grey haired bikers on the silk road prologue - adventure · pdf filegrey haired bikers on the...

Text copyright Richard Margolis 2012. Photos copyright Simon Britten, David Griffiths, John Rose, Christina Chung, Nicholas Swain, Tim Britten, Susan Britten, Karen Griffiths and Richard Margolis. All rights reserved.

Grey Haired Bikers on the Silk Road Prologue What follows is a slightly edited compendium of the e-mail blogs I sent out during a motorcycling trip from the UK to Beijing, which began on 30th March, just south of Bristol; and ended on 28th June at our house in the country north of Beijing. The other participants in the trip were:- Bikers: David Griffiths, film scriptwriter and former software entrepreneur and investment banker, living in Los Angeles; (Sir) John Rose, recently retired CEO of Rolls-Royce, living in UK; Nick Swain, former Hong Kong Police Superintendent, and former Nortel Executive, living in Hong Kong; Van driver: Simon Britten, (semi)-retired doctor, having practiced both surgery and psychiatry, living in UK Dave and John have been friends for 30 years; Simon’s wife, Susan, is Dave’s cousin; Nick and I have been friends for 15 years; and John and I became friends during the 9 years I worked at Rolls-Royce. The idea of doing a long motorbike trip was conceived over 20 years ago by John and Dave (assisted by alcohol), and was revived in conversations with Simon and me about 7 years ago. We bought the motorcycles in late 2006 and began practice/training rides in 2007.

First blog: 27th March, Santa Margherita Ligure, near Genoa, Italy As some of you already know, I have planned for many years to ride a motorcycle from UK to Beijing in the company of a group of friends. Well, after many years of talking and planning, the trip is under way. We set off from UK on 20 March after a rousing send-off party given by Simon and Susan Britten, whose house south of Bristol was our point of departure. Simon is driving our collectively owned Ford Transit van, which has spares and camping gear for when we get to the wilder places on the trip. Our route takes us through France and Italy; a ferry to Greece; across Northern Greece to Turkey, and we spend an extended Easter weekend in Istanbul with our wives and some friends. Then across Turkey to Georgia and Azerbaijan; a ferry across the Caspian to Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan (where some wives will join us in Bokhara and Samarkand); Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and into China near Kashgar, after which we cross the Taklamakan desert and make our way to Beijing via Turfan, Dunhuang and Xian, amongst other places. All being well, we should arrive in Beijing on 30th June.


Bikes and van at pre-departure party on 18th March at Simon and Susan Britten’s house

We had a very gentle first day, riding from south of Bristol to Portsmouth to catch the overnight ferry to Caen. On the way, we stopped for tea and hot cross buns with Dave Kemp, a college friend of Simon’s who owns a large pig farm in Wiltshire. Dave and his wife Maggie are very keen bikers and have a range of fabulous vintage bikes, which Dave has restored meticulously. Dave led us on quiet side roads to Portsmouth before turning round and heading home. We slept on the ferry (our invitation to dine at the Captain’s table seems to have got lost in the post!). We rolled off into a fine but misty morning in Normandy, with some patches of dense fog, but the sun soon chased all that away, and we made good progress to the Loire valley, where we spent the night in our house south of Tours. We were joined there by our friend and biker, Christian Renard, who is coming with us as far as Istanbul. One of the Beijing bound riders, Nick Swain, has a son, David, who joined us for the first three days. After Istanbul, it will be the original group of 4 bikers and Simon in the van.


On the Portsmouth to Caen Ferry The group have all ridden together a lot in the years building up to the Beijing trip, and we are a very happy group. Riding our bikes requires concentration, so we are very pleased to see each other again each evening and talk. If we were cooped up in a car together all day, every day, it would likely be a different story.


At Les Chaumes, our cottage in the Loire Valley – l to r Simon Britten, Nick Swain, David Swain (who rode

with us for the first few days), David Griffiths For those of you interested in the details, we are all riding BMW R1200 GS Adventures. Our van is a Ford Transit Long Wheelbase diesel. We are now in Italy after 6 days of lovely riding across France. We have had our first rest day today in the very pretty seaside town of Santa Margherita Ligure. Tomorrow we will head for Tuscany, and then another stop on the Adriatic coast before taking a ferry to Greece. I would like to use this adventure to raise some money for two charities – one in UK and one in China. The UK one is Help for Heroes, which needs little introduction to those who know the UK. It provides a great deal of care and rehabilitation to UK military personnel injured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since my younger son, who is in the army, has just begun a six month deployment to Afghanistan, this cause is dear to my heart. But so is the other charity, Half the Sky, which provides family love and care for institutionalized orphans, many of them unwanted girl children and children with disabilities. They are a wonderful group of people and we hope to visit one of their facilities on the way.


If you would like to contribute to these excellent causes, I have set up two pages on Just Giving, as follows:- www.justgiving.com/richard-margolis www.justgiving.com/richard-margolis0 Please log on and follow the links to the two charities’ websites to see more about what they do. To those of you who have already contributed, a very big thank you.

Chapter 2: Ephesus, Turkey, 13th April We are now in Ephesus in southern Turkey, after having crossed Greece and spent five very enjoyable days in Istanbul with our wives. Our progress through Italy was marred by dangerous driving habits, especially on the motorway, but we rode conservatively and avoided any problems. We did, however, see the aftermath of a motorcycle accident – a man riding a very fast café racer had collided with something and was lying in the road, clearly dead. There were people assisting and calling for emergency services, so we did not stop to offer assistance. It was a sobering reminder that motorcycling has its risks, and reinforced our determination to ride in a way that gives us a good margin of safety. Italy was also good preparation for driving into Istanbul, where driving habits are completely bonkers. Parts of our ride through Italy were lovely, but we were slightly frustrated trying to find Italy’s equivalent of France’s routes departementales – we ended up going round in circles a couple of times. Either they don’t exist or our navigation skills let us down. We resigned ourselves to using the motorways. Much of the Adriatic coast was rather unlovely, but we found a charming small town called Polignano, just south of Bari, where we spent the night before catching the ferry to Greece. Polignano has a walled old town, in which there was a wonderful small restaurant serving the freshest fish and sea food cooked simply and with care. The owner, Michele, has a motorbike, and is planning a trip to China with a couple of friends, whom he called in to talk to us.

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At the Osteria dei Mulini in Polignano We rode off the ferry into a chilly but sunny morning in Igoumenitsa. The road across northern Greece to Thessalonica and the Turkish border is a new motorway crossing spectacular country – there was still quite a lot of snow on the mountains, and at one point, the temperature got down to freezing.


Off the ferry at Igoumenitsa


Misty drive out of Igoumenitsa It warmed up again as we rode out of the mountains and onto the Macedonian plain. We found a charming guest house on top of a hill in the town of Vergina, site of the tomb of Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. There is a wonderful museum at the tomb site, with stunning artifacts excavated from the tomb – well worth the visit. We particularly liked the gold crowns/wreaths, which had a level of fine craftsmanship that is difficult to find today, and is astonishing for objects made 2,300 years ago. A slightly faint but still vibrant fresco of Persephone being taken to the underworld was also very special – it uses perspective many centuries before this became generalized in western painting. Our host in Vergina was Thomas Katsaidis, who greeted us in perfect English, having studied for some years in Coventry. The family also has vineyards which produce excellent wine.


Katsaidis guest house, Vergina


Artifacts from the tomb of Philip II of Macedonia


The Rape of Persephone We rode on to Alexandropoulos, a rather dull seaside town, prior to crossing the border into Turkey – our first non EU country on the trip. No great problems – we just had to show our papers rather a lot of times. We then rode on to the Gallipoli peninsula, and took a guided tour of the ANZAC battlefields from the ill-conceived and badly executed campaign of 1915. In nine months of bloody fighting, the allies barely got off the beaches; the campaign made the reputation of Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey, and of course led to 25 April (the day of the first landings) being commemorated as ANZAC day. The cemeteries, like most other allied cemeteries, are cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and are neat and well kept. We stayed at a place called the Gallipoli Houses, which I can recommend to anyone going to visit the battlefields. It is a small collection of cottages built in the local style – plain but very comfortable, and run by a knowledgeable Belgian, Eric Goussens and his Turkish wife.


The Gallipoli Houses


Christian Renard, who came with us from Les Chaumes to Istanbul


ANZAC Cemetery, Gallipoli The next day, we rode into Istanbul. The Last 20km were dreadful, with Turkish drivers carving us up right left and centre; and the last kilometer to our hotel in Sultanahmet, the historical centre of Istanbul, took nearly 45 minutes, during which a taxi hit my motorbike a glancing blow, which caused a wobble but nothing worse. We were very happy to lock the bikes up and use public transport for our five days of sightseeing in Istanbul, which took in the must see sights (Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Blue Mosque) and a number of other places. Our good friend and biker, Christian Renard, came with us from Les Chaumes to Istanbul, but had to turn round after two nights in Istanbul because he had to get back to work. Christian has been on two of our group preparatory rides, and both Nick and I have ridden with Christian on other occasions. He rides a BMW R1200 RT – same engine and drive train as our machines, but sleeker and lower and designed for road use only. Christian is always wonderful company – we were sad to see him go, and relieved when he let us know by e-mail and text that he had got home safely, devouring the route home rather faster than we had done so on the way out, in spite of some very wet weather along the way.


The Blue Mosque


On the Bosphorus


A few of us went to the Rami M Koc museum, which is incredible. A collection of cars, boats, trains airplanes, historical machinery agricultural equipment, models, horse drawn carriages, an old foundry – the list goes on. Everything has been restored with incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail – I totally recommend it if you are going to Istanbul and have even a tiny interest in these things. Istanbul drivers apart, we have encountered nothing but courtesy, kindness and friendly help in Turkey. Simon, our van driver, managed to get the front wheel of the van over a step and the suspension grounded. A crowd gathered and picked up the front end of the van and moved it back onto the road again. We left Istanbul on 10th April, saying farewell to our wives and some friends who had come to Istanbul to join us. We headed south into Anatolia – getting out of Istanbul was not such a near-death experience as getting in had been. It got progressively colder and wetter as we rode south and at one stage we were riding in a snowstorm, which forced us to stop for a while.

Snowstorm in Anatolia The snow and rain abated and we rode on to Kutahya, the ceramic capital of Turkey, where we spent the night in a Hilton Garden Inn built above a shopping mall. After some debate about which way to head from there, we road south west to another charming guest house called the Ephesus Boutique Hotel, in a village not far from Selcuk and the ruins of the city of Ephesus, home to the Temple of Artemis and once one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the Mediterranean. A most enjoyable guided tour of the ruins, combined with long conversations with our host, Mustapha (who has a post


graduate degree from the UK, and divides his time between running the hotel and teaching economics at Istanbul University) have made this a very pleasant two days. This evening, we watched the sun go down over the hills to the west, sipping some excellent local wine and nibbling a local ewe’s milk cheese which was like Roquefort without the moldy bits. Moments like this are what we are doing this trip for.

Ephesus Tomorrow we ride to Pamakkale, home to some spectacular calcified falls and hot springs; then we head for Cappadocia, where we will spend a couple of days before heading north east to the Black Sea coast and the border with Georgia. Biker Geeky Bit John and Nick had some clutch problems caused by lots of clutch slipping in heavy traffic in Istanbul, but these were fixed by the Istanbul BMW motorbike agent. The rest of us have not had any trouble with our bikes – touch wood. The further east we go, the rarer big bikes are and the more attention our attract from local people. This is nice – it means that the bikes themselves help establish contact in a way that would be very unlikely to happen if we were in a car. Charity Bit Many thanks to those of you who have contributed to Help for Heroes and Half the Sky. Since I have added some additional names to the list (and corrected some errors), forgive me if I repeat my plea for


support for these two excellent causes. You can find more details by following the links below to the two pages I have created on Just Giving:- www.justgiving.com/Richard-Margolis www.justgiving.com/Richard-Margolis0 We are all in excellent spirits, and getting into a good rhythm with our riding. We have allowed enough time to enjoy the countries we are visiting, rather than just racing through them; and so far have had mostly agreeable surprises when it comes to accommodation. Central Asia may be more of a challenge, but we have camping gear and a field kitchen, so we can always take care of ourselves.

Chapter 3, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey, 16 April Since I last wrote, we have been exploring more of Turkey. After Ephesus, we headed for Pamukkale, which is famous for blindingly white calcite deposits laid down on a hillside by thermal springs. Photos of these adorn every guidebook to Turkey. The reality is less appealing. You can see the large off-white blob on the hillside from miles away. When we got there, we found a small town at the base of the cliffs infested with touts trying to get you to come to their hotel or restaurant – they would leap out into the road in front of our bikes. Our hotel was in a village a few kilometres from the cliffs, and was a large, soulless spa hotel with a large pool fed by the hot springs. Most of us had a quick soak, but it was nothing special. We went to have a look at the cliffs, which were moderately picturesque, but overall we would say that Pamukkale is eminently miss-able if you are planning a trip to Turkey.

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Pamukkale We then headed for Cappadocia, where I am writing from. We staged overnight in Konya, a city of over 1 million, which is known as the most conservative city in Turkey (it was hard to find a place which served alcohol); and is the centre of Sufism, whose best known manifestation is the whirling dervishes. After a long ride (480km) to Konya, we found that the hotel recommended by our host Mustapha in Ephesus was quite bad. We asked for no smoking rooms when we checked in, which caused the reception clerk to shout a stream of orders at one of his colleagues, which we guessed (correctly) to be an instruction to go and remove the ashtrays, open the windows and spray some air freshener. The beds were firm and the plumbing worked fine, so no great problem for a one night staging post. We went out for dinner and found a hotel with a restaurant that served beer and reasonable food. It was crowded with local people who had come to watch the Turkish cup final between two Istanbul teams. Unfortunately, there was a biblical rainstorm in Istanbul, and the pitch was completely waterlogged, so the game was called off. It would probably have been fun to watch the match with the Konya fans. On the way to Goreme, the centre of Cappadocia, we detoured to explore the Ilhara Valley, which was well worth it. Like Goreme, it has weird shaped rock formations which have been hollowed out to make cave dwellings. One of the places we visited in the valley was used as a location for Star Wars – the


home of Jabba The Hutt, if my memory is good. My so-called friends on this trip have taken to calling me either Jabba the Hutt or Chewbacca when I am wearing my bulky but very good Klim protective biker jacket. I shall have to grow a beard to get into the Chewbacca part, and cultivate being very grumpy. We had lunch by the side of a river in a restaurant which was being rebuilt around us. Very good grilled trout.

Between Ilhara and Goreme Goreme is amazing – it is at the bottom of a valley surrounded by the weird rock formations for which Cappadocia is famous. They were created when softer rock was eroded by wind and rain, leaving columns of harder volcanic material. They have been used as habitation (especially in times of danger), animal shelters and storage for thousands of years.


Goreme We are staying in a very pleasant and reasonably priced cave hotel. Some of the rooms are proper caves, and some are stone built house backing on to the cliff and using traditional vaulted construction. It is called the Vineyard Cliff Hotel, and our host Hassan is knowledgeable about the area and its history, speaks impeccable English, and manages the hotel with the help of his wife and elder son, who is a student at the University of Kutahya (the ceramic capital of Turkey, where we stayed one night earlier in the trip). The son, in conversation, revealed some (to us) distressingly archaic views on the role of women, which he seems to have ingested from an Islamist mentor at university. We are spending two nights here, which gives us today to sort gear out, chill out, soak up the atmosphere, do laundry and generally recharge before hitting the road again. I am writing this e-mail in the small communal dining/sitting room of the hotel, which has a superb view of the rock formations. It is sunny but pleasantly cool, and there is a delicious smell of frying onions wafting in from the kitchen, as Hassan’s wife prepares the family lunch (the hotel only serves breakfast). We are thinking of using our field kitchen to cook our own dinner tonight, which would be a good road test before we actually start camping. Hassan has said we can set it up in the courtyard of the hotel. We duly did so, the great amusement of the local street dogs and some passers-by. Everything worked fine, and we feasted on risotto with duck confit – we had stocked up in France. The riding itself has been a great pleasure in Turkey. The landscape is very varied, with spectacular snow-capped mountains; fertile valleys and plains where we have been treated to a wonderful display of fruit blossom – apricots, apples, almonds. Then there was more barren and rather windy prairie east of


Konya – strong winds are always trying on motorbikes, but with very little traffic on the road, you just grind out the kilometres and try not to grip the handlebars too hard because if you do, you get lots of aches and pains very quickly. The wind abated, and we started climbing – at one stage we were above the snowline, but it was sunny and reasonably warm. The views riding into and out of the Ilhara Valley and into Goreme were fantastic. We have taken lots of photos, and I have a bullet video camera mounted on my motorbike, but I am not sure that any of these images will really convey how good it felt to be riding through this scenery. Apart from the fact that no camera or video camera can quite match the human eye, the pleasure I got from taking in this scenery was a composite of various emotions, not just the messages from my eyes to my brain. Being out in the open air, visor up (but protective glasses on) feeling the breeze; the steady drone of my trusty BMW, the rumble of slightly bumpy Turkish tarmac under the tyres, the very deep satisfaction that we are actually doing this trip after having talked about it for so long; looking forward to sharing and discussing what we have seen and felt with the other guys – all of these things go into the magic of the moment. Sometimes I feel we are so busy recording images of what we see that we forget too look at it properly.

Central Turkey landscape

We had an excellent dinner last night in a nearby restaurant in Goreme. Three of us tried a house speciality, which was a veal stew cooked in a small clay pot, which the waiter broke in half at the table using a rather fearsome looking knife. It was delicious. That said, we are all ready for a new country and a new cuisine – we hope that Georgia will bring some different taste sensations. We have two day’s riding to get close to the Georgia border. We are allowing a full day for crossing the border – it will be interesting to see how this goes. I have a bag of herbal tea, which I realize looks suspiciously like


marijuana! If you do not hear from me again, send the bail money to the Georgian correctional services department. Renewed thanks to all those who have contributed to Help for Heroes and Half the Sky, and a quick reminder of the Just Giving Pages for those who wish to but have yet to do so:- http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-Margolis http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-Margolis0 Biker Geeky Bit I have been riding on Metzler general purpose tyres, which are fine on tarmac and dodgy roads, but not so good on dirt and off-road. I will change them for Continental TKC-80s, which are much more knobbly but very usable on tarmac, when we get to Baku. We have two sets of the TKC 80s for each bike in the van. The rest of the gang has been on TKC 80s from the beginning.

Chapter 4, Tbilisi Georgia, 21 April We are now in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. We crossed the border from Turkey coast the day before yesterday at Sarpi on the Black Sea coast. Getting out of Turkey, like getting in, involved producing our passports and vehicle registration documents on four separate occasions. Getting into Georgia was much simpler – we only had to produce the documents once, and we were greeted with a smile by the border official. Our last days in Turkey were good. We had a magnificent ride from Goreme to the Black Sea coast at Fatsa. We rode across hills and in between mountain ranges; we again rode above the snowline for a while; we rode through villages; through wide fertile cultivated plains and through much more arid prairie. We generally had the roads to ourselves. Occasionally in a village, the tarmac would disappear and we bumped over rutted dirt road for a while, which had us standing up on the bikes and using the techniques we were taught on our off-road riding courses. Having covered 240 miles (400kms) by the time we stopped for our 3pm break, we were very happy to see that we only had about 80 miles (120km to go to Fatsa). But that 80 miles took us three hours – the road suddenly deteriorated – very rough patches, big potholes and a twisty route over the hills on we were frequently stuck behind trucks. But there were also magnificent views, and we arrived tired but happy at having done 500km in a day on some challenging roads. Hassan, our host in Goreme, had warned us that people from the NE corner of Turkey had a reputation for being slow, and were the object of many jokes. The service in the restaurant in our hotel in Fatsa proved him right. The waiter was a very pleasant young man who had spent time in Holland and spoke

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reasonable English. But he and another colleague were incredibly slow. Bringing a bottle of wine and five glasses and getting the wine open and poured took well over half an hour, and involved putting the wine bottle on the table and taking it away again several times. I am not sure whether there is a word for the opposite of multi-tasking, but this was it – multiple but completely ineffective effort applied to one task that should have been simple. I am afraid that the meal was terrible too, but let's pass over that. We then rode along a good coastal highway to Rize, so that we would only have a short ride to the border on Thursday. We stayed at the unpromisingly named Dedeman Hotel, which turned out to be fine: there was a very nice and capable member of staff who seemed to be concierge, assistant manager, head waiter and barman all rolled into one. He was the complete opposite of the waiter in Fatsa, and we enjoyed chatting with him. He also got us set up in the lobby lounge to watch the Chelsea vs. Barcelona Champions League semi-final game, which made for a great evening – especially given that Chelsea won. The Black Sea coast is a succession of rather drab towns, none of which seems to be able to make much of its seaside location. Difficult, I suppose, when a four lane highway runs between the town and the sea right on the shoreline. Between Fatsa and Rize, we took a detour to the Sumela monastery, perched on a cliff face about 70km inland. Great riding through a river valley to the national park in which the monastery is located. Lunch in the open air by a roaring stream, and then an exciting ride up a steep and twisty road to the entrance to the monastery, It has a small church with ornate and highly coloured frescoes, sadly defaced in the parts of the church that human hands can reach, but now properly protected.


Sumela Monastery


Sumela Monastery Fresco


Sumela and biker

After crossing the border we chatted to some of the large number of Georgian guys hanging around at the border post (who wanted to know how much our pensions were; and like everyone else, how much our bikes cost). We then headed north along the coast road to see what driving conditions were like and find a place to stay. We stopped for lunch in Batumi, the first town of any consequence along the road. It was a very curious place – some swanky looking hotels with casinos; a street or two with smart buildings and shops; and a lot of very shabby soviet era housing blocks, plus skeletal buildings – presumably development projects abandoned because they ran out of money. (Inflows of foreign investment slowed dramatically after Georgia picked and then lost a fight with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia). When riding through the town, we were held up by police or security guards at the exit of one of the casino hotels to allow some prosperous but dodgy looking geezers in their black SUVs to drive away.


Georgia entry post from Turkey – I wonder what the architect had been smoking

We found a nice restaurant to have lunch in – and had our first pork since entering Turkey! Good pea soup with chunks of bacon. There seemed to be one or two policeman standing at the side of the road doing nothing every few hundred meters. We also saw lots of police cars. The police force is clearly a major employer in Georgia – maybe just as well, because all the other men we saw seemed to be standing around doing nothing. The women of course were carrying shopping, taking care of roadside stalls and so on. Georgian roads and driving habits have been a serious challenge. The roads usually deteriorate very badly in towns and villages – huge potholes – some of them more like craters, and the road surface completely broken up. The main road artery from the Turkish border up the coast and then across to the capital is two lane for all but the last 50km or so, where there is a new 4 lane divided highway. And Georgian drivers make the Turks look like old ladies! They are totally insane – overtaking at high speed on blind bends; and diving in front of us into the space we leave for safe braking between us and the vehicle in front, sometimes only inches from our bikes. When I see one of these madmen (they are always men) on my tail, I flap my hand at them to try and persuade them to leave a safer distance. As they start to overtake, I have another hand signal which says “give me a wider berth, you *******


moron”. Strangely enough, it works often enough for me to keep doing it. We spent Thursday night in a clean but slightly mournful hotel on the coast just south of a town called Poti. The guy behind the reception desk was built like a rugby prop forward, and spoke good English (he was an English teacher as well as a hotel employee). I asked whether the hotel had a restaurant, and he confirmed that it did. I should have asked a follow up question: “Does the restaurant have any food?”, because when we had showered and changed and came down for dinner, we discovered that the choice was very limited. Then came yesterday’s ride to Tbilisi, which was intense, to say the least. It was raining as we left, and the entire morning was spent riding in heavy rain, which made the bad roads and worse driving even more of a threat. But we rode even more conservatively than usual, and stayed safe. We found a roadside restaurant in a slightly gloomy spot with a stream in huge spate running through the grounds. The restaurant consisted of a series of individual rooms, each with a small but effective wood burning stove. The waiter spoke no English, only Georgian and Russian. I have a very small capability in Russian, so I ordered the only things I could remember how to say – shashlik and soup. The soup was very hearty and tasty; with large lumps of lamb; and the shashlik were large sword -like skewers of grilled salt pork – just what we needed after a cold wet morning of riding. There was a bear in a cage in the grounds of the restaurant – very sad to see the animal confined in such a small space. Simon went over to the cage with his Nikon SLR (which has quite a long zoom lens) to photograph the bear. Unfortunately, he got a bit too close to the bars for the bear’s liking, and it punched the camera hard, banging the camera into Simon’s nose. Simon suffered a cut and some bruising on his nose (and a shock at the speed of the bear’s action), but no serious injury.


The bear that punched Simon

The rain stopped after we had gone behind the mountains onto the plain in which Tbilisi sits. But the lunatic driving never let up, although it was less of a problem on the new divided highway. We are now treating ourselves to a bit of luxury in the Marriott in Tbilisi. We were too tired to do anything except eat in the hotel café last night, but will go to the old town for something a bit more authentically local tonight. Tomorrow, we cross into Azerbaijan (the border is not far from Tbilisi). Next report will probably be from Baku, where we will spend three nights. Some work to do on the bikes (tire and oil changes etc.), plus the need to find a ferry across the Caspian (no regular schedule, apparently); and to stock up with supplies before driving through Turkmenistan, which we must leave within 5 days of entry.


Old church in Tbilisi

Chapter 5, 1st May, Bokhara, Uzbekistan Our generally smooth progress on this trip got a lot rougher when we left Georgia and entered Azerbaijan. We knew that getting across Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan would be a challenge. But it ended up being a bureaucratic nightmare at either end of the Caspian sea crossing – with the crossing itself taking almost 36 hours instead of the usual 14, and on a shabby, smelly railcar ferry instead of the usual passenger and vehicle ferry. The causes of these challenges were varied – deliberately unpleasant bureaucrats in Azerbaijan, mind numbingly inefficient and slow bureaucrats in Turkmenistan; and (believe it or not) the Eurovision Song Contest. Before explaining all that, a word or two about Georgia. We had a very pleasant couple of days in Tbilisi, exploring the old town, the museum and having a great evening in a small restaurant with a jazz band, whose owner spoke excellent English (he trained as a lawyer and used to work for Skadden Arps). Georgians seem to be confident about their future – they have had a tough time learning to trade with new markets instead of relying totally on the Russian market and they have done a lot to eliminate


corruption. If they could repair the roads, drive more sensibly and smoke a bit less, they would be very well set. The ride to the Georgia/Azerbaijan border was easy – the main feature of the landscape was a massive open air car market in Rustavi, which seems to serve car buyers from Azerbaijan as well as the local market. Leaving Georgia was also easy – one booth which examined our passports and vehicle registration documents, a cheery wave, and then into the Azerbaijan bureaucracy. It took us 4 hours to complete the procedures, and with all of that our vehicles were only given 3 days in the country. The customs official told us that if we went to customs in Baku, we would be able to get an extension. So we rode off, and spent the night in a Ramada hotel in a town called Ganja – no spliffs and no Bob Marley music, more’s the pity. The next day we rode into Baku, where we had some difficulty getting a hotel, but found rooms at the Hilton. Azerbaijan roads were in good shape, and whilst their crazy drivers were just as crazy as the Georgians, there were many fewer of them. Baku has an old town which has been tastefully restored and has real charm; and the rest of it is being restored or rebuilt with a series of replicas of Baron Haussmann’s Paris, plus some extraordinary modern buildings, including a crystal edifice being put up for the Eurovision song contest. I always thought the Eurovision song contest was the dumbest thing on TV (that is until I saw part of an episode of Big Brother). Quite how Azerbaijan counts as Europe is a mystery to me, but the real problem it caused us is that all the normal passenger/vehicle ferries had been commandeered as floating hotels for the contest, leaving only the railcar ferries running which do not normally take vehicles and passengers. Things started to get complicated on the second day in Baku: Nick went off to Customs with a helper/translator from the hotel to see about extensions to our vehicle permissions, and returned ashen faced to report that they had refused point blank to grant an extension, and that if we did not get the vehicles out by the following day, they could impound them and charge us their assessment of the value before they would release them to us. So we decided to get out of Baku as soon as possible. We had some help from a logistics firm who took us to the very scruffy ferry terminal to buy tickets and try to negotiate loading onto a railcar ferry. There then followed a seemingly unending series of problems – new arrangements on visas for Turkmenistan: we had planned to get our visas on arrival in Turkmenbashi (we had a letter of invitation), which would have ensured that we had the full 5 days of our transit visas to ride across the country. But now there is a Turkmenistan Embassy in Baku, you have to get the visas before you leave, so we had to chase all over town looking for the Embassy; get the visa section to open up for us (they normally only issue visas on Fridays); and then back to the ferry pier to try and talk our way onto a ferry. With visa issued, the clock was ticking – it is nearly 800 miles (1300km) across Turkmenistan, and we would have liked to have broken this into three days’ riding. But the ferry we should have been on sailed without us while we were being told fairy tales by customs officers and the shipping people. We decided to spend the night of 25th in the ferry terminal car park – we used our camping stove to heat some soup, drank some good Georgian brandy, and slept in our sleeping bags on sleeping mats next to the van and our bikes. Spirits stayed high all through this – we listened to a recording of “I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue” on the van stereo and slept surprisingly well. Thanks to one of John’s friends who has a lot of influence in Azerbaijan, we got on the next ferry, which sailed on the morning of 25th, and should have docked around 11 pm that day. But we were


required to anchor off Turkmenbashi waiting for a berth, and waited 20 hours, finally docking at 8 pm on 26th.

Camping at Baku ferry pier It then took us 7 hours to get off the boat and through customs and immigration. The Turkmen bureaucracy is staggeringly inefficient and irritating. The process consisted of entering and re-entering the same information in a seemingly endless series of ledgers, and then doing it again in computers. The process was punctuated by the payment of numerous separate fees, for each of which a receipt had to be obtained (from a different window, naturally). Perhaps we should have given in to the fairly obvious pressure to lubricate the process with some money for which no receipt would be issued; but we were determined not to do so, and to outlast even these officials’ capacity to make life complicated. We got to our hotel at 5 am. We then had to get all the way across Turkmenistan in two days to ensure that we had the last day of validity of our visa for the border crossing. So after 4 hours’ sleep, we set off on the 575 km ride to the capital, Ashgabat. 575 km on good roads in a day would not have been a problem, but the roads were atrocious – they seem to be building new roads, but the existing ones have man-eating pot holes, huge longitudinal ridges, and long stretches with the surface removed and very rough and ridged. So we had a very long day, much of which was spent standing up on the pegs like off-road riders. We made it to the Sofitel in Ashgabat by 9 pm, and had a good dinner and very comfortable rooms. We hit the road again for an even longer day – 625 km to Turkmenabat. The road from Ashgabat to Mary (also known as Merv) was even worse than the previous day. But happily for us, the last part of the road from


Mary to Turkmenabat was in good condition, so riding in the dark was much less of a problem than it would have been on the awful roads. We had a last drink and snack break to watch the sun go down – out in a wilderness of sand dunes and scrub. As it got dark, it became pleasantly cool, and although we were tired, some of us got into a calm zone riding through the cool darkness and eventually seeing the lights of Turkmenabat come into view. We had to get some local people to guide us to our hotel, the Amur Darya. For those of you feeling nostalgic for Soviet style hotels (or pre-reform era hotels in China), I recommend the Amur Darya. But we were too tired to care that the hatchet man at reception decided to rip us off by increasing the price well above what we had been told when we booked over the phone, nor that the sheets, while clean, appeared to be baby cot sized rather than adult bed sized. There was some hot water; the bathroom was clean if shabby, and the mattress was firm and bug free. We paid a nice couple who had guided us to the hotel to guide us towards the border post the next morning – and a good thing we did so, because we would never have found it ourselves. Before the border post, we crossed the Oxus River on an alarmingly patched up looking pontoon bridge – but 40 tonne trucks were on it so we decided not to worry too much (inevitably, there was a fee for crossing the bridge and three forms and five receipts to obtain). Getting out of Turkmenistan was much simpler than getting in. The border staff were more efficient and switched on – they still had to write down the same information multiple times, but it all went quickly, and we began procedures for entering Uzbekistan. These too were a bit repetitive, and took us nearly two hours – but the officials were pleasant, and we rode out of the Farap border post on a well surfaced dual carriageway north towards Bokhara, which is where I am writing from. The honeymoon with the roads did not last long, and we began to encounter potholes, craters, road works, short stretches of dried mud and grit – all the pleasures we had experienced in Turkmenistan. But we did not have far to go - Bokhara is about 100k from the border, and (again with help from locals) we found our hotel, the Avicenna, which shows a very blank face to the street, but turned out to be a modern version of the traditional courtyard design common in this part of the world, with a nice pool and shaded verandah. The management and staff are as nice and helpful as can be, and we began immediately to feel our batteries recharging. We decided to spend three nights here to chill out and get some work done on the bikes – I needed to change my tires, which we did today. The tires I took off had done great service – I had ridden them around Morocco three years ago and one two other multi day trips in France, and then around 5,000 miles on this trip. I had a puncture in the rear tire in Morocco, which I repaired with the excellent repair kit supplied by our friend Dave Kemp. When we took the old tire off, we found the six inch nail inside the tire which had caused the Morocco puncture, and which has been rolling around inside the tire for 3 years! Uzbekistan has one very quirky feature – its currency, the Som. There are about 2,500 Som to the US dollar, but the largest denomination note is 1,000 Som or 40 US cents. A wheelbarrow would be handy for carrying cash around.


Hotel Avicenna, Bokhara

Since we ended up spending much less time in Baku than we expected, we have arrived in Uzbekistan ahead of schedule. Three of our wives arrive in Bokhara on 4th May, so we have decided that once we have had our rest days in the Avicenna, we will ride into the mountains east of Bokhara and camp for a couple of nights, returning to Bokhara on 4th. We are saving the main sightseeing in Bokhara for when the ladies get here. What we have seen of Uzbekistan and its people so far we like a lot. In Turkmenistan, the people we met were all very pleasant and as usual interested in our bikes; most of the police at the many checkpoints were also friendly – but there is something very strange about the country, which made me happy to be riding through it quickly. These trials have brought us closer together and taught us a few things:

We face everything the journey throws at us as a team (sounds a bit trite, but it really matters and we really are a good team).

We can ride long distances on really bad roads and do so sensibly and in good spirits.

We bought the right bikes. John and Dave had wondered whether it would have been better to buy the lighter and lower R1200 GS instead of the GS Adventures we did buy. But the longer


suspension travel, larger fuel tanks and better protection for the engine have all been essential on this trip. If any of you are thinking of doing a long trip in places with dodgy roads, buy a GS Adventure (no, BMW are not sponsoring us!).

Without Simon and the van, we would have had a much more trying time and would not have been able to cope nearly as calmly with the problems we encountered. And on the horrible roads, it was much more difficult and uncomfortable for Simon driving the van than for us on our bikes, which are after all designed for bad roads and off road. When you stand up on the bike, you add the suspension and shock absorption provided by your own legs to that provided by the bike’s springs and shock absorbers, and it is possible to maintain a reasonably brisk pace even on really rough surfaces. In the van, Simon just has to sit and take it. Plus on two wheels you can weave between potholes, which you cannot do on four wheels.

Chapter 6, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 15th May We are now in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. The city is pleasantly laid out with lots of tree lined avenues, although none of the buildings is of any architectural or historical interest. In the Soviet era, the city was known as Frunze, after the Soviet Defence Minister of the 1920s, who also gave his name to the Soviet equivalent of Sandhurst, the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. The city is on a plain, but the view to the south is dominated by a stunningly beautiful range of snowcapped mountains – amongst which is a spectacular 7,000 metre peak, Khan Tengri, or ruler of the skies. Since I last wrote, we spent nearly two weeks in Uzbekistan. While waiting for three of our wives to arrive in Bokhara, the bikers and the van rode/drove 200 miles to a hilly area east of the city of Shaxrisabs, close to the border with Tajikistan, and with a great view of the Pamir mountains. We found a field to camp in, and were befriended by a farmer whose cattle grazed the land on each side of the road. We set up our camp on some slightly higher ground about 150 metres from a very fast flowing river. John was quite ill with the Uzbek equivalent of Montezuma’s revenge, so the prospect of a day chilling in camp before having to ride again was appealing. The only other permanent resident of the area was a tethered bull, who was required to service some of the farmer’s cows during our stay – very noisily on the first night, but thereafter our presence seemed to make the cows skittish.


View to the Pamirs in Tajikistan from our campsite We became local celebrities, with large numbers of people coming to visit – including a delightful group of local ladies of various ages, who all chattered gaily to us in Uzbek, of which we understood not a word; and we chatted back in English, which they did not understand. Communication of some kind was nevertheless taking place, because the ladies and we were soon laughing helplessly, although quite at what, we were not sure. The men visitors all asked the usual questions about the bikes – what is their top speed, how much did they cost etc. The ladies showed more interest in the tents, the splendid awning we have attached to the van and our cooking gear – I was busy making lentil soup in our cast iron Dutch oven when the ladies’ group came to call. They found this very interesting – my companions were convinced that the Uzbek ladies wanted to take me home with them. We deduced that Uzbek men do not spend a great deal of time in the kitchen. Farmer Giles, as we called him, spent quite a lot of time with us drinking wine and fruit juice and nibbling nuts. We could communicate a little via my very rudimentary Russian, but he seemed content to hang out; and kindly brought us some bread and fresh curd cheese. On 4th May, we struck camp and rode the 200 miles back to Bokhara in time to meet Christina (my partner), Susan (Dave Griffith’s wife) and Rosita (Nick’s wife). We stayed for two nights in a pleasant hotel right by the historical centre of town (the Omar Khayyam hotel); and the second two nights back in the Avicenna. We had a guide, a nice lady called Shaxnoza, to show us the sights. I won’t rewrite the guide books, but I particularly liked the Kalyan Minaret, which is the only building spared by Genghis Khan when he sacked the city – according to legend, he did so because it was so tall, his hat fell off when


he craned his neck to look at it, and he had to bend down to pick it up. No other building had ever forced the great Khan to bow down before it.

Bokhara – Kalyan Minaret We visited a large number of Madrassas and mosques, mostly constructed in similar style, with imposing arched edifices, beautifully decorated with glazed tiles, and with well-proportioned interior courtyards. The multi-domed but compact souks were very attractive. The souvenirs on sale ranged from very nice quality handicrafts to tacky stuff, but the atmosphere was pleasant and the merchants were not aggressive.


Christina in traditional Uzbek wedding dress


The food throughout central Asia has been rather monotonous – salad, bread, shashlik and plov (an Uzbek version of pilaf). They are all fine for a while, but the lack of variety does get a bot boring, especially considering that we have been eating basically the same stuff since we entered Turkey on 3rd April. However, Rustam (our tour agent – of whom more below) kindly arranged for us to eat in a small Madrassa in Bokhara. The catering was done by a family, and it was by a large margin the best meal we had in Bokhara. The event was presided over by a young guy (son of the cook) who had spent several years in California, and was a successful mixed martial artist. He had returned to Bokhara to live, and was recently married. He was clearly caught between cultures, since he said rather self- consciously that he was for the time being not “permitting” his wife to work, in accordance with local custom.

Plov with horsemeat sausage and quail in Samarkand Our last evening in Bokhara was completely bizarre. The staff at the Avicenna hotel had proposed to us an expedition to what they called their “ranch” for an afternoon/evening of fishing, the possibility of some duck or rabbit shooting, donkey rides and a barbecue of a freshly killed lamb. This all sounded good, so we told them to go ahead and arrange it. We were somewhat surprised when they told us that the cost would be about $70 a head – which is roughly what we paid each night for a meal for all eight of us. We decided to go along. We were driven in a minibus for about an hour to a flat desolate dune/gravel area with some shallow small lakes. The so-called ranch was a shabby, semi-derelict concrete bunker, permanently inhabited by


a shabby, semi-derelict Russian man, alongside which was a yurt in rather better condition. The fishing was a complete bust – we caught nothing but weed. The hunting arrangements involved a shotgun so old and patched up that none of wanted to pull the trigger, especially since we were handed a rather random looking selection of cartridges, and the left barrel would only very reluctantly take a cartridge if you tried to load. Our meal consisted of a large carp (presumably brought from town), which was partly fried (acceptable taste and texture) and partly steamed in aluminium foil – uneatable because the foil was such bad quality it had completely tainted the fish); and of some gristly and fatty lamb rib bones. All the best parts of the lamb were never served to us. Christina kept everyone amused by demolishing the carp’s head, eyes and all, with great relish. Having lived in greater China for such a long time, not to mention having lived with Christina for over 20 years, the special relish that Chinese people, especially from the south, have for fish heads is no surprise to me. It was amusing to see the reactions of our friends from the UK. Fish head apart, the whole thing was all so bad that it was funny in some ways, but none of us likes being ripped off, so we complained to the hotel management when we got back. The younger members of the team who had made the pitch to us were embarrassed – the problem lies with the older boss guy who managed the ‘ranch’ expedition who clearly thought that the offering was acceptable when it was not.

The dining yurt on the “ranch” outside Bokhara We then drove to Samarkand, with Rosita bravely riding on the pillion of Nick’s bike, and Susan and Christina in the van with Simon. Bokhara is quite small, slightly sleepy and the main area of historical


interest is quite compact. Samarkand is a much larger city, and its key sight – The Registan, is on a grander scale than the Kalyan complex in Bokhara. This seems largely due to the larger ambition (and much bigger bloodlust) of Samarkand’s best known ruler, Tamburlaine the Great, as compared to the rulers of Bokhara. Prior to Tsarist and Soviet conquest, this part of the world was a series of small fiefdoms centred on the major cities. We had a very knowledgeable and articulate Russian guide, Sergei, to show us the sights. He was born in Samarkand – his father came there as a child to avoid starvation in Russia; and his mother was sent there to work by the Soviets. Sergei trained as an engineer, and had various jobs before becoming a tour guide. We enjoyed his company. Apart from Tamburlaine - more accurately, Amir Timur - the Timurid dynasty of Samarkand produced a notable astronomer and mathematician, Ulugh Beg (Amir Timur’s grandson), whose treatise on the stars was a standard work for many years. But Ulugh Beg was murdered by his son, possibly at the instigation of conservative elements who disliked his enlightened approach to education in general and the education of women in particular; and Samarkand lost forever its status as a seat of learning and discovery.

Samarkand – The Registan


Ulugh Beg


After three nights in Samarkand, we drove to Tashkent, the capital, again with Rosita riding pillion and Susan and Christina in the van. We stayed in a brand new hotel, the Miran (which was not formally open, but happily was finished and in operation). This had been found for us by our excellent tour operator, Rustam Muslimov, whom Christina had found by reading a Hong Kong traveller’s blog about visiting Uzbekistan. Rustam helped us with hotel reservations during our mad dash through Turkmenistan, as well as coping admirably with our changes of plan and hotel in Bokhara. He even stood us the meal in the Madrassa, which was very kind. If any of you are thinking of visiting Uzbekistan, please do use Rustam – we can give you his details. In Tashkent we had a good Italian meal in a restaurant with a small jazz ensemble, led by a friendly saxophonist. Our taste buds and digestions were very happy to have a change. Susan left very early on 12th to catch planes back to UK. Rosita and Christina stayed an extra day before flying back to Hong Kong via Seoul. The biker/van team set off after breakfast for the Kazakhstan border, just north of Tashkent, aiming to get to the Kazakh city of Taraz that day, to leave an easy ride to the Kyrgyz border and Bishkek for the following day. Although Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have a common border, the fastest route to Bishkek from Tashkent is through Kazakhstan - a hangover from the soviet era when the distinctions between these republics were pretty notional. We found that the border crossing close to Tashkent was open only to pedestrians, so we had to retrace our route to the south to another border crossing. We got out of Uzbekistan and into Kazakhstan in a couple of hours, but then it started to rain, and the roads were not in great condition, so we decided to stop for the night in Shymkent. At one point, the rain was so heavy you could hardly see 50 feet. But just as we did when we were riding the last weary 100km to Turkmenabat in the dark after a very long day, we all got into a sort of Zen state. Our consciousness of the world shrank to the motorbike, the van (we follow the van in bad weather), the road in front of our front wheel and wiping our visors. We ground out the kilometres at sensible speed and the rain eventually subsided. We found a large and perfectly pleasant hotel on the main street, and had an OK meal in the next door restaurant. The city was shaken by a minor earthquake during the night we were there, which was also felt in Tashkent, but so far as we could tell, caused no damage or injuries. We then set off for the border crossing into Kyrgyzstan, 100km east of Bishkek. It was 380km from Shymkent to the border crossing. Thankfully, there were some long stretches of billiard table smooth concrete road – fresh construction which will eventually become a motorway, but which is in partial use before completion. Thanks to these stretches of good road, we arrived at the border crossing by 3.15 in the afternoon. There was a queue, and we were resigning ourselves to a 2-3 hour minimum crossing, when the queue started moving. We actually entered the Kazakh border post at 3.45, and had exited Kazakhstan and completed entry formalities to Kyrgyzstan by just after 4.30. World and Olympic record! The Kyrgyz officials were very pleasant and we did not have to fill in a single form. The passport control officer, who spoke excellent English, told us we were the first tourists to enter Kyrgyzstan this year at that border crossing. We rode the last 100km into Bishkek in good spirits, which were hardly dented by the now expected outbreak of totally bonkers driving as you get into the city. We found our hotel without major difficulty (no need to pay a cab or friendly local to guide us in). The hotel is a slightly quirky design – two buildings linked by a glass bridge slotted in among rather shabby soviet era buildings. But it is neat and clean and comfortable, and the staff are as helpful as can be – and it costs a fraction of the Hyatt Regency across the street. We had Italian again on our first evening – good if not quite as good as in Bishkek. Last


evening, we found a curry house just next door and had a really enjoyable meal – it was so good to have a completely different and stronger set of tastes.

View from Holiday Hotel Bishkek restaurant terrace Yesterday was Chinese visa day – and again we had some adventures. We could not get our Chinese visas in London before we set off, because of the risk that they would expire before we arrived at the China border. Our agent/fixer for the China leg, Paul Shi, has done visas and temporary vehicle imports for many groups, and arranged letters of invitation for us, issued by government departments in Beijing, to be waiting for us at the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek. But when we got to the Embassy, we were told that the form of these letters was no longer valid, and they could not accept our applications. So the rest of the day was spend on the phone with Paul, who galvanized his contacts in Beijing to get all the letters re-issued in the proper form, and e-mailed and faxed to the Embassy. By the time all this was sorted, it was late afternoon. I got back to the Embassy just before closing time with the passports and the application forms, which they accepted, and we will get our visas (all being well) on Wednesday. This means spending an extra night in Bishkek, but none of us minds this. It gives us an opportunity to change the oil on two of the bikes (which did not have an oil change in Istanbul), and get our hair cut, laundry done, and generally recharge batteries for our southward ride to the Chinese border. On Thursday, we will set off south to the southern shore of Lake Issyk Kul, where we will spend three nights in a lodge, and do some exploratory riding around the lake area, which is apparently full of wild


flowers at this time of year. We hope to be able to watch the European Champions’ League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich on the lodge’s satellite TV via the Russian sports channel. We will then set off for a yurt camp in the mountains at a place called Tash Rabat, about 100km from the Torugart pass, which is the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and China. We will spend two nights there – using the day of 21st May to reconnoiter the road up to the pass (which is 3,700 meters in altitude, so quite likely to have snow, even at this time of year). On 22nd, we will start at dawn to ensure we get across that day (there is a two hour jump to China time). Once across, we have about 200 km to ride to Kashgar, but the Chinese side is generally dry (in the rain shadow of the mountains) and the road is apparently much better than on the Kyrgyz side. The combination of possibly difficult road and weather conditions on the Kyrgyz side, and the always uncertain factor of officials’ attitude and behavior at border crossings mean that 22 May is a challenging day for us in prospect. But we are all looking forward to it, and many have done it before. Biker Stuff We have done a fraction less than 7,000 miles so far (11,000 km). The bikes have (touch wood) coped well with crappy petrol in Uzbekistan – we bought some octane improver additive which seems to help. We have been using warm weather riding gear for the last three weeks or so. We all have different solutions to this: Nick has an amazing Touratech double suit; Dave uses BMW gear which has plenty of vents and with light rain gear on top when needed. John and I have body armour over which we can put a vented T shirt or whatever is needed to suit the temperatures. But it will be back to the cold weather gear for the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Charity Stuff I apologise for not having had the time to send individual emails of thanks to everyone who has contributed to the two charities, Help for Heroes and Half the Sky. Thank you all too for your various replies, comments and words of encouragement. The reactions of new friends and old, and of the people we have met along the way, to what we are doing have been wonderful, and multiply the already intense enjoyment we are getting from the trip.

Chapter 7, May 21st – Tash Rabat Yurt Camp Kyrgyzstan/May 23rd, Kashgar, China. Kyrgyzstan has turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. We spent four nights in Bishkek; we got our Chinese visas and shopped for supplies at a very nice, clean, well-stocked market. We also bought seats for a recital at the Opera House – I did not go in the end because of doing some shopping, but the rest of the team went and enjoyed Kyrgyz singers performing a varied programme of local and international songs, including some Schubert. John and Dave had new sets of tyres fitted at a local garage, and we all set off on Thursday morning for the south shore of Lake Issyk Kul, where we had reserved a guest house in a small village called Tamga. The north shore of the lake is littered with decrepit Soviet era sanatoriums, and to be avoided, according to all the guide books. We had a spectacularly enjoyable ride to Tamga, weaving through a range of mountains and coming out onto a wide plain that preceded the lake itself, which is a startling turquoise blue. While riding along the south shore towards Tamga, we encountered a very intrepid Swiss guy called Ernest, who was riding a


Suzuki 90 cc bike, and had been on the road for many weeks. His lightweight machine and very simplified approach to trip gear was impressive, but I would still rather have the larger and more powerful bike. Ernest works as a cabinet maker, and quits his job to go travelling for as long as he can keep himself on the move.

Lunch break by Lake Issyk Kul We met another traveler in Bishkek whose mental and physical strength was truly humbling – Nathan Jones. Nathan is a school chum of Simon’s son, and is riding a bicycle from UK to Tokyo, taking much of the same route as we are. He has to manage with what he can carry on his bike. Nathan is extremely modest about what he is doing, but we were all in awe of his achievement (he set out from UK last September, and rode through harsh parts of Turkey in the winter). Nathan, who is an ex-paratrooper who served in Afghanistan is raising money for a charity called Combat Stress and another charity which helps homeless children in Bolivia. His blog is witty and well worth reading. His charities are also well worth supporting. Here is the link. www.cyclingtowardsthesun.co.uk The Tamga guest house was plain but comfortable and presided over by a wonderful lady called Lyuba, who was a serious climber and mountaineering guide in her younger days (together with her husband), but who now did rather less and focused on taking care of the guests and providing a wealth of information about things to do and places to go. On our second day at Tamga, we rode up to the

http://www.cyclingtowardsthesun.co.uk/


Baskoon pass, 3,800 metres above sea level (around 12,500 feet). The road was a well-constructed dirt road with some interesting strings of tight hair pin bends, which made for a good work out in dirt road riding techniques. We all felt the effects of altitude when we got to the top – light-headedness and shortness of breath. There was a Canadian/Kyrgyz gold mine close to the top of the pass, and the road up was used by large convoys of heavy trucks bringing fuel and supplies, and taking gold back down. The employees were also transported up and down in six wheel drive Kamaz trucks with a passenger pod on the back. We encountered one such convoy on the way down and had to proceed with great care, because once the trucks are launched into the steep climb, they don’t stop!

Tamga Guest House


Typical Kyrgyz landscape As we have found everywhere in this country, the views were spectacular – sharp snow-capped mountains with dark pine forest and black rock below the snowline; green and beige velvety looking foothills , with flocks of sheep and goats, herds of horses and occasional cattle grazing on the slopes and in the lusher meadows. Just before the steep climb to the pass, we met a diminutive but charming Kyrgyz who invited us for tea – we took up the invitation on the way down. He and his family receive lots of overseas visitors and keep a guest book in a school exercise book. It is evident from the comments that a small but regular stream of visitors come that way and were all, like us, charmed by the warmth of the reception in their home – lots of hot tea, fresh yogurt, bread and jam, and warm smiles from our host and his wife and another lady whom we assumed was a sister or sister-in-law.


Road to Baskoon Pass


Simon tries an alternative to the motorbike


Teatime in the mountains On our second day in Tamga, we were joined by an Australian couple, Shane and Cristine, whom we enjoyed meeting very much. Shane is a surrealist painter, whose paintings are an Australian take on themes pioneered by Salvador Dali and Renee Magritte. Cristine is a pharmacist, and they had come from China across the Torugart pass using hired minivans with drivers. They were heading for Bishkek, and were then going to fly to Uzbekistan to see Bokhara and Samarkand. We left Tamga yesterday and had an even more spectacular ride to Tash Rabat, where we are spending our last two night in Kyrgyzstan in a Yurt camp, which is where I am writing from (although I won’t be able to transmit this until we get to Kashgar in China tomorrow evening). It was a 220 mile ride, with about half of it on roads that were either under construction or in serious need of repair. But the breathtaking scenery and the absence of traffic made it probably our most rewarding day of riding on the trip so far. We climbed more or less all day, filing our way through beautiful mountains, whose peaks were wreathed in masses of cloud in shades ranging from very dark grey to blinding white. As we left the shores of the lake, we were winding through wrinkled ochre coloured hills which were almost blood-red when the sun hit them, and whose wrinkled crests reminded me of nothing so much as the shape of a Chinese steamed dumpling! The Chinese are building or rebuilding the road to the Torurgart pass, and at one section of road works where we were stopped to let some trucks through, I had a brief chat in Chinese with one of the workers. We had a blissful interlude of smooth tarmac on sections which were build or half built; and


no doubt in a year or two, people will be doing this trip in 40 seat tourist buses and Ford Fiestas, and wondering what the hell we were talking about when we said it was challenging. Every town and village in Kyrgyzstan has at least one cemetery on its outskirts, and as we rode south, the tomb construction became grander and more elaborate. Instead of min-madrassa facades, there were complete scale models of mosques and madrassas, complete with domes, often covered in shiny metal sheet which would catch the sun and sparkle. We rode past the towns of Naryn and Ash Baty, and 60km beyond Ash Baty we turned off the main road for the last 8 kilometres to the Yurt camp. We were very glad to see this – road conditions mean that it took us nine hours with breaks to get here, and as the day was drawing in, it was getting cold (the camp is at 3,000 metres). We were given a very warm welcome by Yuri, Sofia and Zoria who run the camp, and who opened it up early just for us. As the first visitors of the season, we were treated to champagne on arrival. We then had a very welcome hot dinner.

Tash Rabat yurt camp


Champagne on arrival at Tash Rabat yurt camp It started snowing soon after we got here and is still snowing gently, although the snow is not accumulating. We are quite snug in our yurt, but this is a camp not a hotel – long drop toilet and only cold (very cold) water for washing – so we will likely need a good clean up when we get to Kashgar tomorrow. This afternoon, we plan to take a short ride up the dirt road to the remains of a silk road caravanserai. This will turn the bikes’ engines over and hopefully get our own circulation going, since Yuri is a bit stingy with the fuel for the yurt stove, which is mostly dried yak dung.


Old caravanserai near Tash Rabat


Inside the Caravanserai Kashgar, 23rd May We duly visited the old Caravanserai, which is very atmospheric and has been restored. The weather remained bad all day, but the short ride was enjoyable and got us out and the bikes’ engines turned over. We say some large raptors, probably eagles, and a large number of large carrion birds – none of us being much of a twitcher, we speculated that they might be Lammergeyer – I know one recipient of this e-mail who will set me straight on this (subsequent note – he did: they were Himalayan Gryphon vultures). Ernst and his 90cc Suzuki (which he has christened Lily) showed up in the afternoon. He had planned to get back to Naryn after visiting the Caravanserai, but we persuaded him to stay at the Yurt Camp – it was too late and too cold and too wet for him to be able to ride back to Naryn. Ernst has done an amazing amount of travelling on his own, and we were full of admiration for his courage.


Ernst and Lily Later in the day, a group of (mostly) Australians arrived to stay the night, having had a long and bumpy day from Kashgar. We had a very interesting chat with one of this group – Ian, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Australian SAS, and then became a professional diver. In retirement, he runs a diving school, and has a fascinating, if slightly gruesome voluntary sideline – euthanizing beached whales with explosives. We thought he was spinning a line, but it is for real – and fully endorsed by the animal welfare groups, since a beached whale which cannot be refloated will die a slow and agonizing death, and explosives are the only practical way of euthanizing such a large animal. We set off at 8 am yesterday after an early breakfast in the yurt camp. The road towards the Torugart pass was mostly dirt and in some case quite muddy after a day of rain, sleet and snow. There was some truck traffic, and we made slow progress, but this was expected. The first Kyrgyz control point is about 60km from the actual boundary. At the second border post, where we formally exited Kyrgyzstan, we were relieved of one of the two originals of our China group visa. We felt uneasy about this, but when men with guns tell you that they have to keep the document, there isn’t a lot you can do about it. We had a fabulous ride through “no man’s land” between the last Kyrgyz checkpoint and the highest point of the pass (3,700 metres). Having studied our route across the Torugart for hours on Google earth, it was amazing to ride it for real. There was fresh snow all around us, and it was below zero for much of


the time we were riding through the large valley surrounded by the beautiful jagged peaks of the Tian Shan. The only time I have been anywhere that felt as remote was in 2003 when Nick and I and another friend went hunting in the Altai Mountains in north west Mongolia.

No man’s land on the Torurgart Pass At the border line, there is a simple barrier and a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) outpost. The PLA were out to lunch when we got there, so we had to wait for a while – we naturally wondered whether an invasion force would be similarly accommodating to the meal schedules of the PLA. Happily, Kyrgyzstan is a very un-aggressive neighbour. Paul Shi, who is taking care of all our administrative arrangements in China, was there to meet us, and we drove and rode in convoy to an initial checkpoint, where everyone was very jolly; and then to the large entry station (about 100km from the border), where we were told that we should not have surrendered one of the copies of our visa, since the port of entry had to retain one original and the port of exit kept the second; and that they were disposed to send us back or make us wait until we could arrange for someone in Kyrgyzstan to go to the border post and get the document back. Neither of these options was remotely feasible. The discussions went back and forth and the day wore on. We had a customs inspection conducted by a very pleasant senior Uighur customs officer, who spoke very polished English. He relieved us of most of the fresh food we still had, and while we continued discussing a solution to the visa problem, we saw the customs officers knocking off work and carrying our fruit and vegetables home with them. Eventually – no doubt because they wanted to go home, they accepted that they could take a photocopy and let us keep the remaining original.


With some relief, we rode out and eventually got to our hotel in Kashgar at around 9.30 pm. We had a very welcome shower and a nice Chinese hotpot meal in the hotel restaurant, and fell into bed. China operates a single time zone, even though it covers as wide a longitudinal spread as the USA. So from a sun time point of view, the far west is 2-3 hours behind Beijing, and people adjust their schedules accordingly. Today has been spent getting the bikes and the van inspected so that we can get the temporary Chinese number plates which China insists on. The inspection was fairly cursory – as so often on this trip, the required procedures have been more about paperwork than anything else. After the inspections, we filled up with petrol and got 60 days of crud cleaned off our bikes and the van. At the petrol station, we had a slightly unexpected problem: the attendants said they were not allowed to fill motorbikes from a pump, supposedly because petrol might spill onto the engine and catch fire. The solution they proposed was to fill a filthy galvanized watering can from the pump and then pour the fuel into our bikes from the watering can! We showed them that our bike filler caps were proper safety ones like on modern cars, and that the watering can solution was a) much more dangerous, and b) would contaminate the petrol. They eventually agreed to fill up normally. I hope we don’t have to have this discussion at every filling station in China! After sparsely populated Kyrgyzstan, China and Kashgar have brought us back to T.B.D.H (Totally Bonkers Driving Habits). We have used our horns more in one day here than on the whole of the rest of the trip. We plan to avoid big cities as far as possible. We will discuss some changes to the route schedule for China with Paul after dinner this evening, but will do some sightseeing in Kashgar before we set off for the desert. Our next adventure is crossing the Taklamakan desert and camping in the middle of the desert for one night. Renewed thanks for the kind responses and contributions to the charities.

Chapter 8, Turfan, 2nd June Our sightseeing in Kashgar was most notable for the knowledgeable guide, Abdul, found for us by Paul Shi. As we worked our way around the main mosque and the Abu Hoja tomb, Abdul gave us a fascinating account of the history of the Uighurs, the Turkic people who constitute the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang. History and geography have condemned the Uighurs to be the jam in a succession of great power sandwiches – notably the rivalry between Tsarist Russia and the British; and the complex political games played by Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, as well as China’s upheavals since 1949. Their history is littered with broken promises of autonomy and religious freedom. The current situation is not exactly ideal – Xinjiang is an “autonomous region” in name only; but according to Abdul, it is a lot better than much of the recent past. After Kashgar, we rode south east along the southern edge of the Tarim basin (of which the Taklamakan desert is part), skirting the edge of the Kunlun mountains, which form the northern rim of the Tibetan plateau. We had hoped to have a view of the mountains, but these were dashed by the thick haze and semi-permanent dust storm which has sat over our heads pretty well the entire time we have been in


Xinjiang. We staged first in Ye Sheng, a completely undistinguished town, but in which we had an outstandingly good Sichuan meal. The restaurant was presided over by an enterprising lady from Sichuan, who had previously been running a restaurant in a remote part of Tibet – and who (purely coincidentally!) was a relative of the girl at reception in our hotel. The food was brilliantly cooked and served to us with an easy going and friendly charm, which made for a memorable evening. Next stop was He Tian (sometimes called Hotan) where we spent two nights in order to see the Sunday animal market (we missed the more famous one in Kashgar). The sight of large numbers of sheep being tied up ready to be slaughtered was a reminder of the connection between death and dinner, which we are normally shielded from by antiseptic supermarkets, cling film, and discreetly located slaughter houses. As we rode along, there seemed to be people pushing bits of desert around using tools varying in size from shovels to JCB diggers. However, the purpose of moving the piles of dust and stones around was not apparent – maybe we should have stopped to ask. Bill Bryson would probably have done so. He Tian is also famous for white jade, and we saw quite a bit of it for sale – at eye watering prices for some stones. Not being connoisseurs, we declined to deal. There is a wide but largely dry river bed in He Tian, full of stones. People scavenge among the stones looking for jade that has been washed down from the mountains when the river is in flood. After He Tian, we staged in Min Feng before turning north to cross the Taklamakan. We climbed steadily throughout the day, riding between irrigated sand berms. There were wells every few kilometers which fed water into several rows of narrow black hoses which dripped water into the sand berms pushed up at the side of the road. Over many years, this has produced rows of hardy bushes (creosote and some other hardy types I did not recognize) which are intended to provide a barrier against the road being buried by wind-blown sand There were some stretches where the ground water gave out and the road was completely open to the dunes, which were impressive – marching off into the distance as far as the eye could see. We got to the centre spot of the desert, where we had planned to camp. But this is now occupied by a really squalid small settlement not far from an oil field. Since we had made good progress (the road was very smooth); and since it was not too hot, we decided to push on for another 200 miles (320km) and finish the crossing of the Taklamakan in one day. We duly arrived in Lun Tai around 7 pm. Lun Tai is another oil town with nothing to recommend it.


The next day, we rode east again to Turfan – another longish day (345 miles or 540km). We wove through a Martian landscape of total barrenness and made a steep descent onto a scorching hot and utterly desolate pebble plain. In the space of 20 minutes, the temperature went from a comfortable 27 degrees to 42 degrees, and a strong wind blew up. It was like riding through a fan oven. The inhabited places we went past were depressingly ugly, and the thick dusty haze persisted, denying us anything other than a shadowy view of the Tian Shan mountain range which curves across the middle of Xinjiang and divides the Tarim Basin in the south from the Dzungar Basin in the north. On a clear day, these are a magnificent sight (I have been here before); but I fear my companions who are here for the first and probably only time will only have my word to go on.

Crossing the Taklamakan

For a long stretch in the mountains, the eastbound and westbound carriageways of the expressway diverged to the point at which we could not see the other carriageway for about an hour. This is quite disconcerting – you have to keep reminding yourself that it is not a two way road (but see below under driving madness!). Another interesting feature of our journey is that all two wheeled vehicles are exempt from paying expressway tolls. We loop around the toll plaza through the forecourt of the police post that sits beside every toll plaza – and are usually asked by the police to have a photo taken with the bikes (see attachments).


Today we went sightseeing in Turfan, which was another depressing experience. The museum devoted to the amazing Karez irrigation system is a largely fake reproduction, and is completely dominated by stalls selling tatty souvenirs. The Karez system is actually an amazing feat of hydraulic engineering, dating back 2000 years, and probably first developed by the Persians. A series of wells and tunnels channel the snow melt from the Tian Shan towards the Turfan depression – requiring pin point accuracy in the tunnel digging, and back breaking toil in unimaginably awful conditions. We were told that the water flow is decreasing – hardly surprising when you consider our hotel hot water system (see below).

Entrance to “Grape Valley” – can you spot the fake rocks? The Su Gong minaret and mosque is worth a visit (the minaret has a wonderful variety of geometric patterns in its clay bricks); but it has been very over-restored. Jiaohe ruiuns are also real and have not been over-restored or concreted. The original part of Turfan – a collection of mud brick houses, with distinctive square brick latticework lofts for drying grapes and extensive areas of grape vines trained over frames which provide a shady walkway – has been fenced off and turned into “Grape Valley” with a stiff admission charge and lots of retail opportunities. There is another phenomenon which tends to blight tourism in China. Every Chinese tour guide leading a group of Chinese tourists has a portable amplification system which produces ear-bustingly harsh noise, and makes it very difficult for anyone within a 50 metre radius to hear themselves think, and prevented us from hearing what our knowledgable but unamplified guide, Paul Shi, was telling us.


Jiaohe ruins


Su Gong Mosque and Minaret Our hotel is a very elegant looking building, and the rooms are spacious. But to get hot water in the daytime, you have to let the taps run full blast for about 20 minutes. In a desert oasis, where water has been husbanded as a precious resource for centuries, the installation of a hot water system which causes so much water to be wasted is criminal. On a more cheerful note, we have met some more awesomely adventurous people. When crossing the Taklamakan, we met some Chinese people cycling from Urumqi to Lhasa. First a guy on his own, then a couple of small groups, the second of which stopped to chat (we were having a picnic by the side of the road). They were very happy and chatty and included a girl – we felt a bit like people on a large ocean going yacht stopping to chat to people rowing across the Atlantic. The physical and mental strength needed to bicycle onto the Tibetan plateau is incredible. But with water stations every 4 to 5 km where drinkable water is available, cycling across the Taklamakan is a feasible proposition.


Cycling across the Taklamakan Further on towards Turfan, we encountered a Spanish couple from Barcelona who have been on the road for 9 months, and who were heading for Turfan. The descent from the hills and the baking hot plain are a much bigger challenge for cyclists than the Taklamakan, and we worry now that they will find enough water. I asked them what made them decide to do this trip – the man said that a few years sitting in front of a computer had been enough for them, and besides, there was not much reason to go back to Spain at the moment. (We diplomatically avoided mentioning Chelsea’s victory over Barcelona in the semi-final of the Champions League.)


Intrepid Spanish couple Our final encounter today was with a group of very friendly motorcyclists from Thailand, who rode up to our hotel an hour or two after we arrived. They have a mixed bag of bikes – some KTM 990 Adventures, some BMW 1200 GS Adventures like ours, and one Triumph Tiger. They do not have their own support vehicle (although they have an accompanying car and guide in China as required by law). They shipped their bikes to Beijing, and were planning to ride to Lhasa and then Kathmandu, from where they would air-freight the bikes back to Bangkok. But they have a problem with their permits, and had to ride off to Urumqi this morning to try and get this sorted out. Their bikes are all accessorized to the nth degree from the Touratech catalogue. Personally, I think they have over done it, but I am probably just jealous. Our bikes look positively stripped down by comparison. Friday 1st June, Hami The sun came out today – the first time we have really had sun and blue sky since we crossed the border on 22 May. There was still some haze, but we were able to see the flaming mountains and the Tian Shan beyond them as we rode east out of Turfan. Not too long a day today – 240 miles (380km) across more arid plains to Hami, which gives its name to a particularly delicious orange/yellow fleshed melon. But it seems that Hami melons did not originally come from Hami – the princeling who used to rule Hami made a present of melons to the Emperor, and everyone assumed they came from here. Whatever – they are available throughout China and taste really good.


Uighur ladies enjoying a laugh We saw Nathan again on the road today – he had taken a bus to Urumqi and had cycled to Turfan and was heading in the same direction as us. He was upset to discover that cycling across the Taklamakan was actually possible. Nathan had hooked up with an amazing 63 year old French man called Alain, who is riding one of those recliner bicycles around the world. He has already ridden from France to Beijing before, and this time will go to Shanghai, then fly to San Francisco and ride across the US; fly to Paris and ride back to his home in Marseille with a side trip to see a friend in Germany. Alain has been in perpetual motion since retiring from teaching a few years ago. He is wiry, tanned and fit and very cheerful. Like Nathan and all the cyclists we have met, he is very modest about what he is doing. Humbling encounters.


Nathan (above) and Alain (below) in Xinjiang


Driving madness continues to enliven our journey. The divided expressway is not yet complete, and some sections are two way on one carriageway. The places where you turn on or off the second carriageway are quite badly signaled, and we found one driver heading our way on the wrong side of the dual carriageway, doing around 120km an hour the wrong way in our fast lane (he had missed the turn back onto his side of the road). One driver in Hami cut right in front of me having overtaken unwisely, forcing me to brake. I pulled up alongside him and told him in Chinese that if he did not know how to drive, he should stay at home. This gave him a bit of a shock, and relieved my feelings. It will only get worse as we head east into the more densely populated parts of China. Tomorrow, we ride to Dunhuang – the site of the Mo Gao caves, which in addition to some beautiful Buddhist frescoes, used to contain priceless scrolls which are among the oldest printed documents in the world. These were mostly removed to UK by a British archaeologist and explorer of Hungarian origin called Aurel Stein, and are now in the British Library. This was one of the most staggering acts of archaeological larceny ever perpetrated, although it is very likely that the scrolls would have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution – so Aurel Stein may have done history a favour. The ride has brought home to us just how huge Xinjiang is. We have ridden nearly 2,000 kms and we still have 500 or so to go before we leave Xinjiang. The next province, Gansu, is also rather arid, and it will be a relief eventually to see some greener parts of the country.

Lunchtime stop in Xinjiang. Note Simon’s ingenious and instantly deployable awning on the van


Riding through Martian landscape in Xinjiang

Chapter 8, Jiu Zhai Gou, 13th June Since my last e-mail, we have visited Dunhuang and the Mo Gao caves, which were outstandingly good. Breathtaking frescoes and stunning Buddha statues carved out of the rock inside the caves. The site is quite well managed. However, we were told that the days of visiting the frescoes are probably numbered – even with rotation and some climate control, the ever growing tourist numbers are damaging the frescoes. A huge visitor centre is under construction at which a 3-D Imax type film will be shown to visitors as a substitute for going to the caves. We were therefore lucky to hit a window in time when seeing the originals is still possible.


View of the Dunhuang dunes from our hotel


Approaching Mo Gao – photography is banned in in the complex itself There are grounds for hoping that the substitute audio visual experience will be well conceived and managed – we were very impressed by Dunhuang as a city. Its development has been well planned and the style of new institutional and government buildings is tasteful and fits in with the local traditions and environment. We were told by several locals that Dunhuang was lucky to have a really good mayor for a few years who was competent, not corrupt and determined. He is now working at the Provincial government in Lanzhou, but his successor seems to be continuing in the same vein. We had dinner in a very nice, clean night market which was well patronized by locals and visitors alike. From Dunhuang we rode through more arid territory along the Hexi Corridor, which runs between the Qilian mountains (the north-eastern edge of the Tibet/Qinghai plateau) and a large expanse of desert. Our next stop was Jiayuguan, which is famous for being the western end of the great wall. It was a cold rainy day’s riding – the first day we have had on the entire trip where it was raining the whole time we were riding. The rain caused a flash flood, which washed away the road we had been planning to take out of Dunhuang to reconnect with the main Hexi highway. So we had to retrace our footsteps a bit – and found torrents of muddy water running across the road in several places. We thought as we rode that the road might get washed away, and after arriving in Jia Yu Guan, we heard that this had indeed happened. The tourist spots for visiting the great wall at Jiayuguan were hideous – another example of the way concrete, tacky souvenirs stalls by the hundred and over restoration or outright faking turn what should


be an interesting experience into a nightmare. We eventually found a patch of the rammed earth wall about 500 metres from the road and walked over to take a look.

Rammed earth Great Wall at Jia Yu Guan Our next staging post was Zhang Ye, where we were joined by a Mr. Sun, who is deputy Director of the Beijing Tourism Development Commission, and a friend of our guide and fixer, Paul Shi. Mr. Sun apparently was so intrigued by our project that he came to Zhang Ye to meet us and accompany us to Xining. He had a bit of an entourage – a driver and an underling who took photos of Mr. Sun the whole time. We persuaded him to borrow a crash helmet and some protective gear and ride on the back of Nick’s bike for the morning. He seemed to enjoy it and said he would do his best to make such trips easier to get approval for. The journey to Xining was a truly stunning day’s riding – it started with some more fertile gently sloping farmland with the Qilian Mountains getting closer. One of the crops was rape, with incredibly intense yellow flowers.


Field of rape We climbed higher all day and crossed what is going to be the highest pass on the trip – just under 4,000 metres. The very highest portion of road across the mountains was a dirt road, which made for some exciting riding, since there was quite heavy bus and truck traffic. As we descended towards Xining, we were treated to seemingly endless waves of hills, valleys and patches of green plateau, stretching away as far as the eye could see. Breathtaking.


Qinghai vista Xining driving was the worst we have come across so far in China (and as you will have gathered, the general standard is very low). Our hotel had arranged a little arrival ceremony for us (although it was likely Mr. Sun’s presence that stimulated them). We were treated to a nice Tibetan song of welcome and some bitter Tibetan tea, plus a very long bright yellow scarf.


Arrival ceremony in Xining


4,000 metre pass on road to Xining


More of the road to Xining

Getting out of Xining proved to be challenging – Paul’s pick-up truck was T-boned by a car whose driver (happened to be a woman) cut right across from the left without looking (she was using her mobile phone while driving and no hands free system, of course). The damage was superficial, but it took 45 minutes to get the paperwork done and a policeman to certify that it was her fault.


T-boned pick-up

We eventually got out of town and headed for Xia He, which is still on the Qinghai plateau and is home to the largest Tibetan monastery outside Tibet itself – the Labrang monastery. The road to Xiahe was if possible even more beautiful than the road to Xining. We rode over a series of passes and through valleys of stunning beauty – some of them were bounded by rich ochre red cliffs with vertical ridges which looked almost sculpted. The valleys and grasslands were lush and green, and we saw huge herds of yak and sheep, with most of the sheep being a breed I had not seen before with quite large horns sticking out straight, but twisted like a drill bit. A bird watcher we met at Ruoergai suggested that these were blue sheep, but they don’t look much like the blue sheep pictures on Wikipedia, and I haven’t been able to match them with any reference material. Yaks have a strangely pre-historic look, and a tendency to wander across the road. There were several villages and small towns built in the Tibetan style, which thick mud walled compounds guarded by Tibetan mastiffs – huge shaggy dogs bred to protect herds from wolves. Tibetan mastiffs have unfortunately become a fashionable breed for wealthy city slickers in China, and there are stories of pure bred mastiff puppies being sold for US$1million. They belong on the high plateaus and are totally unsuitable to be pets.


Yaks


Unidentified sheep breed At several of the passes, there were Tibetan shrines lavishly festooned with prayer flags, and all along the way the views were so beautiful they took our breath away. The photos cannot convey the strong emotions we felt at seeing such beauty stretching away in front of us. We also passed a small Tibetan monastery, at which we asked directions (a new road had been built since Paul Shi last came this way, and it cut the journey time quite a bit). Some young monks came out to look at our bikes.


Young monks check out our bikes


Prayer flags at a pass I have never been to this part of China before, and it was a real revelation. It struck me (having been to Tibet proper) that the Tibetans communities leaving on this area of the Tibet/Qinghai plateau have a better life than those in Tibet itself. Whilst high (3,000 to 3,500 metres), this area is not as high as Tibet. The pasture is much richer and the arable land more fertile and extensive – sustaining larger populations of herd animals and a wider variety of crops. The Tibetan towns and villages in this part of China also seem to me to be more authentic than much of what one is allowed to see on a tour of Tibet, presumably because the authorities have not felt the need to arrange large scale Han migration into these areas. Given the difficulties of getting permission to visit Tibet (separate permits are required in addition to a visa), I recommend going to the Labrang monastery and the Qinghai/Gansu Tibetan areas to get an idea of what Tibetan life and religion are like, and giving Tibet itself a miss. The one sour note was the road tunnels we went through. They are horrendously dangerous – completely unlit and with active or abandoned road works which have created huge potholes. These are coned off in a very amateurish fashion, and of course drivers veer across to the wrong side of the road to avoid them without worrying about whether anything is coming the other way. John Rose had a nasty spill in one tunnel later in the trip – he suffered only a bruised shoulder and was a bit shaken up and the bike suffered only scratches. But it was a reminder of the dangers of biking, and the absolute need to wear proper protective gear every time you get on the bike.


Xiahe has been built in mock Tibetan style (we saw more of this later), but the Labrang monastery which we visited the morning after our arrival was the real thing – such a relief to find something that had not been turned into a parody of itself by the commercial tourism industry. It is enormous – the longest prayer-wheel corridors of any Tibetan monastery, and the largets Tibetan monastery outside Tibet proper. We spent a fascinating couple of hours walking around the perimeter, and then being guided around some of the temples by a supposedly English speaking monk, whose English was very difficult to follow.

Labrang monastery prayer wheel corridor – note pilgrim prostrating herself


Labrang Monastery


Labrang monastery – monks and pilgrims leaving their shoes and boots at the door


Monk at Labrang


Monk on his way to pray – Labrang belongs to Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism In the afternoon, we set out for Ruoergai, which is in Sichuan province and the centre of a large grassland national park. The mountainous landscape progressively gave way to large expanses of marshy grassland in a series of valleys bounded by hills. We crossed a series of passes all well over 3,000 metres. It was cold and drizzly, but the weather did nothing to spoil our enjoyment of yet another day of wonderful scenery.


Approaching Ruoergai Ruoergai itself appears as a rather ugly mock Tibetan scar on the landscape from afar. But our hotel turned out to be a charming mixture of real Tibetan architecture and interior design, and some slightly more kitsch bits. But it was comfortable and fun and had a sense of place. We had an excellent Tibetan meal (although no salt tea with yak butter or tsampa – a barley porridge- both of which are challenging). The waitresses changed into their traditional Tibetan clothes and sang and danced for us after dinner. Simon and John were game enough to volunteer to be taught traditional Tibetan dancing, which amused the girls and their boyfriends no end. We sang a couple of songs by way of returning the compliment. They were very polite about our singing.


We sing after getting our supper From Ruoergai we rode to Jiu Zhai Gou. It was cold and wet riding, but again the beauty of the landscape kept our spirits high. The grassland plateaus eventually gave way to a more alpine scene, with deep valleys and pine clad mountains. We stopped for lunch at a completely fake Tibetan town – a weird contrast with the rather nice genuine Tibetan villages we passed along the way. Jiu Zhai Gou is quite reminiscent of Yosemite. Today, we visited the valley – you cannot drive into it; there is a shuttle bus system. The numbers of tourists visiting in high season is incredible, and it is a real challenge to cope with such numbers without completely ruining what they came to see. In our view, they have done a reasonable job. Apart from some pushing and shoving to get on the bus, the crowds were quite well behaved, and (incredibly to those of you who know China) obey the no smoking and no littering rules. We stopped off at one really lovely set of waterfalls, where for some reason almost none of the tourist wanted to go. We found two newly we couples having their photos taken with the falls as a backdrop – an interesting trend towards authenticity, since many couples settle for photos against picture backdrops in the photographer’s studio.


Jiu Zhai Gou Mirror Lake


Jiu Zhai Gou falls with newlyweds Tomorrow we head south and east and will work our way over the next few days towards Xian, exploring the rural areas of southern Shaanxi Province along the way. We have had several days at altitudes of over 3,000 metres and have all felt the effects – shortage of breath, headaches and rather fitful sleep. But totally worth it for the incredible sensations stimulated by riding across this vast and beautiful part of China. This journey is nearing its end – if we survive the crazy drivers, we will arrive in Beijing on 28 June, so just over two weeks to go. We have already done 16,600 kms. Coming to rest is going to be interesting!

Final Chapter, 4th July, Wisdom Valley, Huai Rou district, Beijing. Journey’s end We arrived at our house in the country in the northern outskirts of Beijing just before 6 pm on 28th June. We visited 12 countries, covered 11,900 miles (19,200kms). The trip took 101 days since departure, of which 63 spent riding, 35 spent sightseeing and 3 in limbo trying to cross the Caspian Sea. Our bikes were extremely reliable – John and Nick needed to fix slightly overheated clutches in Istanbul; we all changed our tyres once; we all needed to replace a headlamp bulb; but nothing of any consequence went wrong in spite of bad petrol, worse roads and extended periods at high altitude. Incredibly, we did not have a single puncture.


Jiu Zhai Gou to Xian 13-18 June We rode back roads from Jiu Zhai Gou, which is in northern Sichuan into Shaanxi Province. Whilst not matching the grandeur of Qinghai and eastern Gansu, some of the countryside was very pretty. We rode south east through very steeply wooded hills and alpine type scenery before coming out into a landscape with more flat, cultivated areas between the hills. We passed through an area in which tobacco seemed to be the main crop – it is obviously a profitable one, because the houses in the area were the grandest and best looking houses I have seen anywhere in the Chinese countryside, with spacious first floor balconies. The state owned tobacco monopoly obviously takes care of its farmers. At one high pass, we found the entire hillsides covered with azalea bushes in full bloom – it looked as if some mad pastry chef had sprinkled pink, white and red icing sugar all over the hills. We rode through the area of Sichuan most affected by the earthquake in 2008 which killed 68,000 people. The road showed lots of signs of hastily repaired earthquake damage, and all the villages along the roadside were newly built. It seems that most of the people living in villages up in the hills who survived were moved to newly built homes close to the road. We spent that evening in Guangyuan, a town which plays host to a lot of nuclear power scientists and engineers. It was otherwise notable (to us at least) for being almost impossible to get out of: the roads to the north were all being rebuilt and were closed, and we had to bump our way along a dusty track for several kilometres before being able to get on the road again. The next day (15th June) was John Rose’s last day of riding with us – he needed to return home before the end of the trip to help with the preparations for his son’s wedding. We rode to Yang Xian, a small town reasonably close to Xian, so that Paul Shi, our guide could drive John to Xian airport on 16th. The highlight of the ride to Yang Xian was a temple dedicated to Wen Chang, a sage who is as revered as Confucius, but less well known to the outside world.


Wen Chang temple The temple is located in a grove of ancient cypress trees, which also line the road for some distance beyond the temple. Riding among these ancient evergreen trees on exceptionally smooth tarmac was an intense pleasure.


Cypress tree road Shaanxi Province, of which Xian is the capital, has become a major apple growing area in China (which has become the largest producer of apple juice concentrate in the world). We rode through huge areas of apple orchards, and every apple on every tree seemed to have a gauze bag around it to keep pests way but still allowing the apple to ripen. The labour intensity of this process was messing with my mind as I rode past the orchards. Yang Xian turned out to be a rather miserable place, and the hotel was awful – exceeded only in awfulness by the Soviet-style hotel in Turkmenabat. We found a reasonably decent restaurant, and ate in a rather glum state for a while until John relieved the mood with some farewell remarks which got us all trying to find a way of expressing in words why the trip had been so good. I will try to distil this at the end of this letter.


Farewell to John (l to r Dave Griffiths, me, John Rose, Simon Britten, Nick Swain) Our original plan was to stay on in Yang Xian for a couple of days exploring the Qinling Mountains, and get to Xian on 19th June in time for the arrival of Christina and some HK friends on 19th; and Susan (Britten) and Karen (Griffiths) on 21st. But the hotel in Yang Xian was so bad that we decided to submit ourselves to the ordeal of two extra nights in the Sofitel in Xian. It was tough to adjust to the Sofitel - the whiteness of the towels hurt our eyes, and the pulp of the freshly pressed orange juice got stuck in our teeth - but we were up to the challenge! Xian 18-24 June Getting into the centre of Xian was not simple – large motorbikes are banned. Fortunately, we have some wonderful friends in Xian who wrote a letter to the police and traffic authorities who not only agreed to let us ride our bikes to the Sofitel, but provided us with a police motorcycle escort to smooth the way. Apart from doing the usual tourist things (Terra Cotta Warriors, Big Goose Pagoda, Shaanxi Museum), we also had a very nice celebration dinner at our Xian friends’ restaurant for my and Nick’s birthdays- Nick turned 56 on 16th June, and I turned 62 on 20th). On June 20th, the bikers visited a children’s home in which the structure of care is organized by Half the Sky, one of the two charities for which I have been seeking your support.


Terra Cotta warriors museum Most of the children have mental or physical disabilities, and those that do not are generally unwanted girl children. Half the Sky provides family type love and care within the institutional framework – there is a residential block in which couples care for three or four children as their own. The wife is given a stipend by the institution, and the husband normally has a regular job outside. They share in the utilities and running costs of their accommodation. The children attend class across the way from their homes, and are taken care of by specialized teachers and carers, whose training is also organized by Half the Sky, which operates in a symbiotic relationship with the government funded institution. No description of the basic facts of the way Half the Sky works can convey the emotional impact of seeing and feeling the care and love given to these children. The Director of the centre, Madam Zheng, told us that in the 20 years she had been working there, they had gone from simply rescuing these children and keeping them alive to trying to give them a life. So to all of you who have kindly donated money, a big thank you from the Xian Children’s Welfare Centre.


Children in class


Lunchtime at home with mother Xian to Beijing - 24 to 28 June With John gone, Simon rode his bike, and after Xian, Susan drove the van with Karen providing navigation and support in dealing with local driving habits. Our next major destination was Pingyao, a walled town in the province next door to Shaanxi (whose romanised name is – confusingly - Shanxi). We planned to stage in a small town called Yichuan, after visiting the very impressive Hukou falls on the Yellow River. The Yellow River valley is known as the cradle of Chinese civilization because some of the earliest evidence of human habitation has been found there. It is also known as China’s Sorrow, because it has produced catastrophic floods on many occasions. The river carries vast quantities of silt (hence its name), and once it leaves the mountains, the silt gets deposited on the river bed, requiring dykes to be built to contain the river. The silting continues and the dykes have to be raised – resulting in a water course which is well above the height of the surrounding country. This means that the slightest breach in the dykes will bring a terrible flood.


Hukou falls on the Yellow RIver We never made it to Yichuan that day. After visiting the falls, we were riding along a country road and decided to pull into a graveled area on the left side of the road for one of our regular breaks – drink water, eat some chocolate, and rest for a few minutes. As soon as we pulled in, some soldiers came out of the totally unmarked gate at the back of the graveled area and said we could not stop there. So Paul and Nick rode/drove off, but as Susan was trying to back the van out, more soldiers appeared and told us that we could not leave. More soldiers still came out to prevent us from leaving. Paul and Nick returned and Paul began patiently negotiating with the soldiers. They said that they had reported to the police and their senior officer. The police arrived after about 20 minutes and took us all to the police station in the nearest town, where Paul continued his patient explanation and showed them all our permits and documents. After about an hour, they were satisfied that we were tourists, and escorted us out of town to a different road avoiding the military base. Paul very sensibly decided that we would not ride in the dark to Yichuan so we stopped at a closer town called Luochuan. By way of illustrating what an excellent guide Paul is, he phoned his Beijing office while on the road to get them to cancel our original hotel booking and make a new one in Luochuan. This made for a rather long day the next day from Luochuan to Pingyao, but we got it done with no great problems. The south and west of Shanxi Province is coal mining country, and we passed a very dreary collection of towns and villages grimy with coal dust. The roads were full of large coal trucks and even out in the country, a fine coat of coal dust seemed to swirl around everywhere. China is still


heavily dependent on coal for its energy needs (70% of electricity is generated in coal fired power stations) and coal mining is highly profitable. Unfortunately, both state owned and private coal mines have a cavalier attitude to safety and there are frequent fatal accidents. I heard that 100 people a week die in mining accidents in China, but cannot verify the statistic.

Grimy Shanxi town Christina and I had visited Pingyao before and enjoyed the Tian Yuan Kui guest house in the centre of the town, which is where Paul booked us in. We parked outside the town walls and were driven to the hotel in golf carts, since motor vehicles are not generally allowed inside the walls. The hotel had lost none of its charm, and the team enjoyed staying there. Tim Britten, Simon and Susan’s youngest, joined us in Pingyao, having flown out from UK to join us for the last three days on the road and the arrival celebrations. The next morning was devoted to exploring Pingyao. Having done this before, I had a lazy morning in the hotel discussing the plans for the last few days with Paul.


Pingyao In the afternoon, we had our shortest ride of the whole trip – barely 80km to Taiyuan, the provincial capital. Paul had booked us into a rather luxurious conference centre hotel with a nice temple in the grounds.


Temple in Taiyuan

Paul’s excellent route planning meant that we enjoyed mostly pleasant country road almost to the boundaries of Beijing. But as we moved into the more densely populated parts of China, the interludes with heavy traffic – take-no-prisoner truck drivers; barking mad car drivers overtaking on blind bends; death-wish cyclists and pedestrians – become more frequent. As we approached Beijing, death wish dogs added themselves to the mix – we all had some very near misses. As we rode into the more densely populated areas before and after Xian, the towns and villages were generally uglier and messier. As Rob Gifford mentions in his excellent book, China Road, “public toilet” style house design is now the standard - concrete block or brick buildings of utilitarian design and poor


construction (single course walls, no insulation to speak of), covered with white glazed tiles of a kind generally used in public toilets. It is hard to be nostalgic for the quainter looking but squalid and insanitary mud brick houses which were the norm until the reforms got under way in the 1980s – but it is hard to understand why everywhere should be such a mess – valuable machinery and equipment lying around in a dirty and poorly maintained condition; spare parts, old engines, bits of rusty metal all piled up or scattered around. It was always a relief to get out of the towns and villages and into the quieter parts of the route, generally the hilly bits. Our last two days riding took us from Shanxi into Hebei Province, and finally into Beijing municipality, which extends for a radius of around 100km from central Beijing. The last two days had some of the most challenging riding since the Torugart pass. As soon as we crossed into Hebei, the road became very uneven and full of large potholes. In places, the road simply disappeared altogether as it was completely dug up in preparation for laying a new and more solid road. But pending the completion of the works, road users have to contend with mud, grit, puddles and potholes. Our off-road training and the practice we had had in Kyrgyzstan came in very useful. Our last overnight stop before Beijing was in another nondescript county town called Lai Yuan, which we did not reach until well after dark. Paul again showed his qualities as a person and a guide by immediately finding us a restaurant near to the hotel, persuading them not to close, and ordering the food while we had a quick shower and changed out of our biking gear. Our last day on the road, 28th June, was a wet one. We rode through a Chinese landscape painting – steep wooded crags shrouded in mist with occasional rather tortured looking pine trees silhouetted on the skyline. There was frequent evidence of rock and mud slides, as well as more “let’s make the road disappear altogether” road works.


Hebei roads

Then we crossed a pass which marked the boundary of Hebei Province and Beijing municipality, and the road quality improved dramatically. Another 45 minutes or so of country riding and then we descended towards the outer fringes of urban Beijing, reaching the 6th Ring Road (roughly equivalent to London’s M25) about 4 pm. This was a moment I had been dreaming of for years – taking over the lead of our little convoy and guiding everyone to the house in Wisdom Valley (the village’s real name is Jiao Jie He, but like many villages within Beijing municipality, it has given itself a more impressive sounding name). We rapidly ate up the 45 kms around the ring road to the Beijing to Cheng De expressway, and after 20km on the expressway, we reached the exit for Huairou, the nearest town to our village. From there it is about 30km on a pleasantly twisty and well surfaced country road to our village, and a final ride of 3km through the village to our house. No possibility of relaxing our vigilance, even on a familiar road – the crazies were still out there, and I had quite a close brush with an insane over-taker. But we all arrived safe and happy, and have been making the most of the past few days to relax, enjoy good food and wine. Nick’s wife Rosita and son David arrived on 30th. So Simon and the three remaining bikers all have their wives and other family members with them for the end of trip celebrations, which were marked by quiet sharing of good food and wine and a deep sense of well-being. It was a pity John could not stay with us to the end of the trip, but he had the best of reasons for leaving early. We raised our glasses to him more than once.


We visited a lovely, unspoiled section of the Great Wall which is 20 minutes’ drive from the house; we all went into Beijing on Sunday 1st for the Pan Jia Yuan bric-a-brac market (think Portobello Road, Chinese style, and on steroids). The rest of the team had a day’s sightseeing in Beijing on Monday 2nd, and then the departures started. By the evening of 5 July, Christina and I were alone in Wisdom Valley with our dogs, savouring the memory of this long planned for celebration with our friends.

The Great Wall at Jian Kou


Bikers and loved ones at Wisdom Valley


Bikers with our guide and friend, Paul Shi Baoying


Our trusty BMWs get a rest at journey’s end So our trip is done. It has far exceeded my expectations, and I am happier to have done it than I can adequately convey in words. There are many reasons why this is so, and it is hard to do justice to them all.

The intense beauty of much of the landscape through which we rode. We have seen a big slice

of the Euro-Asian landmass, and so much of it is truly lovely.

The warm curiosity of so many people we met along the way. As I have observed before, the

bikes themselves are a magnet, drawing people to look at them and see what sort of people ride

these machines into their backyards. When they see that it is a bunch of grey haired men of 60

or close to it, they become even more friendly and curious.

The physical pleasure of riding the motorcycle – I have commented on this in earlier missives,

but the ride itself was what the trip was really all about, including the tougher bits. We were

saddle-sore and tired at the end of long hard days, but had a deep satisfaction at having taken

on the challenge and overcome it.


But most of all, it was the companionship of our group that made this such an unforgettable

experience. We are all very different people, but we knew each other well before we set off,

had done practice runs together, and throughout the trip supported each other through every

challenge. It is difficult to talk about this without sounding corny or trite, so perhaps I can just

express my very great gratitude to my companions for their company and friendship, and hope

that my other readers will understand a little of how special it has been to ride with Simon, Nick,

John and David, not forgetting Christian Renard and David Swain for parts of the trip.

Coming to rest has not been as much of a challenge as I thought it might be. I have Christina to thank for that – she has been completely supportive of my involvement of this project from the beginning; took care of all our personal admin while I was away; got us moved into the new Beijing apartment; and got everything ready for our arrival. This left me entirely free to devote my mental energy to the trip and to the living in the moment which has been one of its hallmarks. Thank you, Christina. Inevitably, the trip has triggered some thoughts on what is happening in the world at large and especially in China. I will save these for a while, since they require a little more time to organize and write down.

Richard Margolis

Beijing, 8th

July 2012

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