Around The World For Water
My 15 minutes of fame (in China)
I had expected the final stretch in China to be pretty uneventful, with just 9 days to do the best part of 1000 miles I anticipate long but pleasant days in the saddle and little else, I couldn’t have been more wrong. As for the riding I was very lucky, most days were sunny and the wind was not too bad so time on the bike flew past without me really noticing, I continued to receive incredible hospitality on a daily basis with people stopping to by me drinks, refusing to let me pay for my lunch (even if I’d ordered 2 or 3 meals) and generally just making me fall in love with China even more. One day a cycled up alongside a guy called Jonny (his English name) he spoke a little English so we chatted as we rode together, he invited me back to his house but unfortunately I still had a long way to go and time wasn’t on my side so I had to decline. He said goodbye and cycled off ahead on his speed, unburdened bike and that was that. About 1 hour later I caught up with Jonny as he had been waiting for me by the side of the road, again he tried to persuade me to stay at his house and when I reluctantly declined a second time he produced a map from his pocket that he had drawn showing all the details of the road ahead, distances between towns, all the big climbs and where I should stop to pick up some food and water. This type have kindness from complete strangers has been common place for the majority of the trip.
After a couple of days riding I was making good progress but as I headed further east into the densely populated areas of China navigation became a bit trickier. It was city after city, each one blending seamlessly into the next creating an endless urban sprawl in which the road I was cycling on got swallowed up. Places that looked like small towns on my map were cities of millions of people and the map with its 1:4 000 000 scale was rendered useless – it was time to bring out the trusty compass. If unsure I would just head east and try to find a bigger road which are easier to navigate on. I was fully aware that I was not supposed to be cycling on half the roads that I was but I had already cycled almost 15000 miles on motorway in the West of China without passing policemen even batting an eyelid. In fact I had the impression that most police didn’t seem to care and only stopped me if they wanted to give me a can of red bull or invite me over for tea, that was until I reached the city of Hefei. Cycling along in my own world listening to a bit of Stephen Fry on the Ipod, completely lost in a maze of motorway bridges I saw the flashing lights as the police car pulled alongside me. The policemen were friendly and asked me to wait in the car while they called another officer who could speak English. Steven Zhang was a traffic officer who had spent 2 years living in Zambia and spoke great English. He told me that I was not allowed to be cycling on the bridge which I of course had no idea about and then we chatted for a while about my trip. They escorted me off the road and asked me if I minded waiting a while as there were some media reporters coming to interview me! Of course I did not mind apart from I still had a long way to cycle and I was having a bad hair day! In no time at all a large crowd of onlookers had gathered to stare at the strange tramp on a bike while several photographers asked me to pose for cringey photos and reporters asked me all sorts of irrelevant questions. After I was taken to dinner with the policeman, the reporters and a priest who came from who knows where, they offered to pay for me to stay in Hefei for a night and get cleaned up but once again I had to hit the road. I have since received an email from the police officer informing me that I was on television, radio and every regional newspaper the following day, I will add the links at the bottom for anyone who can read Chinese ; )
I continued to get lost on daily basis but I didn’t care, my unplanned route always seemed to take me through beautiful scenery, on unplanned boats across rivers and to lovely people. I made it to Shanghai in the 9 days feeling a massive sense of achievement in doing so that I had not yet felt on the trip. I’m not sure if it was because Shanghai was such a huge land mark, because I had cycled 3400 miles in 5 weeks or because I had proved to myself that I could cope alone. I was reunited with Rob in Shanghai which was wonderful, I was so happy to hear that he had also been having wonderful adventures as I’m sure you read from his blog. Rob jumped on the ferry to Japan and I spent 4 priceless days with my cousin and parents relaxing and taking in the incredible city of Shanghai then it was also time for me to leave behind a country that I had become so comfortable in and head over to a new one with so many unknown and adventures awaiting me.
The two day crossing was fun and I shared my cabin with some interesting characters including a Buddhist monk, a Japanese doctor working in China and an American having problems with the Chinese authorities.
Compared with China my ride in Japan was like an afternoon stroll. Instead of 3500 miles I had only 350 miles to do and plenty of time to do it in. Japan could not be any more different to China; I had left behind the chaos of one of the world’s fastest developing countries to the immaculate peace and quiet of one of the worlds most developed countries. Everything here is so orderly, the streets so clean and the people so polite. After the constant attention I received in China it was quite nice to be left alone for the most part and instead of huge staring crowd I get a polite wave or the occasional bow. I have not left the hospitality behind though and almost every day somebody will stop to give me a refreshing drink, or just to welcome me into their country.
Japan has it all… mountains, forests and a beautiful coastline. I spent the best part of one day riding through a national park passed Mount Fuji which was breath taking – my GCSE geography teachers would have been jealous.
I am now in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo where I have spent two days being spoilt by a family friend who I have not seen for 10 years. As I write this blog I am bursting with excitement because tonight I get a bus to Kyoto where I will be meeting back up with Rob and Danny for what I know will be an eventful couple of weeks.
Links for the Chinese news articles…
http://hf.bendibao.com/news/2012423/27965.shtm
http://ah.anhuinews.com/system/2012/04/21/004916548.shtml
http://news.163.com/12/0422/15/7VN4CUAV00014AED.html
http://epaper.hf365.com/jhcb/html/2012-04/21/content_550039.htm
Well, we knocked the bast*rd off!
"You can steel your heart aginst any kind of trouble, any kind of horror, but the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you". I have found these words particularly true not only across China but throughout the entirity of this journey. Bad days come, and yeah, at the time you feel like giving up and throwing the towel in. Yet you carry on, you get through things and you are glad you did. However it is when the local guy on the scooter takes you to have lunch with his friends, shows you his family and the sights of his hometown, asks you to stay for dinner and beers then puts you up for the night without asking anything in return anything but your email address and a photo, that you have to take a moment to stop yourself crying.
This happened to me on the my second day of riding having left Xi'an. I imagine that me and Tom are beginning to sound like broken records in these blog posts, everytime it seems all we harp on about is how lovely the people are, how overwhelmed by hospitality we have been. But in all honesty it is the thing that inspires the most and what makes this trip something special, and hopefully something life changing. Before i left my new friends in Danfeng i was warned to be careful in Henan province, the next region, as people "are not very nice". Experience has taught me it is best to ignore these warnings.
Admittedly a tub of chewing gum and lots of water was not quite as grand a gesture of friendship as the day before, but it still made me feel very welcome as i entered the new province. The weather had been very hot and sunny but things began to change. A grey a drizzley day hadnt dampened my spirits, yet the local guy coming the other way on his bike certainly raised them. Despite the fact that most people in China are riding some form of bicycle he seemed ecstatic to see someone else on two wheels. Much laughing, handshaking and photographing later we both continued on our seperate ways. Not before however he filled up my water bottles from his own and offered me his raincoat. Later on a couple stopped me to give me more water and offer me a wash. Once again i declined the later.
I run the risk of essentially making this article a list of the nice things that people did for me on my way to Shanghai. Given that at least once per day somebody showed some gesture of kindness, it would make for a rather long list. Therefore i'll omit the daily gifts of water, and just stick to the events which really made me think about why people help others, why they go out of their way for a dirty, smelly young man with a bike.
Whilst having lunch one day a man in a 4x4 stopped for a chat. We said what we could despite the language barrier before he drove off. He returned 10 minutes later with a list of things translated on his phone. He said he wanted to be friends and had a gift. 2 litres of coke and 2 packs of sausages. The very next day a teacher stopped me and gave me his phone number so i could call him if i needed help asking for food. Later that same day i asked a guy for directions. As i was riding along some while later i heard a shout. He had caught up to me on his scooter to give cakes, biscuits and drinks. He then slipped 100 yuan in to my pocket and rode off in the other direction. It was dark at this point and he had a broken arm yet he had still come after me just to give me food and money.
That last one really got to me. I found it really hard to understand why. I mean i look pretty rough, but i'm clearly not destitute. I understand it creates a nice feeling to share and give, but to a complete stranger, a foreigner and not to even hang around long enough to recieve any thanks. I really felt like crying. To be all alone in a strange country, yet to not feel scared because you know there is always someone there, someone you havent met, who is going to look ou for you. It is a great feeling, a feeling that makes you want to go out and find someone to pass it on to.
Navigating in a foreign country can at times be a challenge, but with a population of 13 billion, there is always someone in China to point you in the right direction. Its even nicer when they ride some of the way with you as was the case in Quanjia. Big cities like Nanjing can be particulary stressful. Yet help Is always at hand. A really nice man bought me a map and plotted the route for me before a second passer by wrote the instructions for me in Chinese.
As i passed through Nanjing i entered the concrete jungle of cities, satalite cities and busy highways that surround Shanghai. The approach to the landmark city was not the headache i imagined it to be, and the availability of places to camp was not the horror story i had heard it made out to be.
I have been very fortunate to stay with Tom's cool cousin Ben, who has made me feel right at home (his Yorkshire accent helps). I've seen some sights and got my ticket for Japan.
Food glorious food
I ended up spending four nights in Jiyuguan instead of the intended two, it can often be quite difficult to get going again once you have stopped. As I continued my journey east I was pleased to see that I was gradually leaving the dessert behind. The boring, windy endless sand was now being replaced by rolling hills, calmer days and lush cultivated valleys. Without the constant headwind I was now finding it much easier to manage the 80 miles that I needed to do in order to reach Shanghai in time. On a few occasions I even had a slight tailwind and found myself comfortably covering over 100 miles and still having time to stop and engage with the local people. The headwinds of central Asia and Western China had been such a burden for over two months and I was over the moon to leave them behind, but with the departure of one challenge comes the arrival of another. As I began to head in a more southerly direction my route took me through the lower hills on
the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. This was a challenge was much more welcome however and I climbed the steep mountain roads with the sun on my back and a smile on my face – because whatever goes up must come down and I enjoyed some fantastic decents. Towards the bottom of one particularly long decent of around 50km I met another cycle tourer who was heading in the opposite direction. He was pushing his bike so I asked if there was a problem that I may be able to fix but it turned out his legs were just a bit tired! I didn’t have the heart to tell the poor lad that he had a 50km climb ahead of him!
I mentioned in my previous post that I was enjoying the food here in China, that would be an understatement… I LOVE IT. As a cycle tourer you are always cycling to your next meal and there are several criteria you look for in a meal which are; cheap, tasty, plentiful, nutritious and quick. The food in China complies with all of these criteria and even gets bonus points for spiciness. I break up the long days of cycling stopping in roadside cafes to eat a wide variety of delicious foods which usually turns out to be pretty fun too. Being unable to understand anything on the menus (when they have one) it is often like playing Russian roulette when choosing my meal. Either I look at what the other diners are eating and point at something that looks tasty or I just point at some random symbols and see what turns up. Quite often I am marched into the kitchen a told to point at what I like, on one occasion I ordered the usual noodles and the chef came out
the kitchen holding a chilli in one hand and a leak in the other. As a fan of spicy foods I naturally pointed at the chilli with an eager smile and waited for my food to arrive. Five minutes later the chef bounds out of the kitchen with my plate of noodles, diced beef and what must have been no less that 30 chopped chillies. I finished my plate of food teary eyed and mopping the sweat from my brow eternally grateful for the unlimited pots of green tea which helped with the painful burning in my mouth. That was the day I learned that the Chinese don’t mess around when it comes to spicy food! More recently I have adopted a strategy borrowed from a fellow cyclist whereby I write down the Chinese symbols of the foods I enjoy so that I can ask for them in the next restaurant. This strategy does not always work, I noticed a table of four gentlemen eating a beef noodle dish that looked extremely tasty so I asked the lady to write down the Chinese symbol
for the dish which she kindly did. The following day when I stopped for lunch I asked for this dish and the waitress looked a little surprised. I assumed she was just surprised that a stranger westerner had just turned up on a bicycle and order a traditional Chinese dish so I smiled and assured her that that was what I wanted. When the food arrived I understood the reason for the waitress’s surprise, the lady from the previous restaurant had written the symbols for the exact food the group of gentlemen had ordered which was beef noodles for 4 people! Thankfully I was hungry and the food was delicious so a polished off the lot, to further surprised a possibly disapproving looks from the staff.
While these little roadside cafes/shacks provide delicious and affordable and food they are not places for the faint hearted. Table manners certainly don’t exist and all the things you were told off for as a child; burping, slurping, scoffing are actively encouraged! The more noise you make while eating the better – its great! The hacking and spitting is maybe a bit too much and some of the cleaner establishments have signs on the walls requesting that diners refrain from spitting on the floor. I can just imagine a similar sign on the wall of pizza express back home : )
So I managed the 900 miles to the city of Xian in 10 days. Here I have spent one day with my parents seeing the incredible Terracotta Warriors and Wild Goose Pagoda. Tomorrow it is back on the bike for the final 900 mile stretch to Shanghai where I look forward to a much needed and well-earned week out of the saddle.
Kashgar to Xi'an
Not the most imaginative title, but i wasn't prepared to compete with Tom's 'Desert of Death'. The time seems to have flown by since leaving Kashgar. The first week of riding was a good one, sunshine and tailwinds made for pleasant and productive riding. On numerous occasions i found myself ending the day over 100 hundred miles further down the road then i started. My experience with the people was just as favourable. Twice i was pulled over by the police to be given iced tea, and was even awarded a days worth of food courtesy of a convoy of 4x4's returning from a trip in the desert. Things were so good that i started to consider bad days as being those with no gifts from strangers and only a moderate tailwind.
The good times weren't going to last forever, and the wind began change. This coupled with the tedium of the barren desert became quite testing. Five or so days could pass without seeing anything more civilised then a petrol station or truck stop. Carry enough food and water became a neccessity. With the change of wind came a change in temperature. and i found myself waking up to -16 and frozen water bottles. I was venturing out of the desert however and with that came the mountains. It was b\nice to experience a different terrain, although it was no less harsh or desolate than the desert.
I had grown very untrustworthy of my map, which had been constantly off with its distances and had created a few towns that did not exist. A lot of the time i didnt have a clue where i was. My confusion was made worse when i was escorted by police through a town as i had ventured into Tibet. I was unaware that the region ventured so far North. After initially being a bit hostile the police lightened up. helped me do a spot of shopping and reassured me i was travelling on the right road.
I was excited to be approaching the more populated side of China, and woke early one morning eager to get on the road, only to notice my hub had been leaking a lot of oil. O was unable to top it up and the gear felt very stiff. It wasn't too much of a problem however as i only had 2 3000 metre passes to ride over. Having pushed and cursed my way to the top i was then rewarded with an 80km descent, that put one hell of a smile on my face and led me ride to the outskirts of Xining by the evening.
The next few days were fairly plain sailing, until once again i found myself staring up at another big climb. Very few cars were going up and at the foot of the hikk there was a diversion sign. Not trusting either my map ar my Chinese sign reading abilities i decided to stick with the hill. Approaching the summit i saw a sign for a tunnel and a toll booth. I planned to just keep my head down and ride through, playing the naive tourist. There was noone at the toll gate but the tunnel was closed off and surrounded by workmen. I was given a resounding 'no' when i gestured i wanted to go through. After some pleading and agreeing to wear my winter cap they decided they would let me through. It was an enjoyable 3km of darkness, and i seemed to amuse the workers as i passed by. The following side gifted me a nice descent into the city of Pingliang. There i was taken in by a guy who owned a bike and camping shop. I was fed and generally treat like a king as well as having my bike cleaned. They paid for me to go to a public bath and stay in a liitle hotel. The bext day when i returned to the shop we had a boozey lunch before saying goodbye and taking a lot of photos.
I have now been in Xi'an for 4 nights and am just about to get back on the road to Shanghai.
The desert of death
A bit of a dramatic title I must admit but this is one of the meanings of Taklamakan which is the name given to the desert that I have been cycling across for the best part of 3 weeks, other meanings include ‘the point of no return’, ‘place of ruin and my personal favorite which is ‘go in and you will never come out'. Thankfully I did make it out and am now resting in the City of Jiayuguan in Gansu province.
Arriving in China from Cental Asia was a huge contrast. Firstly it felt extremely developed with good roads and fancy cars, the weather was about 40 degrees warmer and you could remove your gloves without fear of loosing a finger and what I was most excited about was the sudden variety of tasty foods availble - I was becoming quite desperate after 2 months of mutton fat and stale bread.
I left Kashgar on a mission, in a bid to arrive in shanghai by the time my parents arrived 6 weeks later I would need to cycle 80 miles a day (China is HUGE!) This is around twice the daily mileage we had been doing through Central Asia and it has certainly not been a walk in the park. Whether or not I achieve my 80 mile target is largely out of my control but down to the direction of the wind. Even if I cycle 10 hours in the day, which i have done on several occasions it can still be impossible with the desert winds. When the wind changes however I find myself cycling over 100 miles so on the whole it tends to even out.
I was glad to discover that the incredible hospitality we had experienced in 'the stans' did not stop in China. Every day I experience an act of genuine hospitality and kindness from a complete stranger whether its someone buying me lunch, giving me a watermelon, a passing truck handing me a can of red bull through the window or just someone stopping me to welcome me to china. These people make the long days of cycling so much easier and make small annoyances like wind or punctures seem so insignificant.
After 20 days in the saddle I arrived in Jiayuguan wind swept and sunburned carrying half the desert on me. I have spent my time being a tourist and visting the most westerly section of the great wall and some impressive forts. I also met some Geman geologists for a beer or two which was great - the first converstation (not including those i have with myelf) that i'd had since Rob and I went our seperate ways.
On the whole I am really excited to be in China. The weather is great (wind not considered), the people are friendly and the food is incredible. Standing at the top of the great wall completely alone with perfect blue skies I felt incredibly lucky to be on this adventure. I now have an 11 day ride to the city of Xian where i will be meeting my parents a little early which I am extremely excited about!
I must now apologise for this blog post. It is certainly the worst that I have written. I just spent well over an hour writing a much longer and more engaging post which I nicely finsihed in time for the computer to crash! So this one was written in a hurry and very reluctantly!
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