Yakland; take 2

A farmer's bike.













Wow, so frustrating! Yesterday I wrote this entire blog, and the moment I press 'publish', the site disappears and two nightly hours of typing with it. Felt a bit like the time when I was working on my thesis and I lost bits every once in a while because my pentium III (first generation) had a will of its own. Rewriting can be good, you've put it into words before, and now you give it some more thought (Gregory David Roberts' 'Shantaram' wouldn't have been as good as it is, if it weren't for the prison guards who took his drafts away and made him write 500+ pages again from scratch), but it also feels like a royal waste of time.

Anyway, here it goes. Yakland revisited. I'd been before to Qinghai, on my way to Dunhuang, and back then I described it on the blog as China's Siberia. Vast high altitude plains, dry as a desert, long straight roads. The road I cycled last week was quite the contrary. Green, beautiful mountains, rivers and life. Local people that invite you in for a cup of yak tea, or that come out to serve you a plate of fresh fruit when you take a break at a gas station. It's what a travel by bicycle should be like. That's what I reflected halfway through, this is what it is suppose to be. Not too hot, not too cold. Not a road that has still to be realised, or one that's so crowded with motorised traffic that you have to tetris yourself in. No technical trouble (be it health or mechanics), no logistical fuss with water or food. Just a good feel.

I got to what the Chinese government likes to call 'eastern Switserland', and except for the serious lack of cheese fondue, they're quite right.



It's harvest time as I mentioned before. South of Changye the farmers are occupied with getting the grain off the land. With scythes they cut the cereal. The grain is grouped into bundles and left in piles on the yellow fields. Sometimes you see typical chopper-like motorbikes with a box at the back, carrying an enormous pile of grain. The man buried under behind the steering wheel, the wife on top of the pile keeping her mouth and hair covered with a scarf. It's a comical sight.



This man exemplifies the Chinese agricultural labourer, and maybe even working class in general. A blue cap, a blue jacket and a blue pair of pants. Mao's suit. He was sitting at the roadside, life passing him on its way back home. Younger guys with carts full of grain. Men and women with tools: shovels, scythes. The day was almost done and he was enjoying the last moments.
He looked up to see a stranger taking a picture of him. He didn't mind.
The last rays of sunlight. It gave a phenomenal colour to the fields. A glaring green that contrasted marvellously with the glaucous blue mountain in the background.



Not long after I left the road and took a cart track up to the hills. In the foothills of the Qilian Shan I started pitching my tent. Busy with the inner-lining and carbon fiber tent-poles, I was greeted by an old, stocky man who came walking down from the hills with a knapsack on his shoulder. Placing his load on a rock he started talking to me in an animated fashion, using his hands. I don't know exactly what he meant to say, but it had either to do with the place not being fit for camping as it was too cold, or too close to the evil spirits that inhabit the mountains. For the first I have my sleeping bag, and for the second my commonsense, I thought, and thanked him with a smile and carried on. Then he decided that he wanted to help me, but as he had had a bit too much of the old fire water during the day (probably his sole companion in the mountains) he managed to fall with his full weight onto the fragile construction of tent poles and thin mosquito net and push over my bicycle within the first 20 seconds. Then he attached the outer lining to one of the tent pegs in an unconventional way so that I had difficulties undoing it. I told him: "Enough!" He wasn't upset and kept on talking and smiling, so I had to usher him on.
Afterwards I slept like a log, still tired of that midnight blogging session in Changye, and when I woke up, the farmers had already started working the land on the fields below.

The second night I camped on a hill in a bowl made of snow-capped mountains. It was tiresome to push the bike up, but the view was well worth it.




That morning I started climbing the first pass. It goes up to 3700 metres and when I was halfway, I met these people that were busy shepherding their yaks into a fenced off area so that they could be vaccinated (lower left-hand corner). One man had a syringe and the vaccine (upper right-hand corner), another carried red paint and a brush (lower right-hand corner). The 'vet' would corner an animal and inject the vaccine loosely into its behind, after which the 'painter' would mark it red. Beautiful woolly beasts, yaks, with wet snouts.
After their task was done, the men and women asked me into their tent where we had tea with yak milk and a dish of the night before that had potatoes, noodles, and chunks of meat that I recognised as rabbit. These I passed on to my new friends, as they enjoyed them much more than I would, and when I had finished my private bowl and they asked me if I wanted more, I joined them eating from the big pan. Much better.
The girl in the upper left-hand corner stood in the doorway at the moment that the meal was served.



Afterwards I made my way up to the summit, where I came across the first Buddhist shrines with these typical prayer flags.



On the other side high altitude grassland awaited me, with yaks and sheep grazing on it. At one point I was surprised by a pool table standing in the middle of all this. If you thought yaks and billiard don't go together then think again. The lady of the yurt (a tent in which the shepherds live) had to woo the animals constantly from drawing too close, but that might have had more to do with the food drying outside, than the cues and balls.
Played her son, got beaten twice.



The second pass wasn't that much trouble, for the simple fact that your starting point is at let's say 3200+ metres and you only have to do another 500 or so. Nice shrines again, and this time I noticed the stone tables with texts carved into them in Tibetan. Here and there the piles where decorated with foodstuffs that people sacrificed, and prayer texts on paper.
The third pass, was a different thing all together. Hairpin bends climbing more than 1000 metres where you find a 1,5 kilometre long tunnel that saves you the last steep climb to the summit. Cycling in a tunnel this size is an experience. Cars sound like jet fighters passing, a loud roar. One guy warned me before he overtook me by sounding his horn several times. Now, I have gotten used to disturbance in Iran and Pakistan, so until this moment I have been pretty much zen all the way in China, but when this guy horned me from such a short distance under these circumstances, I lost it. But what can you do, it's dark and noisy. You shout on the top of your lungs, trying to penetrate the sound-proof cabin in which a Chinese sits behind the steering wheel not aware of his wrongdoing as this is what he does all the time, everywhere.



Then came green hills, a crystal clear river, horses, cattle and sheep grazing. Agriculture in a beauty of a valley. A valley that is graced by a 10 kilometre long reservoir, which you unfortunately cannot approach (green fence with barbed wire), otherwise I would have camped on its shore.
Afterwards the river takes a more modest shape. Interesting reflections nevertheless.



Although I started the third day facing 150 kilometre and the third pass, I made an effort and got to Xining before dusk. Had a nitro boost (read: coke) at Datong, 40K before Xining, and paced at 30 an hour towards the city. Which is a 'city', with skyscrapers, neon lights, homeless people (sorting out the trash; begging) and 'singing aya yippy yippy yay' coming from the speaker in front of the store close by the hostel. Frantic traffic also. You have to be careful not to be knocked off your socks by a seven series (the rich are really very rich). That's the thing in Chinese cities, you always have to pay attention. Cars have absolute priority, even if you find yourself on a zebra crossing.

I'm staying in a great youth hostel here. Well, youth hostel, what's in the name? I'm sharing a room with Wen, a 76 year old Taiwanese professor of Chinese history who farts in his sleep. We all do, but he does it a lot. Very friendly guy though, with lovely English. Today he tried to warn me for the pass between Xining and Qinghai Lake, an inland sea not far from here, by saying: "It's twenty.. it's twenty hundred.. twenty hundred kilofeet high!"

The biggest attraction of Xining however is the food court, one block away. Customers shouting at the staff. Staff shouting at other staff. Lot's of interesting, very tasty dishes to sample.

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Sunsets are among my favourite moments of the day. This one I saw from the hill on the second night. Beautifully peach yellow and a cloud like an Atlantic wave about to break onto the beach.