Cabbage Roadkill

Paul survived the night. A bit of a dramatic test, but a test nonetheless. The previous day's outing to the Great Wall had involved 560 big, uneven steps and some slopey bits to the top. He survived the test with no after effects. Nothing to hold us back now!

Zanghe was bustling as we arrived late afternoon, but at night most of the local restaurants had their shutters closed. It is actually quite hard to know what a restaurant looks like and a lot of them are not at ground floor level, so it is not just a question of peering in through the window. So we walked in to somewhere where there was at least somebody else eating, rule number one, and with no picture menu our pictionary came in handy.  We roughly got what we asked for. Better than miming.

 

The run from Zanghe to Xining started off as a massive traffic jam as the Chinese Army were on the move. We counted nearly a thousand vehicles, but we were allowed to wriggle our way through. The express way is no longer an option since motorbikes are no longer allowed on it or tolerated. The Army gave way to a spectacular road - Buddhist temples, Tibetan prayer flags, herding yaks, flocks of sheep, twisty roads (built for Chinese lorries, so Paul could cope as the Harley is only marginally smaller) and a mountain pass at almost 3800m altitude and down to just 2 degrees C. And then we stopped for the bike to be cleaned. Unfortunately the 50km run into Xining turned into a bit of the now usual grind playing dodgems with the buses. 

 

We had a couple of extra days in Xining, so we spent some time in a Tibetan Monastery, albeit not in Tibet which is about 200km away. Quite staggering really. One of the temples/shrines in the complex had just short of 850kg of gold in it. Work it out, the units are correct. And there were a number of such temples/shrines within the complex! We had the full atmospheric rendition, i.e it was pouring down with rain.

Paul braved a local haircut and Francoise nearly lost her cool at the post office. Seventy five minutes to send a small parcel back to the UK ...And then some Chrysanthemum tea... The shopping scene is just incredible here with a whole mall running hundreds of metres in perpendicular directions constructed beneath the road and serving as a means of crossing the roads. And they all sell the same stuff. More cool signs to make us wonder what the Chinese writing actually says outside the restaurants in London. It tree burn steak carbon...
 
Still in Gansu Province, we headed for Lanzhou, which is a bigger city stretching along the Yellow River. The Germans built the very first bridge here a century ago. The Yellow River is a nasty shade of brown. The road we travelled in to Lanzhou on had a truly awful stretch of road works. In fact we went from bad road to no road. We were effectively off-road on gravel and broken concrete for over 40km. However Lanzhou was quite a fun place to spend the night. We were hit just before six o'clock in the afternoon by a tsunami of night market stall holders pouring out of all the alleyways to vie for their pitches. Very lively and great fun - a real buzz!

 

Leaving Lanzhou behind, we have now parked our bikes in Pingliang which seems like a newtown nowheresville with nobody about, but really wide roads that wouldn't be out of place for a North Korean military parade. Pingliang is a staging post for us to get to Xian and on reflection all these towns we have stayed at are just that - relay points along the Silk Road. Today's roadworks were twice as hard and twice as long as yesterdays. So much for thinking it couldn't get any worse. We ended up being stuck in huge traffic jams and gigantic clouds of dust. Paul celebrated Chengdu's claim to fame with his panda eyes. Just short of eight hours riding for 350km. The roads were covered with the remnants of every cabbage type known to mankind being, carried in an equally varied selection of vehicles. We will look out tonight at the restaurant to see whether our evening greens have a Dunlop tread pattern on them.

 In our eyes China is now synonymous with dust. How they get their clothes clean is beyond us. Perhaps that's why there are Chinese laundries? We will probably only see the sun again when or if we get back  to altitude. So how come Paul has got a bright red face?
 

Paul & Francoise