the total at some point, because I've moved from one end of town to the other in the last few days, at a snail-defying rate of about 13 millimetres westward per minute.

Yushu is somewhat like London, Paris, Rome, New York, Royston, etc.

It has stuff.

I mean, just look at this.



It even has my favourite, White Cat Liquid Detergent.


And fried dace!
Asmund! Look, fried dace.

Here's the deal.

If I don't make it, you get the contents of my left-rear pannier. I chucked out my tent and sleeping bag, reckoned it wasn't really necessary, and stocked up on dace instead. But if I perish on the plateau, the dace is yours, OK?

Macho Man.

Twist and Shout?

On the road to Yushu, Qinghai province, China.

Yushu

Hallo Yushu

 

More soon

 

e

Day 211 - Cycling from Xiwu to Yushu

Start: Xiwu, Qinghai, China
End: Yushu (aka Jyeku, Jyekundo, Jie Gu), Qinghai, China
Distance: 49 km
Time: 3'35"
Avg: 13.7 k/h
Max: 41.5 k/h
Total: 10,239 km
Total riding days: 100
Riding hours: 1150 -1555

An easy 20 km down and a not-too-hard 30 km up, with a bridge over the Yangtze / Jinshajiang / Tongtian He in the middle.



The road is mostly sealed and perfect, give or take the odd stretch where they couldn't be bothered or ran out of asphalt or went to do somebody's drive instead.

Warmer down here, 3900 metres-ish.

The local monasteries earn a few bob selling petrol. The sign reads 'White Pagoda Gasoline Station of Lab Monastery'. The monastery itself is visible in the background, between the pillars of the forecourt.