Tailwind supports us on our last kilometers in Xinjiang province, which is necessary because we have to climb another 1000 meters. Incredible how we got used to this up and down. The temperature drops roughly 1°C per 100m, additionally the difference between day and night temperatures is about 25°C here in the desert. Why are we telling you this? We started the last climb in shorts and shirts and arrive during sunset at the summit, where the last police checkpoint is located. The policemen who stop us already wear gloves, hats and scarfs – and seem rather shocked because of our summer outfits… Funny! Having passed the last checkpoint we change to winter clothes – but only once we are out of sight ;)
We arrive in the province Gansu and expect quite some changes. The bilingual roadsigns continue, but the Arabic letters of the Uighur language are exchanged for English. A lot more helpful! We head towards the first highlight: The Great Wall of China, which is several thousand kilometers long and can be visited at several places all over China.
The start of the Great Wall is in Jiayuguan, where two parts of the hanging wall are located: The wall runs along steep mountains, the stairs lead up to 45° towards the top. Here we meet two different concepts of tourism: One half of the wall lies behind a fence, costs an entrance fee and is crowded with tourists. Directly next to it is the second half, which can be accessed for free and is empty except for two visitors. One of them is flying a drone over the crowds. When he lands, we are already waiting next to him, with our hard drive and with puppy dog eyes 10 minutes later we have copies of all his files and are very grateful!
We climb up and down the wall, find an old military bunker underneath it and are pretty impressed of the whole area. We decide to spend the night here. The cloudless sky gives a nice view to the milkyway, which costs us some hours sleep. We prefer to spend the night taking pictures. In total this place is definitely worth a visit.
We start pedaling the next morning, only now our legs show crazy symptoms of that unusual stairs workout. We follow the Highway, which gets more and more boring. Corn is harvested at the moment and every space is being used to dry the corncobs. At least this adds a nice color to the landscape.
Speaking of nice colours: Our next destination is the rainbow mountains. Here mother nature painted spectacular pictures, which got rewarded as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009. Words fail us! The hype attracts thousands of visitors every day. Surrounding the area, hotel complexes have been built, which resemble small cities. This doesn’t correspond at all with the remote mountain area we had imagined and where we naively expected to pitch our tent for the night. A huge fence surrounds the whole area. Visitors have to pay a bus tour. Our mood sinks. The ticket hall is about the size of a soccer stadium. Everything is huge, and this is necessary for the masses to purchase tickets quickly. As usual we are pretty clueless in the beginning but soon we sit in a bus together with a Chinese girl named Cassidie. The busses stop at several viewpoints, every path is labeled and it is impossible to go off those tracks. On one hand we regret that we don’t get to explore the area on our own, but we totally understand the need to protect the mountains. If everybody walked around everywhere they would get destroyed soon. We are impressed by all the cameras and gear the Chinese tourists brought along. When we meet all the other visitors in the evening at the so called sunset point, even our Chinese companion is surprised. Everyone seems to have a man sized tripod in one hand, a cigarette in the other and at least two cameras with huge zoom ports around their necks. The real pros additionally carry a two meter long selfie stick for their Iphone/Oppo/Vivo. The highlight is when they take phone calls and forget the selfie stick: Listening attentively, nodding, turning right and left – everyone ducks as the selfie sticks hits the air like a sword! We have to mention that the rainbow mountains are most colourful after rain – we try to believe this statement but somehow we the Photoshop skills of the marketing guys seem the more likely explanation to us.
The leaves of the few mountains along the way turn colourful: Autumn is here. We want to spend the holidays together with Anna in Germany. A while ago we had booked the flights now we have to find a place for our bicycles in Zhangye within the next 24 hours. This happens to be really simple: We are allowed to leave them in the corridor of the Silk Road Travelers Hostel – highly recommended! Relieved we start our trip to Germany, which we plan to use for some sightseeing as well.
First we fly to Xi’an, the former capital of China. The metropole is nicely illuminated, which creates a mystic atmosphere. During daytime we admire the giant ancient city gates, with patina. As soon as the sun sets, the old buildings glow in all colors and we expect Mickey Mouse arm in arm with Mao Zedong lined up for a photo shooting.
Together with masses of Chinese tourists we visit the Terracotta Army, cycle a round on the city wall on a twin bicycle and dive into the streets of the Muslim quarter in the evening. All in all a three days program in one single day. We are a bit proud and sleep very well on the flights to Munich.
We leave the plane and are welcomed by a golden autumn day, colourful trees but no bus. Some hours later we arrive at home. We spend the following week with Anna, Monis family, visit friends and all too soon it is time to go back. On our way back we stop in Beijing to visit the forbidden city – the old palace of the emperors before we get on the night train to Zhangye. 24 hours later we are back at our bicycles. The country is truly gigantic. We are absolutely looking forward to get back to pedalling. Which even we think is weird. We cycled almost every day, by now its more than 17000 kilometers – and we are happy to go on?!
We have only been gone for two weeks, but it got a lot colder since then. The winter is coming. That is one more reason to speed on, because from now on we go straight south: Summer we are coming! Just not as soon as we wished. 4000m high mountains separate us. We feel cold way below the summit and Moni shows first signs of the flu, which is getting worse every day. We have only mountains and freezing temperatures ahead of us… 30 kilometers behind there was a hotel, so we cycle back downhill. With some rest in the warm, comfy room Moni gets well soon and when her daily tissue consumption falls below one package we decide to go on. We already know the first 30 kilometers… But we don’t get to know a lot more of this street. The first truck drivers give us weird signs, one stops and we think we understand that the road is closed. Many other vehicles overtake us and none of them seem to come back, so we decide to cycle on. We climb and climb, at least the way back will be easy. What happens behind the next turn? Read the next blog!
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