Did you think our trip was finished ? Well, we may have arrived safe and sound in Istanbul and taken up our respective lives, but something tells me that this adventure will go on forever in one way or another…

One example of the ever lasting effects of this trip: The Bikes’ Arrival in Tianjin.

On October 13, 2009 the container arrived in Tianjin. After the agent arranged for custom clearance of the bikes, which was surprisingly completed quite smoothly, I prepared the trip to Tianjin, planning to go there and get the bikes together with Petri (our IT Mentor and a bike fanatic) on October 20, 2009.

This was my plan:

Leave Beijing around 7:30am, arrive in Tianjin around 9:30. Unpack the bikes and prepare them for the Tianjin – Beijing ride (including some time for bureaucratic procedures). Depart from Tianjin by bike around 12pm and arrive in Beijing around 3pm.

This is how it went:

7:10 am: Driver Liu picks me up downstairs of my apartment in Beijing. Great wheather, sunny, warm, not too windy. It’s going to be a fine ride.

7:30 am: We pick up Petri, who will help me bring Mark’s bike back to Beijing.

9:20 am: We arrive near the industrial zone of Tianjin. We call Mr. Li, the guy in charge of the storage place, where the container is stored. Mr. Li says he is coming to pick us up.

9:40 am: Nothing happened. No Mr. Li. We call him again, but his mobile is suddenly off. Weird, all the more that he has not been willing to give us the exact address of storage of the container. I have a bad feeling about it, and call the import agent, who says that he will try to reach Mr. Li.

9:45 am: Mr. Li calls back. He is 500m away from where we are. We drive towards him.

10: 10 am: We arrive somewhere at the port of Tianjin. Mr Li brought us there to get a document he needs for the release of the bikes. However, obviously, Mr. Li is doing this for the first time and he needs another document before getting the document he wants. So, Mr. Li drives away and we wait for him.

10:30 am: Mr. Li comes back with the missing document, and gets the document necessary to release the bikes. We drive to the storage place.

10:40 am: We arrive at the storage place. Many containers… I wonder which is ours. The lady in charge explains to us that our container is located on top of other containers, so we need to wait for the “Lift Master”, ie the machine able to move the containers. We wait.

11:20 am: The Lift Master arrives, and after dealing with some other containers, it is our turn! I start to feel nervous and wonder: will the bikes be fine ?

11:40 am: The container is ready to be opened. We break the custom seal and open the container. To my great relief, the bikes are fine! My rider gear, which I had stored in the boxes seems to have suffered a little from the humidity, but nothing serious.

11:45 am: We start unlashing the bikes and rolling them out of the container.

12:00 pm: After reconnecting my battery, I have to face the fact that it is dead. Some young workers come help me push the bikes, in order to see if it would start in 2nd gear with some manual help. Nothing does. Luckily, our battery is compatible with a car battery, and so we decide to charge my battery with Driver Liu car’s battery. However, Driver Liu’s cable are not really the right thing, and so we ask a local worker to arrange for “real” cables. The cables arrive and we connect the batteries. It seems to work fine, my battery seems to be charging and after a while the motor kicks off. I keep my bike in empty gear, the motor running.The cable guys leaves again.

12:30 pm: Petri was able to start Mark’s bike without major problems. Seems Mark’s battery did not suffer too much. Petri is almost ready to leave.

12:40 pm: I try to start my bike. After 200m, during which every thing seemed fine, my battery dies again. Let’s find the cable guy again.

12:50pm: The cable guy is back again with his cable. While I charge my battery, I suggest that Petri goes to the gaz station to fill the tank and bring me back a canister. This way, we could try to put some fuel in my tank without turning off the motor and thereby avoiding the risk that my bikes doesn’t turn on again.

1:10 pm: Petri heads off to the gaz station. I am charging my battery.

1:20pm: A call from Petri: “Clarisse, I think I just messed up badly”… “I think I just put fuel into the oil tank…” (Petri was used to his former bikes having the fuel tank at the front and not at the back). Well, that’s a problem. We call BMW to enquire what to do. They strongly recommend us not to turn off the motor, and to change the oil. The problem is, our bikes needs a special oil not easily available at Chinese gaz stations… So, we’ll have to find another solution.

1:40 pm: In the meantime, Mr. Li, who is still with us and who led Petri to the gaz station, comes back to the storage place with a canister of fuel. By then, my battery seemed to have charged a bit and I managed to start the motor. The cable guy had left again, and I was just waiting for the fuel canister. When Mr. Li arrives I realize that in order to open the fuel tank, I need my key. And in order to get my key, I need to turn off the motor… Well, mei banfa. I turn off the motor, open the fuel tank, empty the fuel canister in the tank, and try to re-start my bike: nothing does, the battery is empty again. Let’s call back the cable guy for the third time!

1:50pm: The cable guy is back. We again connect the battery to Driver Liu’s car. Again, it seems to work, my motor kicks off.

2:15 pm: We leave towards the gaz station where Petry is waiting for us.

2:20 pm: I make it all the way to the gaz station. My bike seems out of trouble. Petri and I try to find a solution for Mark’s bike. After deciding that it is best not to drive it, and after trying without success to convince the gaz station people to let us leave the bike there a couple of days, we find ourselves confronted with the only remaining solution: Find a truck that will carry the bike back to Beijing. Driver Liu talks to Mr. Li, who finds a truck driver available to carry the bike back to Beijing. The truck driver is supposed to arrive in the next hour.

3:45 pm: The truck driver arrives. One problem: How to get Mark’s bike (approx. 300kg) on the truck, which is at an approx. height of 80cm ???? We figure out a solution: At the back of the gaz station, there is a platform which is approx. 50 cm high. Using a wooden panel, we push the bike up to this platform, and from this platform up on the truck. The bike is loaded, and the driver starts to lash it.

4:15pm: It seems we are ready to leave. Petri is entrusted to drive my bike back to Beijing, and I will sit in Driver Liu’s car. The Truck driver will follow us. At first however, Mr. Li leads the way in order to bring us to the Highway.

4:25pm: 1 km away from the gaz station, I don’t see Petri anymore, who was closely behind us. Driver Liu stops, I step out of the car and start to run back along the road. There I see Petri, stopped on the side of the street: “Your battery died again”. I call Driver Liu, who informs Mr. Li and the Truck Driver. Driver Liu joins us and we try to find a solution. Seems the best way is to find a bigger truck which can carry both bikes back to Beijing.

4:50pm: Mr. Li was able to locate another truck driver with a bigger truck. However, bigger means higher. This time the loading platform of the truck is about 1 m high… How to get the bikes on the truck. While we easily manage to push Mark’s bike from the smaller truck to the bigger truck, the task is more difficult regarding my bike… We look around and decide to push my bike from the little grass hill on the side of the street, to the smaller truck and from the smaller truck to the bigger truck… Almost impossible, if it wasn’t for the 4 strong men who were working on it. Even the police stopped by to check what was going on there… Finally, we manage to load both bikes on the bigger truck, and the truck driver even happens to have professional lashing gear. The day seemed saved.

5:20pm: We are ready to leave.

8:15 pm: We arrive at BMW LUDE shop in Beijing, where 3 of the staff were doing overtime waiting for us to arrive.

8:30 pm: Because god probably pittied us, BMW’s shop happen to be located next to a crane company, which has a platform to load and unload their mini cranes on and from the trucks. We could use this ramp to unload the bikes from the truck.

9:00 pm: The bikes are now safely stored in BMW’s garage.

9:25 pm: We drop off Petri.

9:40 pm: Driver Liu drops me off at home. Case closed.

What a day! The lesson I learned was the following: “No matter what problem you may encounter in China, there is always a solution”. Imagine we had bumped into this problem in Central Asia or in Europe. This could not have been solved so quickly and for an affordable price.  It cost us a little more than 100 USD to bring the bikes back to Beijing (ie over 150 km), and more than 15 people in total helped us at one point or another during the day: when unloading the bikes from the container, when moutning the bikes back together, when charging the battery, when getting fuel, when loading the bikes on the truck, when unloading the bikes from the truck at BMW’s garage, etc. Thanks to all these people, in particular Driver Liu, Mr. Li, the truck drivers and the BMW staff for preventing this day from turning into a nightmare.

Despite the fact that Petri and I were frustrated not to be able to ride back home, we did have a lot of fun bumping into problem after problem and finding solution after solution !  What a nice “welcome back to China”!

The bikes are now at the garage, undergoing a complete “health check” . Stay tuned to see the mechanic’s verdict. Ciao!

It’s past midnight and tomorrow is an important day, as, for the first time in almost a week, we hit the road again, headed for Kyrgyzstan, so I have to be brief.

 This has been the 5th day we’ve been in Kashgar, and honnestly, we’ve done pretty much everything this down has had to offer, so the prospect of spending an extra day here this morning was daunting. Thankfully, we chose to get out of town, and see Shipton’s arch, apparently the largest free-standing natural arch in the world. The day couldn’t have been more beautiful, and it is under a lapiz sky that we set out, bumping and shaking our way, first up a dry river bed and then on foot, up some pretty spectacular canyons. The air was breezy and dry, but the short hike splendid and what a view awaited us (and now you!): The best part was that, for once in China, we were ALONE! No other tourists! Having enjoyed the views and taken, as usual, way too many photos, we headed back to Kashgar.

The evening brought another challenge, as we loaded the bikes onto the truck that should, fingers crossed (please cross your fingers here too!) see them safely to the top of the Torugart pass tomorrow morning, from where we should be free to ride them down into Kyrgyzstan. Putting the bikes into the truck and fastening them was an ordeal not-to-be forgotten. In the end though, at a quarter past ten PM, we were done and headed back to the hotel. We toasted our imminent departure from China as we reminisced over the various sustainability issues we encountered here. Very briefly, here are some of the most important points that we have been able to observe: Bad:

• Serious shortage of trash cans in many towns and places
• People throwing plastic bottles and other sorts of trash out of their car/truck windows
• People washing cars in rivers, without regard for the surrounding environment
• Many many completely dry riverbeds.
• Serious lack of education about climate change / sustainable practices

Good:

• There are a LOT of solar-heated water tanks on rooftop buildings
• There are many electric bikes and scooters around (Kashgar has practically NO petrol-fueled 2 wheelers around). This is something that us europeans could definitely learn from the Chinese
• In many small villages, the streetlamps are solar-powered (I guess the sun must recharge a battery-type device during the daytime)

In summary, there are many issues to be resolved here (as there are everywhere), but many of those we have encountered can be more or less easily changed with a little education: people need to learn a set of ecologically-driven values. On the other hand, there are many products available that are in-and-of themselves green. These probably sell well because they are seen as “cool” and people realize that owning an electric bike or a solar-powered water heater will save them money. What needs to happen here is an emphasis on the money (yes, the chinese mainstream culture is VERY money driven) people would save by adopting sustainable and green practices.

I leave you with this thought, and a toast to all of you who have been reading our blog, viewing our photos and contributing your comments. You’ve been with us throughout China, and we look forward to your continued attention as we move into Central Asia-proper. Here’s to you:

Another couple of quiet days passed by in this lovely city of Kashgar, where we desperately tried to avoid having to eat any more lamb and looked for something else in the “westernish” backpackers’ coffees, but our success was limited. Lamb is everywhere, on skewers, in baozi, in the Pilaw rice, raw hanging on sticks, in live form at the animal market, etc. We had to give in, and ended up eating some more skewers at our carpet seller’s shop, who saw us passing by and invited us for some skewers and water melon. A lovely invitation, you should never refuse!

Apart from eating and napping, we spent the last two days walking around the old city (which, according to local saying, is subject to upcoming destruction in an attempt to split up the old-city Uyghur population and force them to mix up with Han Chinese), taking care of some administrative and technical issues, namely checking our bikes, studying the route to and in Kyrghysztan, changing money, etc.

So, I am afraid we have no exciting story to tell this time. We are simply trying to enjoy these unplanned and forced few days of rest, which allowed us to catch up some of the lack of sleep Mark & me accumulated during the months preceeding our departure. However, funnily enough, the longer we rest, the more tired we feel… Having a huge mosquito bite on my right forearm, I already wondered whether it gave me the Nap Disease… It also allowed us to take time to get to know some fellow travellers, with more or less crazy travel plans. We bumped into a Korean guy, who also wanted to cross China with his BMW Motorbike (1200cc), but could not get the permit, so he came to Beijing, bought a local 250cc bike and made it all the way to Kashgar, eventually reselling his motorbike for a 1/3 of the value to a local here. We shared some dinners with a British girl from Hong Kong, who is spending a few weeks in the region working on a childrens book in Uyghur, Chinese and English. We will leave Kashgar at the same time as the “Eurasia Expedition Team”, a team of 16 Germans travelling with Mercedes Vans from Singapore to Muenster also heading next to Kyrgysztan.

This is a message for both our moms: As you can see, we are far from being pioneers and we are surrounded by equally (if not more) crazy fellow travellers who have already “been there, done that”.

Stay tuned for Mark’s upcoming post on Shipton’s Arch and some environmental reflections… and for our upcoming posts, once we’ll have crossed the Torugart pass to Kyrgyzstan.Ciao!

Another day of rest in Kashgar, spent hanging around, enjoying to finally be on the trip, buying carpets, finishing washing our rider gear (the jackets this time), etc. Thus, a pretty uneventful day until the evening… when Taher – our travel agent helping us with the border formalities and an old friend of Mark – took us to a local restaurant, where we ate lamb skewers (again!), liangfen, pumpkin baozi, pilaw rice and many other delicious local dishes.

It was, since the beginning of our trip, the first time we shared a meal with a local with whom we were actually able to freely communicate and talk about almost anything, and more so in Chinese, English and/or French!  Taher is a 26 year old Uyghur young man from the region. Like many other young people here, he specialized in tourism. After being a mountaineering guide for a couple of years, he felt the desire to develop further skills and went to Xi’An where he learned French at the Alliance Francaise for two years. He also learned English by self-study almost at the same time. He came back and settled a couple of years ago in Kashgar working for Newland Travel agency, where he finds ways to help foreign tourists making their dream trip reality. After conversing about our lives, the world, the future, politics and religion, we went for some after-dinner drinks to Jamaica Cafe, a coffee/bar/restaurant ran by Abdul, a friend of Taher (Taher and Abdul are the two guys on the picture). There, we further met Waswas (alias Abdullah), the third Mosqueteer.

So, here we were, not far away from the Taklamakan Desert in the most western part of China, sharing drinks and food with three young Uyghurs, who through determination and perseverance had managed to learn to fluently speak two foreign languages (French and English for Taher and Adbul, and English and Japanese for Waswas), knew more about the West than we would ever know about their region, and had this burning fire in their heart nurishing the firm belief that despite all the administrative and political restrictions imposed on the Uyghur people here in Xinjiang, they were – through self improvement and perseverance – eventually going to succeed and live the life they were longing for.

My feelings were split between anger against a system that does not provide equal rights and chances to all ethnies, and admiration for the way these young locals were surmounting all hurdles to live a better life. This made me think once more about how spoiled we are in the west. We are given everything: civil and religious freedom, health insurance, education, safety, etc. Too many of us just take this for granted and keep complaining about what we don’t have… When you see how far these young people have gotten, despite all the existing hurdles, you get to realize that we – the privileged youth from the west – have the duty to make much more out of what we have.  

Spitting in or spoiling our soup is a lack of respect towards all the youth worldwide, who have to fight everyday in order to access some of the wealth, knowledge and skills, that are put at our free disposal in the west.

There’s no reason to feel guilty for the privileges we enjoy, but there is a duty to feel grateful and to be happy with what we have.

Not much news today… Our first full day of rest in Kashgar was spent taking care of logistical things:

• Arranging various permits to take the bikes out of the country temporarily and to exit via the Torguart pass. As it turns out, we won’t be able to ride up to the border, as the road is not open to the public. Instead, we will have to load the bikes onto a truck and follow them up to the border in a car.  We also found out that we would likely not be able to leave until wednesday morning… not ideal. Still, it leaves us enough time in  Kashgar to take care of all the bits and pieces we will have more difficulty with further on. Moreover, an extra day’s rest will also be quite welcome.
• Washing the bikes
• Washing our riding gear: i can’t tell you how filthy the water was… check out the photo in the photo gallery.
• Carpet shopping: a must when in Central Asia

Perhaps the most unexpected happening was finding out that the agent helping us organize the permits is a guy I had met here 8.5 years ago! Moreover, he remembered Alison, Rishi, Alex and I perfectly, down to our first and last names. I’m afraid that’s about as exciting as our day has been. But lest you should feel cheated by today’s meager pickings, let me share with you some of the thoughts I entertained throughout the evening, after enjoying a luxurious espresso coffee (my 1st since Beijing and probably last till we get to Turkey) at the Karakoram Cafe, the highly recommendable successor to Kashgar’s Caravan Cafe which, after 20 years of trusty service, closed its doors for “unexplained” reasons in 2007.

Earlier today, a friend asked me what I felt like leaving China. As I prepared to type the usual 3 line response to such a query, I stopped in my tracks. I suddenly realized that I had no ready answer; in fact, I had not spent any time thinking about this question at all. Life in Beijing had been so crazy in the weeks leading up to our departure (sorry Tiffany ) that I hardly had time to think about the next day, let alone leaving China. Moreover, if I did have the luxury of contemplating the issue, it was easily dismissed: I would be in China for another 3 weeks… faaar from leaving. Then came the first couple of weeks on the roads, during which time was split between riding, and sleeping, neither of which lends itsself too well to philosophizing about abstract, emotional questions. But here… now… there could be no hiding from it: with the border only some 160km and 4 days away, time has come to explore my feelings.

To my greatest surprise,  I am neither happy nor sad about leaving! I would have thought that after 2.5 great years, I would feel at least somewhat sad to leave China behind me, but no, the more I introspect, the clearer it is to me: I am rather indifferent about leaving this country… sure, there are many great experiences and people that I leave behind, but then again, I have so much to look forward to in the coming year! Am I indifferent because the excitement over the next year at INSEAD cancells out the nostalgia brought on by the closing of a very dear chapter of my life? I think not. As I pondered the question over the last sips of my thoroughly italian espresso, I came to a number of  realizations:

• Leaving for an MBA is not a definitive departure: In a year, I will be done with what some ironically refer to as a “Masters in Bugger-All”, and may very well end up back in China:
  For starters, I speak Chinese, and although I strongly believe the window of opportunity for chinese-speaking westerners in China is closing, for the time being I still have a competitive advantage, especially since I have already spent 2.5 years working here.
  Secondly, in the world’s post-crisis economic reshuffle, China and indeed Asia are emerging as driving forces in the global economy, thus driving employment.
  Lastly, although I am turning 30, I am not ready to move back to Europe / the USA yet, although today I still think I would prefer to bring my kids up (don’t worry mom, no kids on the way yet!) closer both geographically and culturally to where I grew up. Spending a few more years exploring cultures that I am not fully comfortable in yet seems to me like a very good use of time.
• By now, I have strong personal ties linking me to China; interests, both platonic and romantic that have a strong pull.
• Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, I’ve come to realize that China has actually gotten under my skin. For the better or for the worse, I’ve come to think of my relationship with the middle kingdom as best described by a line from the Eagle’s song Hotel California: “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”. In one way or another, China will always be part of my life: be it family ties, close friends that I will be back to visit, business that I will conduct here (whether or not I live in China, I am sure whatever I do will one day or the other, have a link to this country. Indeed, it would take a very strong desire on my part NOT to be involved with China, to successfully avoid any future exposure).

Whereas I was initially surprised about my lack of emotionality vis-a-vis China, I to to bed comforted by the idea that I have not become desensitized to this frustrating, yet weird and wonderful land. Much to the contrary, I have grown fond of it in ways I would not have expected when I moved here back in 2006. It has permeated my nooks and crannies like the Xinjiang dust my riding gear: never to be completely wringed out.

The farther west we head, the less sense “beijing time” is making. America runs 4 time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. China, being at least as wide as America (not people’s waistlines: in that area, there is no question that America wins -or is it loses?!?- ) should also be run with time differences… but no, China officially runs on one timezone: Beijing time, i.e. GST +8. Why you may ask… this is a good question, to which we can give only speculative answers: is it because it makes more sense administratively? Perhaps… or does Beijing need more means to show who is boss? perhaps again… take a punt and please post your answers in the comments… but remember to be “politically correct . All this to say that we are now 3,500 km west of Beijing as a crow flies, but are still on the same time zone, and therefore, whereas we were able to get going before 7am earlier on, we have had to delay our departure time by an hour to make sure we have adequate light, making for a leisurly 8:15am departure. We rode our bikes out of the hotel lobby (see photo above), feeling very cool indeed.. partially because it felt like a privilege to have left them in the hotel overnight but mainly because the air was fresh… to say the least.

A long section of unpaved road followed, as if to test us on our last full-day ride through China. We scoffed at the road’s futile attempt to impress us: with miles of such rocky trails behind us, we cruised comfortably over the 25-odd kilometers of rubble. Lest you think we are getting overconfident, we were still rather relieved to hit the tarmac! The wind as well as a few drops of rain also threw their challenges our way, but again, we failed to be intimidated and by the time we pulled over for lunch, our odometers showed we had ridden 230km. At lunch another mini-battle took place as a very well mannered and kind gentleman did his best to convince me to first gift him, then sell him my sunglasses. Sadly for him, they were not for sale, but it was no walk in the park to convince him of this; in fact, we didn’t manage… we had to hide the glasses and take his attention away by giving him a GOING GLOBAL lapel pin, which he begrugingly accepted as a replacement.

The afternoon went by smoothly as it seems the elements had finally accepted that we would not be intimidated! Moreover, mother nature was kind enough to provide a thin layer of clouds to shield us from the beating sun, as we rode past some interesting sand and rock “mountains”:

At 16:05, hot but happy, we pulled up in front of the Seman hotel, which brought me back 8.5 years as I remembered staying here in 2000, when travelling though the region with Rishi, Alison and Alex, 3 friends from my Chinese language program at the time. Memories of this trip, I am sure, lurk around every corner of this town, and will doubtlessly caress my mind with waves of nostalgia over the next few days here.

After a brush and a scrub, we set out to arrange our permit for exiting the country through the Torguart pass, a process notoriou for being a headache and a money drain). The agency, however seemed to indicate that it would be “no problem” (yeah right… Clarisse and I are both experienced enough in China to know that “no problem” is a very relative term here). Still, we left believing that we would make it across by monday or latest tuesday.

With at least 3 full days in Kashgar, we are looking at the longest break since leaving Beijng, something about which neither of us is complaining: we have time to rest-up somewhat, soak up the unique atmosphere about the old town (the new part is like any other modern chinese city…), wash clothes, clean and service the bikes as well as buy whatever we need to buy while we are still in a country where we can speak the language and know where to find things. Mind you, as Clarisse reported a few days ago, this isn’t entirely true out here, since, despite being considered “China” on a political level, culturally we have already moved into Central-Asia: The language is completely different (Uyghur is a Turkic language) , facial features are distinctly Turko-Uzbek rather than East-Asian and general behavior is also more familiar to that seen in the west: for example, on China’s eastern seaboard, smiling at someone rarely draws a smile back; rather, you get stared at as an alien… in Kashgar (or Xinjiang for that matter), a smile is always returned. Another interesting example of the difference in behavior between the east and the west of this large land is  the timing of the bill in small, “hole in the wall”-type restaurants: in eastern China, as a general rule, you are asked to pay upon order, before food is served. Here, in the “far west”, more often than not, you (the customer) must actively seek out a waiter or the owner and press him/her for the bill. Point in case: while in Hami, we ordered a significant number of lamb skewers, and when it came time for the bill, the waiter collected the untouched kabobs and only charged us after couting the number of metal skewers strewn across the table.

I leave you tonight with these musings and look forward to the first of a few nights of good rest.

Day 17 was another of these uneventful days, where everything worked out just fine. After yesterday’s episode at the Hotel in Kuqa and because the sun here rises only around 7:30 (due to the discrepancy between the official Beijing time – valid country wide – and the actual time of rising and setting of the sun…), we decided to get up a little later, say 6am. We left the hotel with some relief around 7:30 just when the day was breaking. We quickly made our way out of Kuqa, whose subburbs appeared to be a lovely country-side like residential area, where all the women were sweeping and wetting the ground in front of their houses (if they weren’t wearing headscarves, you may think you are in Switzerland…). After re-joining the G314, it did not last long until we found ourselves again in the desert. By the way, the cities we are stopping in are all Oasis, which “grow” out of no where, i.e. underground water tables/surrounding snow mountains. Luckily, although the weather was dry, the sky was covered and temperatures stayed at a comfortable level around 25 C. The road was a seemingly unending straight forward road, newly refurbished and with almost no cars and only few trucks. We were thus able to drive around 100 km/hour for the major part of our short (only 260 km today) journey. Around 20 km before our daily destination – Aksu - the desert stopped again and cute little villages started to appear. We arrived in Aksu around 12:30pm and started to look for a “she wai binguan” (foreign-related hotel), i.e. a hotel which accepts foreigners, in order to avoid surprises like yesterday evening. Passing by the so-called “Guoji Da Jiudian” (International Grant Hotel), we figured that the term “international” had to indicate that it accepted foreigners… Indeed, it did. The only problem was, the hotel had no garage, so that our bikes would have to be parked on the street-side parking lots, where everybody could see (touch) them… Not very reassuring in the light of the interest our bikes repeatedly trigger among locals…

However, having a good sense of business, the man in charge of security decided we could park our bikes in the lobby and so we did! We’ll post a picture thereof tomorrow.

The day continued with trivial activities, including a prolonged nap and the visit of the local Bazar. Interestingly, people less an less speak Mandarin. Oral communication is becoming more difficult (except for public/big service institutions, such as gaz stations and hotels, where there is always someone speaking Mandarin). While Mark has already started to communicate with his hands, I am still trying to use my Mandarin, but I must admit that I did have to add some hands signs to it… Our smile and good mood though seems to work everywhere. After spending so much time learning Mandarin, it is hard to accept that within a few days, it will become totally useless. Since neither Mark nor I speak Uyghur or Russian, we will soon find ourselves in the same situation we were in when first arriving in China: Not understanding anything. I am sure it is going to be lots of fun, and cause us lots of headaches too. We will duly report.

Ciao!

This has been a relatively uneventful, bland day, despite 1) fearing getting blown over by very strong winds around 7AM as we motored past an incredibly well located wind farm and 2) riding through a beautiful gorge (see photo above) as we emerged from the Turpan depression (Turpan is actually located below sea-level). The riding was actually so uneventful that we had ridden the planned 400km to Korla by noon. With a long, restful lunchbreak behind us, we decided to push onwards to Luntai, another 170km away, but as we finally got there, the vibe around town was bad and the people we enountered rather off-putting. Despite 570km under our belt already, as the clock ticked past 5PM beijing time (i.e. light is about equivalent to that you would find around 3PM), we decided to ride out the 110km remaining to Kuqa.

Upon arrival, everything seemed to go fine: we checked into a simple, but adequate little hotel, hunted down the kabob house we were recommended and headed home, wondering what on earth could make this blogpost interesting… perhaps we shouldn’t have wondered, for, as I’m discovering, if you ask you get…!

At 10pm, after Clarisse had crawled under the covers and just about the time I was going to sort out the seemingly uncooperative internet connection came a knock on the door… There stood the FuWuYuan (floor attendant) apologizing, but telling us that we cannot stay in this hotel tonight, as it is not approved for foreign guests! 8 years ago, even 4 years ago, I would have understood that some hotels in China cannot take foreign guests… but NOW?!? after the Olympics supposedly opened China up to the world? Not only that, but it was a) late, b) the receptionist had registered us earlier on and c) packing up all our gear, fixing it to the bikes and moving to another hotel would have taken around 2 hours… not something we had the patience for after 690km! We pleaded with the floor attendant, assuring her that we would be gone by 6am. She left and we thought we’d won the war as Clarisse slipped under the covers again. 2 minutes later, the knock came again… the same FuWuYuan, accompanied this time by a police officer and the hotel owner, who were both very apologetic, but insisted that we could not stay the night. More pleading and bargaining ensued… I had the following conversation with the police officer:

Mark: “Why can’t we stay here”
Police Officer: ”because foreigners can’t stay here”
MD: “Why can’t foreigners stay here?”
PO: “Because those are the rules”
MD: “That’s not an explanation. Please explain to me why!”
PO: “Because this hotel’s standard isn’t good enough for foreigners”
MD: “I’ve stayed in plenty of much worse hotels in China. This is fine!”
PO: “The safety standards aren’t good enough”
MD: “You mean that foreigners and chinese aren’t treated the same way?”
PO: “Yes”
MD: “So the Chinese Government agrees to lower safety standards for its own people?”
PO: “Um…. no”
MD: “Well then why can’t we stay here?”
PO: “umm… because…. ummm… this hotel hasn’t applied for the foreigner hosting license”
… etc… etc…

No sooner had we started packing our bags -as the situation seemed hopeless-, the merry lot came back with a solution: we filled out the registration card for a foreigner-friendly hotel, but were allowed to stay in our hotel for the night. We were somewhat relieved, and laughing in disbelief, unpacked our stuff again and headed for bed.

What I take away from this tragicomic interlude is that the Olympics might very well have been Beijing’s coming out party, but the rest of China is still very much in the closet!

Day 15 was another day of “rest”, a busy one though. The day started around 8:30am, when the son of a taxi driver we met the day before picked us up in front of our hotel. We first drove to the Thousand Buddha Caves (Qian Fo Dong / Bezeklik Caves). There are called Thousands Buddha caves, because “thousands” (standing for “uncountable”) buddhas are painted in each of them, in addition to other buddhist paintings and sometimes sculptures. I visited these caves already 4 years ago, and I was strucked by the lack of conservation of the site. There are in total 83 caves, of which only 6 were open to the public (compared to 8 a few years ago). There is almost nothing left of the paintings in these caves. Whereas it is true that part of the paintings were taken by foreign (German) expeditions who took them back to Berlin (where part of them were destroyed during the second World War), the paintings that were left do not seem to have been subject to any particular conservation, not to mention reconstruction efforts.

Our visit to the caves was to a certain extent representative of today’s China: An ancient buddhist site, not really conserved but exploited as money making cultural heritage, guarded by Ouighours (ie muslims) - in an officially a-religious country, and next to which a new highway is being built. Isn’t this the perfect example of China’s current challenges ? The need for economical development and political unity vs. the need to acknowlege, preserve and respect the cultural diversity and historical heritage of a country with over 50 different minorities and which experienced countless regimes and dynasties. Whereas these challenges very likely exist through the whole country, they particularly struck me here in Turpan. If it wasn’t for the few Han Chinese you see here and there and for the Chinese characters everywhere, you may very well forget that you are in China. People’s faces have changed, the language has changed, people’s attidudes have changed.

We are not anymore the Weird Foreigners, but simply another minority, among the minorities already present here, ie mainly the Hui Minority and the Ouighour Minority.   Today, an Ouighour mint leaf seller hearing me talk Mandarin even asked me if I was a Han Chinese, or just a foreigner

Leaving the caves, we went to see the Sugong Minaret, built in the late 18th century. A building made out of briks, mud and straw. Simple, but elegant; cool, but welcoming. It is still used today as Mosque by the local people. Our morning tour ended with the visit of Jiaohe Ancient City, the ruins of an ancient metropol of Han Dynasty (200 BC). Impressive site bounded by two ravins on each site and craved into the moutnain rocks. A very nice site (UNESCO protected), although it lacked some explanations, and again reconstruction efforts. It thus left the tourist “free” to imagine how it may have been two milleniums ago… This is when we heard a Chinese guide explaining to a group of Northeastern Chinese tourists that the deterioration of the site was due to mainly to foreigners, who – in early years – did not come to travel but to plunder China’s cultural heritage… We laughed (in order to evacuate our annoyment) and just wondered what the site would look like today if it had been discovered before the cultural revolution (the site was discovered and excavated in the 90ies)… and what it will/would look like – without the participation of foreign conservation efforts – in 10 years with the wind and sand erosion…

After this tour we went back to the Hotel. It was around 1pm and over 30 degrees celcius. We thus opted for a nap… and got out of our hotel room only by the end of the afternoon, when the air cooled down. After a walk around the city and our encounter with school children getting out of school (around 7pm…ie 5 pm Xinjiang time) (check out the pictures in the album), we had dinner in a local street market: Some skewers and noodles for a change. A treat!

Tomorrow we take the road again. Around 400 km to Korla. I hope we’ll find some of this delicious Date Ice Tea on the road to cool us down, but I am afraid this is wishful thinking, and we will have to deal with Mordor-like hot desert scenery with noone around… Ciao!

Days have started to fuse, and it is no longer important, whether it is monday, thursday or saturday… our “weekends” are when we have days of rest scheduled and other days are riding days. So while most of you enjoyed a leisurly sunay morning, we were up at 6 again, ready to leave after our morning rituals.

The road was promising, as the highway had replaced the national road, and tollbooths were not built yet. The weather, however, was varriable: having left Hami basking in a beautiful early-morning sun, we quickly caught up to the dark-grey clouds which at some points sprinkled us with 2 or 3 drops… unbelievable, given that we were riding through what is supposed to be a desert, with minimal rainfall. Anyhow, bar the 2 or 3 drops, the rain stayed away; but the wind most certainly did not. It was howling all the way as we descended into the Turpan depression, finding ourselved below sea-level. Gusts of wind made the 2nd half of the morning uncomfortable and difficult, as we rode through scenery that reminded me of the evil lands of Mordor in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”:

After lunch, the wind died and immediately the air became rather stifling: hot and dry, with no breeze… fortunately the cloud cover prevented the sun from cooking us into a stew. The afternoon was uneventful, and we made it to Tulufan by 14:30, leaving us time for a much-needed snooze.

Tulufan is famous in China for its vineyards. As bizarre as it may sound, this little oasis town, just to the north of the Taklamakan desert, produces grapes and wine that, while no bordeaux or bourgogne, is half-decent! We explored the vineyards (top photo) before feasting on lamb shank, more skewers and local wine to celebrate the end of our 2nd week.

All in all, this 2nd week has shot by. From last monday morning’s breakfast noodles in wet Lanzhou to today’s vines and sunshine, it seems like we’re in a completely different country. Thankfully, these 7 days passed by without any problems, personal, physical or mechanical. May there be many more such weeks! Tomorrow we look forward to a day of rest among the grapes before tackling our last week in China.