The Long Road Home

Sue finds herself a shopping assistant and has some fun.

 

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I set out from Korla for the town of Kuche on a hot sunny morning wondering how riding the desert would be. I am now going olng the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, and Taklimakan Desert, with the Tianshan mountains to the north of me. after a bit of getting lost in the town in streets with ceramic tile warehouses and metal box dealers I finally got up onto the main 314 road. This road runs all the way to Kashgar. There were brown bare crinkly mountains to the right on and on until they faded into sort of yellow with the horizon ahead, and brown rough desert to the left. Hot bright sun and big clumps of cloud. The road was just a long black line to the horizon, with telephone wires and poles on each side stretching out also to the horizon. Container lorries and trucks were hammering along. Some going into central Asia were marked ‘haiguan’. Buses with flags flapping and wavy Uighur writing on the windscreens and then ‘Kashgar to Urumqi’ in Chinese. Somehow exciting. At first every so on often there were huge petrol stationswith music and red bunting. When lorries arrive people blow whistles and staff run across to do things, wiping windscreens etc.

The map had dots market ‘tuanchang’ with various numbers. I didn ‘t know what these were. I stopped at the entrance to tuanchang 29 and got water at the petrol tation. There was a long track leading into the desert with windbreak trees on each side. It turned out the tuanchang are Han settlements where people had come frmo the’neidi’ interior provinces in the 1960s from all over China to open up this barren land. The hopeless Uighurs had failed to do anything like that, the ladies said. At the tuanchang they grow cotton and grain and oilseed. The petrol station women were the children of settlers, they were born there. Now they had childrn too. The sandstorms were bad, and the winters cold. But they said their houses were warm and they would stay there.

I went on across the hot desert. There was a major turn to somehwere not on my map. The traffic thinned and the big petrol stations stoppd. The road was empty for long stretches. There was just brown gritty sand on both sides and wiry grass tussocks dotted around. A few tiny pale brown birds sit in the dust and then fly up the telephone wires when you come along. SOmtimes goods trains went through on the tracks far away at the foot of the mountains. LIke little black caterpillars. You can see them for miles and hear them hooting.

Every 20-30km there were oases. These are Uighur villages with long names that sounded Pakistani to me eg Kalabeg. You see them about 6-7km off, as a horizontal dark stripe on the horizon. Then as you get near, you frist get low scrubby bushes in the sand, green ones like horsetail weed, and some nice flowering pink bushes like a thing I think is called astilbe, in all shades of pink rfom whitish pale to purply and orangey deep colours. The dark green stripe is eventully lines of poplars and willows and walnut trees, and apricot orchards. As you ener the village there are sudeenly blue black swallows diving over the road, and pigeons. Flocks of brown and white sheep with ears hanging down next to the faces. There are rough-shaped fields of vry bright yellow corn and some bright green leaved crops under orchard trees. Channels of brown water at the sides of the road under poplars, and dark pools under willows. It’s lovely actually. There are donkey carts and women in skirts and headscarves and men in skull caps with sequins. There are mud houses with wood trellises made of poplar sticks with green vines over, and verandahs with people drinking tea out of bowls with silver tea pots on the table. Geraniums in pots on the ledges. Bakers making big naan breads and piing them up. Some villages have a small mosque with a gatehouse made of beige clay bricks in fancy geometric patterns and tall colmns with crescents. The Uighurs did’nt seem hopeless at all. The tea houses have metal vases like mini amphora with water in on the doorstep, for washing your hands. People ask me if I am Uighur. They also have bushy eyebrows and a nose like mine. The men are keen on using my camera to take pictures of me with them. They hardly speak Mandarin at all so we muddle along the best we can, adnd groups of blokes in flat caps and skull caps gather to discuss me, and look at my map and bike.

In the evenng I stop at a tiny row of houses where there’s a guesthouse. a single stoery block like an old school house. Opposite is scrubby desert to the horizon. At the door are hollyhocks and orchard trees and onions. I hang out clothes to dry in the orchard and they are dry and stiff and sort of crunchy in about 1 hour. Inside there are recesses for braziers in winter. The window is pasted with newspaper for some reaason. The wood door has no handle. The sun goes down really late at 10pm here. I eat zhuafan at a nieghbouring house where there is a spout pouring water into a trough and hollyhocks and a wood deckchair. Zhuafan is I think called pilau rice in English, or plov. It turned out to be rice with bits of marrow in it, and lumps of mutton on top.

The next day was dead still and very hot. I rolled on and on. The desert was white with salt on the cracked dry mud. Very bright dazzling white like snow. SOmtimes when lorries go past you can smell what’s inside them. Cinnamon going west, apricots and peaches going east. When you stop your skin covers with sweat. Big ants appear from nowhere and go up your legs, which is quite annoying. My bags are hot and the things inside stay hot for a long time after I arrive somewhere. Plstic is soft and my map case has gone all bubbly and wavy.

At desolate junctions there are sometimes crummy places with three or four shacks, some abandoned. You think noone could live there but when you go across the gravel to see, a few poeple come out, and they are quite jolly and give me a stool to sit in the shade. One couple said they were from Shaanxi, they go back every three years to see their children, who ive with their parents. They showed me a photo frame with the children in rompers with ears etc. He was a motor repair man, in overalls sitting on piles of tyres.

I listen to my ipod going along here. It’s fantastic rolling over the desrt listening to David Bowie and Tom Petty and U2 with the huge huge sky and hot road amd nothing anywhere for miles. Well, might not be your choice of music but I liked it. And listening to Officium ancient singing with Jan Garbarek on a saxophone on the road with the huge sky above made my hair stand on end. Never done anything like this before.

I had lunch of aptricots and naan bread under a bridge sheltering from the sun. I am also eating lots of salted nuts and dried salted beans which suddnly I desperately want. I guess for the salt.

I stopped at an oasis and had blackcurrant juice under a verandah and a whole pack of biscuits with a chidl whose mother I hope was not too cross about it. There were donkey carts going through. The pepole said there was a hotel in Luntai, a coouple of km away. I imagined a shack with newspaper windows etc. Low expectations always good. But next minute there were street lamps and flower beds with petunias and dry cleaning shops, nd it was an oil town in the desret. Scholol childrn were cycling home with little rucksacks on and red scarves. Thre was a beautiful hotel with a fish tank and sink with cold water in the lobby. I drank a litre of water and checked in.

They braodcast the news over the oil town at 8am. National anthem etc. I had rather disappointing fried dough and a boiled egg with two oil worker men in a cafe. I rode the last 120km to Kuche. First I had a tail wind. I flew along. Hot and hazy. No mountains and only flat all rond everywhere. The road normaly shelves up very slightly for around 6km, and ten you reach a long fale flat and then the road shelves down very slightly - and on it goes. You can see te gradients by looking at the telephone wires. There are no trees, only tussocks of grass here and there. I saw an orange oil flare far out in the desert. After I stop somewhere, say a little petrol station or something, I find it’s quite hard to push off unafraid into nothingness. You just hope your fragile little bike and body will be OK, and have to have faith that over the horizon there will be SOMEWHERE. Strange experience.

The tail wind died and became a nasty headwind or strong side wind. I battle along out of the saddle even on slopes slanting down. Different winds come from all over the place for no reason. It makes a whilsting in the spokes. I got a bit fed up. Finally finally I reached motor repair shacks and big petrochemical works and it was Kuche. I spent ages hunting for the Kuche Binguan hotel getting wrong directiosn from nice Uighur men who didn’t speak Mandarin.

At last I find it and eat crispy aubergine fried with egg, and onion pancakes, and more apricots. My face is brown and red from the sun and wind, with weird pale patches round my eyes from sun glasses. People politely ask if I’ve got used to the climate. I’m resting today. This town is anothr silk road town with a bazaar, caves and pre-islamic Buddhist paintings etc. I have to raech Kashgar in a few days so I must get abus from here towards Kashgar. This is a pity. I’ev enjoyed the desrt much more than I thought, but I’m looking forward to riding out of Kashgar to the mountains - and then once I reach the Torugart Pass, that’s the end of China after all these long kilometres - and after all the long days and years living in Hong Kong, in fact. Can’t quite believe it.

Sue describes a stage of her journey for us and confesses to buying not one but TWO donuts!

 

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Well I’m happily back on the road again. I decided to get the bus from Lanzhou as the desert looked too difficult. I went first to Dunhuang. In Dunhuang I had a lot of pancakse and the backpackers’ cafes, thinking what to do. I weighed up the risks of the desert - there was the heat, the huge distances between places, my own lack of expeirnece in deserts, no water, and not easy camping as no cover. Hmm. I went to look at the Mogao caves. These are out of town, in a chunk of barren desert. They have 6th to 14th C (I think) paintings in them of buddhas and feitian angels and a few lovely scenes of people riding horses and eating things off plates in little houses. ABout deserts, I heard from someone that there also desert bandits, so I decided enough was enough and I would get the bus up to Urumqi and then ride west from there.

I arrived in Urumqi in the morning after a beautiful night acrsos the desrt. THere was a gorgeous sunset blindingly bright, and then deep blue night sky with half moon and wonderful stars. Some stars very low down. You would never think of drawing them down there. Also I thought the desert was flat but this one was not flat. It had various low hills all sharp black silhouettes against the sunset sky. The bus was, by the way, wonderfully clean. It had lots of women on board. An older lady somehow in charge, and young women in jeans combing their hair and asking for songs on the in-bus video, and playing cards. It was so clean you were not allowed to wear shoes, but had to put them in a plastic bag and walk barefoot and put your shoes in a special cubby hole. The bus from Lanzhou to Dunhuang had been just awful in comparison. Disgusting dirty, noisy, smoky, smelly. It had been all men passengers with smelly socks. It had had macho fat men drivers who drove the appalling road in shifts. They shook each other awake, then the new guy would stride into the drivers seat, fling the bus into gear and wipe his face with a grubby towel whilst crashing through potholes. The drivers resting played cards for money in the back, shouting out ‘he’s a chicken’ etc at each other. The Urumqi bus from lovely in comparison.

Once in Urumqi, I rode through the city looking for breakfast, money, fruit and food. I REALLY wanted a slap-up breakfast and went round for about an hour looking for one. I thought there would be cafes etc. Only grimy official blocks and barrows with fruit and dusty gritty wastelands. I finally cycled up the drive of the (former) Holiday Inn expected people to shout at me that you can’t bring bikes up the drive becuase they look messy etc, but to my surprise, the security guards were lovely and put my bike in their shift room, and so I could go in and have eggs, bacon, four rounds of toast with jam, proper butter, coffee, almost real orange juice, and even cornflakes with milk. Fabulous. I filled in a comment card and gave everyone top marks.

Then I got food and bought apricots and bananas from a barrow lady with gold teeth and a headscarf who looked Russian to me but said she was Uighur. And I set out to the south west.

Through small brown villages with dead trees and mud houses and odd people bicycling slowly across the dust. There was a mosque with lots of men coming out after prayers. I saw two hoopoes, exciting orange black and white zebra striped birds. I stopped at the roadside to buy some honey, and made a hot coffee and sat with the beekeeper lady outside her green tent. Hills in the distance ahead. Didn’t look too difficult. Ha. I then rather surprisingly met two doctors from Urumqi Teaching Hospital on mountain bikes, heading up to the glacier in the mountains. I joined them and we rode togehter into the foothills. There was green fresh grass and little stands of birch trees, sheep, Kazakh villagers buying things from their village shops. There were pretty pale brown hawks or kestrels of some kind. The valley narrowed and we went into a rocky gorge with the river white water below.It started to rain and rained steadily all evening. Higher up again the valley widened and there were smooth grassy slopes and rocky peaks. There were little farmsteads with donkeys and goats. A big yellow hairy dog with alarming teeth attacked me. Where were my fur leather gaiters now!! I had thrown them out after the Tibetan plain. I screamed and pedalled like mad but that made it run after me more. I realised I should just stop and face it and then it eventually would stop going at me. I’m not keen on dogs at all. Kazakh men on horses were rouiding up sheep and goats in the wide pebbly river bad. It was dark and gloomy and water was pouring down the road like a stream.

Finally just before nightfall I reached the village of Houxia. It’s light until 9.30pm here now. There was an unexpected rather nasty cement factory before the village, chimneys with white smoke and orange fires burning. I stayed in the ‘post office guest house’. It had greasy dark steps and a thick padded canvas curtain instead of a door. Otuside was a Uighur baker’s hut. He was peeking out from behind the boards. He had a cosy bunk in the back of his hut. The guest house cost 40rmb, and there was hot water from a pipe into a cement mop sink, so I stood under it with the mops.

The next day there was bread at 10.00am so I messed around till then. I bought some stockings at the general store as I was going to go over a 4000m pass and it would be cold… I had gorgeous hot naan bread with my honey which was getting sticky everywhere, and hot coffee on the baker’s bench. The baker hardly spoke mandarin and had curly black hair.

I climbed all day. It rained all morning. I went up zig zag bends with wet cliffs on one side and river on the other. There were patches of snow now in the gullies. The wind was freezing. The main problem I had was keeping my hands and feet warm. THey hurt and then go numb. My hands got so cold I couldn’t feel them when I blew on them. Rick, thank goodness for you donated long-finger gloves - they were brilliant. I put plastic bags on my feet to stop them getting too wet. I ate chocolate and bread in a cave to keep out of the wind and rain. Finally as I reached the snowline, the clouds cleared. Huge ice black and white peaks appeared against blue sky. Warm, sun!! I climbed on between rocky grassy slopes sprinkled with snow. I was going really slowly, monitoring myslef all the time for altitude sickness signs. Panadol etc now at the ready. ALso good to know there were two doctors just up the road (ahead of me - they set off before the bread etc).

The road then went through deep snow. It was silent except for melt water trickilng through stones and crying of a few birds, little pale brown warblers or maybe wheatears. DOn’t know what they were. Also some huge black kites, and a brown and white bird of prey I also coulnd’t identify. From time to time there was crying of some furry brown animal like an otter trotting on the snow, then standing to watch me. I went past a camp of white round tents with chimneys. A man said they were collecting lichen. He said there had been heavy snowfall earlier, and pointed out tracks of avalanches on the slopes opposite.

At the juntion where the glacier road went off, I met the doctors. We took some photos, and then I started on the long last climb to the pass. There was now fantastically bright sunlight and blue sky. The road became a track and went zigzaggin black up the white mountain to a dramatic notch high on the horizon. I had to walk and push the bike all 9km to the top. There were avalanches booming like heavy lorries. I’ve never heard that before. The sun was pink. A few trucks were struggling through the ice and snow. I sang to keep myslef cheerful (your idea, Huang Xin!). Surprisingly I found I could rmemebr almost all of gaudeamus igitur. Not sure why I sang that.

Trucks were occasionally passing. To go round eachother on the narrow track, the drivers would stop, get out, and then stamp in the snow verges to check how far the ground was solid before a drop-off, and then get back in and edge around each other. It looked awfully dangerous.

CLose to the top, I realised my brakes had frozen and startd to wonder how I should deal with that. I battled the last few hundred metres, with icicles hanging from the rocks. SUddenly the cliffs dropped away and in front was wide open light and below a floor of astonishing snow-covered mountain tops to the far horizon, lit pink and blue in the sunset, under the deep blue sky with bright cold white moon.I have never seen anything like it. the pass is 4100 m above sea level.

I was really pleased I’d made it without getting sick, but now I was in trouble because of the bitter cold. A new problem. Amd the 9km had taken far longer than I expected as I didn’t realise it would be a track. I freed the brake levers by forcing them, but then discovered the rims were covered in ice. I tried riding down a short piece, but couldn’t brake at all, and had to stop by scrabbling my feet. Not good for a 20km descent of frozen hairpins. I decided to hitch a truck. A coal truck stopped and turned out to have a lovely man and his wife in the warm dark cab. They immediately helped me and slung my bike on the top of the coal and my bags in the cab.I was shivering as we showly ground down the trac now in the dark. There were those big maoniu hairy cattle like on the Tibetan plain, and we saw a fox running across the snow. The couple were villagers from the desert, who hauled coal every week from north of the mountains. Mr Zhang said they hated it as it was so dangerous but they could do nothing else. We passed a truck that had rolled off the road and smashed up - “fan le”. People were struggling with smashed boxes of stuff. Mr Zhang steered by. They were driving as a pair of trucks with neighbours. The neighbour got stuck and we waited for hours. No mobile signal. Finally we arrived in Bailitun village at 2am. I got down and waved goodbye. There was a nightwatchman at a little guesthouse. He made a big fuss about my passport and counld’t read chinese very well and spent ages trying to work out my HKID card. I was desperately tired and hadn’t eaten properly.Finally I got into a room and sat in bed eating oat biscuits and made up hot milk. Very relieved to be safe and warm in bed.

Bailitun turned out to be a rough row of sheds and cement shacks with some pool tables under an awning. The next day the nightwatchman appeared, all flustered, and took me to the police station. An official in a black uniform told me the town was in a closed area, and I had to leave. One thing after another. I should go to Heqing. The watchman was very smiley with him and agreed to arrange a bus or car for me. Heqing wasn’t really where I wanted to go. WHen we left the plice station, the watchman told me I could just bike away, if I wanted. I packed my stuff. THe watchman and an old lady gave me hot water for my bottles and I rode off. I headed south towards Korla and the desert.

Luckily the wind was behind me. I flew down the long descnet along the river with the ice mountains behind me when I twisted round to look. I was doing 40kph, hardly trying. I sped down valley after valley of rust coloured barren mountains. I saw Mr Zhang and his wife in their lorry, waving madly and tooting. I passed a busload of Muslim men who were out of a patch of dust with prayer mats in a row. They got up and said hello with their foreheads all dusty. SOme had red brown hair. They had big eyes. They were going to Yining in the far northwest corner of China.

THen suddenly, the mountains on both sides dropped to nothing, and the road and river emptied out onto a vast open space bright and huge huge sky. The desert was in front flat and brown with the road a dark stripe straight across it. The scenery is so stupendous I just coudl stop and stand and stare. I have never seen anything like this.

The gale was so strong I could hardly stand up, and it made me stagger forwards. I sat back on the saddle and it just lifted me along. I didin’t pedal for 20km with the gale blasting me across the desert. Thank heavnes it wasnt blowing the other way. There was a strange whistling sound coming from the brown bars of sandy gravel. Insects? No plants and no birds. As I passed telephone wires there was a huge booming sound of the wind in the wires.

I reached an oasis where suddenly there were scrubby plants like horsetail, and then marshy ponds with reeds and black headed gulls diving and widly flying, and loud calls of redshank waders, and horses with foals in the grass, and goats with old ladies in headscarves calling them. There were poplars blowing green and white in the gale. Poeple with coloured skull caps and big glasses were going by on wooden donkey carts. Behind you could still see far away the ice-capped mountains, and to the west dark clouds above another range of peaks. Ahead was yet another mountain range, brown with one white-topped sharp ridge with a white cloud over it. The oasis village was called Bairunheermodun.

I stopped at a guest house hoping I would not have police troble again. The gues house had a sewing shop with sewing machines and tailors dummies downstairs and a huge picture of Mecca. They said the place had been a Muslim prayer hall and then hadn’t bothered to take down the picture. I had some dumplings with two Mongol people with square faces.

Then this morning I have ridden from there through a string of lovely oases, with uighur villages and lines of poplar trees. It was quiet, as the wind had dropped to a light breeze against me, and I watched the huge sky above the desert with big grey rain clouds, then huge white clouds and then finally just a few scraps of white against blue sky. It was much easier riding like this across the desert than I thought. Bars of brown barren mountains would appear and then slip slowly past. The last ice-capped peak disappeard behind me. The road was empty and I rode down the middle. It got hot. There were no birds and no sound and no smell. I had a second breakfsat in a village bread and bottled pears. The Uighur men said I looked like them, they had dark skin and bushy eyebrows. We all took photos of eachother with my camera. They greet eachother with soft handshakes, two hands. There were no women around.

I came to a railway and a long goods train went past towards Kashgar. Trains are weirdly romantic, especailly going across the desert. I stopped at a scrappy row of shacks and had peaches and bananas and hot naan bread with the bakers were throwing like frisbees out of the oven. There was then one long hot winding climb through brown hlls, and then suddenly in front of me was the city of Korla. Hotels! Hot water! Towels folded on little racks in the bathroom! Kettles! Coffee! i have just had a plate of chips at a coffee bar.

Sorry for all typos and long post, but I found these last few days really interesting so I’m cheefully here writing quite a lot - no doubt most poeple have stopped reading my now, but it you are still reading - hello! and hope you enjoy.

[NB, for those kind souls writing to me etc, I still have no blackberry connectivity, and now also for some reason gmail now blocked, (sorry Julia!!! eek) and also my HK mobile has no signal. CHina mobile phone still working thank goodness. THANKYOU to the kind people writing etc, and I hope I get better connectivity soon so I can write back etc]