Today we again experienced the inflexibility of the Chinese toll-gate manager. We are farm machinery and as such can’t use the motorway. We were therfore relegated to the lanes and muddy tracks that wind under this wonderful construction and travelled 25 km in two hours. we wouldn’t have had a show of getting out of [...]
The food on our ride has been varied in quality and taste ,but there has been one vegetable that has been consistently outstanding and that has been the tomato .We have all agreed that the flavour of the tomato’s, particulary those we have sampled through Central Asia and China reminds us of [...]
We arrived in Luochuan after an easy but wet ride from Xian. Easy in the sense that it was only a little over 200ks however there were still the challenges of avoiding trucks passing on blind corners ,cars cutting in when they find that there is oncoming traffic and the wonderful slow farming machinery [...]
We are in Ping Liang in China somewhere and everyone stares as we are the only tourists they have had for ever. Babies scream and grannies point and laugh. Crowds gather whever we go, especially with the bikes. It is quite amazing to get such attention when you are just having a long bike [...]
One of the sights we had been anticipating on our adventure has been the Great Walls of China. I say walls plural, because there have been about a dozen “great walls” built, the first around 500BC. We started to see the first evidence of one of the walls as we crossed the Taklamakan Desert [...]
I’m lying face down, the bike is running still and I’m waiting for the big black dog to sink her teeth in me. Shouts from the road workers have sent the bitch running, but my leg is at a strange angle with the bike on top of it. Dave is muttering about the leg “not [...]
On a bike trip like this you have to have a computer if you’re going to maintain a website and write media columns. My first thought was to bring a laptop, one of those rugged types mounted in gel. The vibrations from being in a pannier was bound to be a test for any ordinary [...]
Since we crossed the Torugat pass and moved out onto the Taklamakan Desert we have seen the “Desert Twisters” that the Taklamakan is famous for. There is probably a local name for it but let me describe (we have also posted a photo in the latest upload to the website).
The wind blows almost [...]
Today a few of us went to see the Caves of 1000 Buddahs carved into a rocky cliff face at the edge of the desert. In 366 AD a Buddist monk started this creation and it continued over a 1500 years depicting the art and life of the people. Only in the early 20th century [...]