Rough Patch

11-Oct-08: One Big Buddha
China: Dun Huang – Rest Day

The focus of our rest day today was a tour of nearby tourist sites which was arranged for us by our translator. We started with the Thousand Buddha Caves which were once a series of a thousand caves carved into the rocky face of a mountain and now number half that. Each cave was created by different individuals or consortiums as a form of worship and varied in size from small head sized caves to gigantic caves reaching 7 stories in height. Historically, the location of the caves was at the western most point of China and certain caves were created in order to ensure luck for an ensuing silk route journey around the desert and/or to give thanks for a safe return from such a journey.

Each year only 8 caves are opened to the public with a further 2 being opened exclusively to western tourists. The first cave we visited was the most awesome...we were told we were about to see a big Buddha statue and as I walked through the 10m high entrance archway I thought to myself ‘I can’t see any Buddha, what is he talking about?’...at the end of the archway I looked up and realised that I had been eyeballing the big toe of the Buddha which towered an impressive 35m high. The entire statue inside the cave had been carved in-situ out of the mountain in the 7th Century...very impressive. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside any of the caves.

The remaining caves were all of varying ages and degrees of repair and in themselves quite interesting, but compared to the gigantic Buddha seemed a little small! Our final cave was where a secret cave housing thousands of manuscripts and artwork had been discovered. The documents which were initially not given adequate recognition of value and therefore not protected were taken over time by various explorers and are now housed in museums all over the world.

After leaving the Buddha caves we were treated to a lunch in one of Dun Huang's best local restaurants. The food was tasty, interesting and plentiful and refuelled us for a busy afternoon...back on to the bus and on to the desert dunes just outside the city. After riding for so long around the edges of the desert we had been looking forward to seeing some real sand dunes and so were happy to find that we were able to see them so easily. Being so close to town the dune ridge has been thoroughly commercialised for tourists but was still impressive. We took a camel ride through the dunes...sitting on a camel is not comfortable...and so when all our site seeing was over I headed straight back to the massage centre and got a second massage to undo any damage the camel had done!

12-Oct-08: Lost in Space
China: Dun Huang to Yuanquan
136km, 6h 01min ride time

I am finding it an effort not to just let riding days of late slip by unacknowledged. Today I was restless and feeling ready for this trip to be over...after giving it some thought I acknowledged that my restlessness comes from the relative nothingness of the past few weeks. I came on this trip expecting the unknown to an extent and it has delivered with a variety of challenges from torrential rain to blistering heat and everything in between. But I had not expected the nothingness that has been the past few weeks. It is hard to not look back upon the weeks we have spent cycling through the deserted nothingness as a waste of precious time, achieving nothing, and by no means so extraordinary in any experience as to have any chance of outweighing the ‘ordinary’ that I was trying to break away from in signing up for this.

So I was reminded to return to the process of acknowledging milestones and our progression towards the end. On the 18th of November we completed our last border crossing...on the 18th of October we will have our final night of camping and beyond that will no doubt have a few more ‘lasts’ before our last day of riding will be upon us. Beyond that there will be an inevitable element of nostalgia which will look back on endless days of riding with a degree of longing. And so now I must try to fuel a future longing with a present enjoyment of a nothingness that will somehow evolve in retrospect into a something.

13-Oct-08: From Bad to Worse
China: Yuanquan to Chinjinxia
130km, 7h 02min ride time

The events of today did not help me in my decision to try and find enjoyment in each day. A cold start made for a slow start (at least we are not in Turkmenistan stuck on a ferry in 50 degrees)...followed by rolling my sunglasses up inside my tent and consequently breaking them (at least I was carrying a spare albeit inferior pair)...and topped off by a headwind (hmmm, sorry but cannot think of any riding condition that a headwind on a cold morning with 140km to cover is preferable to).

Our directed route today was to follow a secondary road alongside the major highway...the secondary road being narrow, rough and longer than the visible highway which was smooth and had a nice wide and safe shoulder to ride in...a no-brainer that all bar 4 riders abandoned the prescribed route and scrambled their way up onto the highway. This plan was foolproof provided we returned to the prescribed route before the lunch stop at 75km...unfortunately for the majority of riders lunch was pulled forward to about 70km, about 1km prior to the off ramp everyone took and not visible from the highway. Luckily for a couple of us the lunch truck spotted us on its way back to camp and stopped to hand us supplies which were gratefully accepted. The ironic conclusion being that a change of instruction was issued at lunch...get onto the highway!

We all ultimately made it to camp after having also ‘missed’ the instructed exit off the highway, which did not exist, and had to scramble down an embankment and through barbed wire fences to physically get to camp. The ultimate good news story of the day being that tomorrow can only be a better day with the distance to our next destination being reduced from 145km to around 100km, tomorrow’s prescribed route being to follow the highway and that at the conclusion of the days riding we will be in a hotel and will wake to another rest day.

14-Oct-08: A Hot Shower...Eventually
China: Chinjinxia to Jiayuguan
111km, 5h 35min ride time

Today did not start with my breaking my sunglasses and so started relatively well. The weather was chilly but calm with no wind and combined with the smooth highway gave us a good chance to get going. As we head into the populated oasis region the landscape has finally started to show some signs of life with a covering of Autumn coloured vegetation and the occasional waterway in the foreground of a snow capped mountain range.

As lunch today was on the highway we had no chance of missing it and so refuelled for the afternoon of riding into a headwind which had developed throughout the morning. Knowing we were riding into a hotel and a rest day got me through the afternoon.

After settling into the hotel, which included letting the shower run for 15 minutes to kick start the water heaters, we spent some time in the internet cafe across the street before finding dinner. Despite a picture menu, dinner was a disaster with us ordering 2 very chili hot dishes, one being mostly very fatty meat and the other being half weird mushrooms and half chili. We could not finish it and opted to move on and fill the remaining hole in our stomachs by sourcing safer fodder from a nearby supermarket.