Desert-desert

From Kashgar there are two roads east, the southern silk road and the northern. I went south.










Where it's all but wet! Barren land as much as you want. I got reminded of Haruki Murakami's 'Hard-boiled Wonderland'. The surroundings becoming a reflection of my mind. Or the other way around. Drives you crazy. The Taklamakan Desert. I thought: "This is the most 'desert-desert' that I've seen on my ride. Fierce." Then I thought: "There's no water. There's no water. There's no w-a-t-e-r.. WATER!" The road goes to Hotan, to Cherchen, to Charkilik (the Uighur names, as this is the area inhabited by Uighurs) and in between there's sand. And sometimes dunes. And every once in a while poplars aligning the road, where the Uighur farmers have their farms.
The Taklamakan is no joke for cyclists, and as my time is limited I decided to fast track a bit. A bus to Hotan, a bus to Cherchen. When I got there (Thursday), they told me that the next bus to Charkilik would go on Monday. Beijing time! Beijing time means that you subtract two hours from the local time. The party wants people living 5000 kilometres westwards (roughly two timezones earlier) to stick to Beijing time. One nation one country policy, but ridiculous when you're there. But that the man at the bus station tells me, next bus in four days time - Beijing time - was funny I thought.
So I cycled to Charkilik and beyond.







Had a great time in Kashgar. It's not the charming place that you imagine from the stories, but still, a great time. Visited the livestock market on Sunday, where I photographed this man. He was part of a deal, I didn't really get which part, as the sheep came from another guy and went to yet another guy, but he ended up with some cash in his hands. I loved his expressions during the transaction. 3 sheep, 500 Yuan. That's what, 60 Euros? Lots of touching and feeling the sheep, especially in their fat bottoms.
At the hostel where I was staying there seemed to be some sort of bike-packers (the equivalent to back-packer, but then with everything strapped to the bike instead of the back) convention. Endless talk about gear, roads, experiences.. Often when standing around some bicycles and looking at the way the other manages the thing. "What went wrong, did you have this? Punctures? Hardship?"
Anyway, here's the Kashgar cycle gang on a sunny day in August:



Today I cycled out to the sand dunes around Dunhuang, which lies smack in the middle of the Gobi Desert. On my way I came across this billboard, a left-over from the Olympics '08:



Which brings me to what I've learned so far about the Chinese:
- They often smoke like chimneys, especially the men.
- They rasp their lungs out to get rid of slime and snot. Men and women alike. When we discussed this at the hostel in Kashgar my German cycle friend Holger blew his nose and put his handkerchief back into his pocket. That's what we do.
- They know about USA and ask me: "You, USA?" with hope in their eyes. They don't know about Europe, or Eulope for that matter. And you can forget about 'The Nethellands' too.
- They must all carry toilet paper, because you don't find any in the public toilets, or even in the three star hotel where I'm staying at the moment (after more than a week of roughing it in deserts I thought it was time for some luxury). And they don't use water either, like in Iran and Pakistan (just another habit you habituate yourself to when you're staying there long enough) and the dust-bin in the corner is always full with used papers.
- They don't care whether or not the paper in the dust-bin shows the result of the toilet visit.
- They don't necessarily need doors for toilets.
- Women carry umbrellas, even in the desert, not to protect themselves from getting wet, but to protect themselves from getting brown.

What I've learned about Dutch who travel long enough:
- They all buy and eat peanut butter, no matter how delicious the local food might be. Aziza and Jorma, a couple from Amsterdam cycling their way to Cambodia to support a charity there, were the first to find the peanut spread in the vast mass of Chinese sauces in the supermarket in Kashgar (took me two visits to figure out where exactly they hid it). The news spread like wildfire so that everyone stocked up.

One more thing about the Chinese:
- They display peanut butter at the sauces section, not at the bread topping section (like they have honey and jam grouped together).



Two more images of the animal market in Kashgar. I like the way the guy rests on the fence, as if he's tied to it like the animals he brought.



The area east of Charkilik was not depicted well on my map. A real mind screw, as I was calculating certain villages to pop up at the horizon, which wouldn't come. That night I camped and felt depressed. My gears had started to defect, something that you can't have if you're using a Rohloff speed hub. It's kind of high-tech, and way above my league of repairing. Called Cycledad, asking him for expert advise, who then browsed the internet and found many similar cases. After a call with the factory, we got the solution. Mind you, we're talking a hub with 14 gears, like a tiny advanced automatic gearbox. Lots of toothed wheels, spheres rotating around each other. Cost a small fortune. What do they say:
"Whack it with a hammer, both sides, but the sprocket side first.."

Reminds me of the sprocket change I did at the bike shop in Kashgar. The old one looked like a throwing star after all the kilometres I did with it. Must say, it's the best souvenir to my trip so far.

But back to the pictures (when I do get to write my typing goes everywhere..), after a long thirsty ride through the Taklamakan I got to this melon farm where some Uighur men and women where weighing, selecting and washing melons. They immediately gave me one to quench my thirst. Then the Han Chinese came, probably the people who owned the farm. They took me to the back where we ate freshly plucked and boiled corn stalks. Yummy! And we had more melon and tea. When I was about to go they gave me bottled water and another corn stalk. And another melon for the road (by now my eyes had taken the shape of melon and I couldn't see much more of the fruit).
I proposed to take a group photo, at which the Uighur workers and Han owners looked uncomfortably at each other. But we did it, and I felt proud of bridging the gap between the two ethnicities. That gap is not only one of ethnicity, but also of religion and material wealth, but for a moment we were all friends.



And then I bumped into Mr Ying, Mr Chang and Ms Lee, three truck drivers (although Ms Lee does most her time on the passenger seat) going to Dunhuang. I had planned to cross Qinghai - charmingly called China's Siberia - but I couldn't handle more Taklamakan and a map that didn't seem right. If I could come along a bit? Mr Ying had a free passenger seat and his cargo was not much so it was easy to strap the bike onto it.
We drove through the pass, not much faster than what I would have made cycling, but I loved it. No worries about food, about water, about energy, where to stay. Through the mountains we left Xinjiang (Uighuristan as some Uighurs had in mind; it appeared a fatal thought for many of them) and entered Qinghai. A plateau; a high altitude desert and again my map misguided me. Many of the villages weren't there, or a name on the map proved to be nothing else then a ruin.
But I was sitting comfortably on Mr Ying's passenger seat. We didn't exchange more than 5 words (I tried some Chinese from the dictionary, but that was useless) and then restored to signing 'sharing' (in case of food and Mr Chain smoker Ying's cigarettes), 'sleeping' (two bunks in the truck, so luckily no sharing here) and 'what's that strange sound coming from the gearbox?'
The gearbox broke and we made it just about to Lenghu.



So I had planned to cross Qinghai, Siberia in China because of prison camps and endless nothingness, but I changed my mind. After the umpteenth non-existing village on my map I decided to take the back door into Gansu. Cycling went great, I managed to avoid the defected gears (4,6 and 7 for my hobbyist friends reading along) and ploughed on eight, nine and sometimes ten with tail wind. And then came the last thirty to the Dangjin Pass (3800 metres, cookie after Koenjerab).. A head wind as I haven't often felt before. Criminal. And that bit of road is as straight as an arrow so for 4 hours you're looking at one and the same mountain range that doesn't seem to come closer.




The place might be very unkind to cyclists, the scenery of Qinghai is simply marvellous. So wild. Black and white land, endless vistas.
On my way out I camped on the Dangjin Pass, where I got stuck. Fatigued and hungry, for the first time during my ride without a having a proper meal handy. I literally scraped the last dried dates from the bottom of one of my bags. And I had peanut butter. No bread though, but I did have a tea spoon. My friend Johan once made a diet out of eating nothing but peanut butter so how bad could it be? It has a lot of energy and proteins, so I felt full and satisfied. Made a cup of tea to celebrate the return of my stove that was out of order for quite a while. I finally figured out where it was blocked (for the hobbyists: it's never the tubes, it's the needle and screw at the bottom of the burner and the soot that clogs it).
Freak occurrance that night: I was lying on my mattress, seeing some of the photos that I took that day, when I saw a red laser pointing at the outer lining of my tent. I unzipped the front door and looked out. A car had stopped, the passengers spotted my tent and where trying to get my attention by using their laser. Bloody frightening.
They drove off.




Then came the Gobi. Die Wüste Gobi, as my German travel guide calls it so beautifully. And there's no road other than a gravel strip, all the way to Danhuang, 90 kilometres long. Arriving there was great though, very civilised place with all the facilities one wishes for when one has been without showers and toilets and beers and roads for a week.

And the dunes around, by far the most desert-desert I've seen.