Xi'an...a City of 8,000,000 People!

24-Oct-08: Freezing Over
China: Lanzhou to Homestay
128km, 6h 56min ride time

After the last riding day being snowy and miserable I was a little apprehensive about getting back on the bike after having been resting up for a few days. I was prepared with all my cold weather apparel but it turned out to be quite a mild morning by comparison at around 5 degrees.

There was no concession in the riding conditions for my first day back with the day comprising quite a lot of climbing. Having fresh legs probably had a lot do with it, but I felt good and the climbing did not actually bother me as much as it could have.

The descents however were freezing and without any knowledge of how long they were to last you are caught between the 'I'll be climbing again soon and will warm up' and the 'should I stop and put on some more clothes' thoughts...the former winning out most often and detrimentally so for the final 10km descent of the day after which there was no climbing to warm up at all! I spent half an hour on arrival at the homestay literally sitting on top of the heater trying to defrost enough to attempt changing.

25-Oct-08: Game Crazed
China: Homestay to Jingning
101km, 5h 00min ride time

Despite the lack of showers, the homestay hotel was heated and the cosy room and heavy bedcover had all the ingredients for a good night sleep. The morning trip to the outhouse was enough to tell that we were in for a cold start. After dusting the frost off our bike seats we set off in zero degrees and pedalled hard in an attempt to get the blood flowing and warm up. I seem to have figured out an appropriate level of clothing to wear now so that I can leave comfortable but not overheat in the first 5 minutes...although my fingers seem to be in their own little microclimate because they are always screaming in pain from the cold!

The ride today was a very pleasant one with rolling hills and nice scenery for most of the day. We had one slightly nerve wracking incident with a guy on a motorbike recklessly herding a couple of donkey at break neck speed along the road and straight through us and a couple of ladies walking on the side of the road. I was run off the road by one donkey and both donkey's went either side of Dan leaving him little space to move, before they then hustled the ladies off the road and out of their way!

We had a short relatively steep climb before lunch and a long descent after lunch...this time I was prepared for the descent and put on my jacket and enjoyed the ride a hundred times more because I was warm. With the days having been quite long since our entering China, any day under 110km is considered a short day and so today at a predicted 105km was practically a rest day. We rolled into town at about 2.30pm leaving us with a good 7-8 hours of time before having to get sleep for tomorrow.

Jingning is a small city but feels more like a large town...I'm sure there must be a statistical definition for the difference, but Zabi our translator assures us that it is a city not a town. In any case it has all the necessities for a mid-ride-week stop, being internet and a supermarket. I went to the supermarket to buy supplemental supplies for breakfast and stopped into the internet cafe which to my amazement was more like a Wall Street trading floor...there were people everywhere! There must have been 200 computers, many with 2-3 people per terminal and a further 20-30 people gathered at the desk waiting for a place. Our best guess is that computer games are the thing to do on a Saturday night...

26-Oct-08: Inching My Way
China: Jingning to Pingliang
103km, 5h 23min ride time

I found today a tough day. When we got in all I could do was lie on my bed for about an hour before having the energy to get changed. The route had us climbing for the first 50km and although only a very slight incline most of the way, was enough to knock you about as it makes you feel as though you are getting little in return for all the effort you are putting in.

At the top of the climb we had fried eggs on bread for lunch and were escorted by the lunch van through a 2.4km long tunnel afterwards. With one lane in each direction and room for little else we wondered what the consequence of an accident in the tunnel would be like as we rolled quickly through with the downhill in our direction. The downhill continued for the remainder of the day to varying degrees and so was reward in part for our morning of effort. All the same I was tired and pleased when we finally covered the distance to the hotel.

The highlight of the afternoon was on a short detour to avoid going through another tunnel. The detour was really no longer than the tunnel would have been but took us through an interesting and tiny little village positioned and hidden away directly beside the tunnel. The village was home to a small monastery which was established in the late 1800's. Inside the monastery were a few small Buddhist shrines with some interesting looking statues inside them and having a look was a nice little distraction from the ride.

Many of the others rushed about on arrival or took a detour en-route to visit a mountain top Taoist Monastery...I was far too tired to contemplate going anywhere and it seems just as well I didn't as the group I would have gone with have missed dinner and are presumed to have missed the last gondola down the mountain and now to be walking their way down in the dark!

27-Oct-08: Sore Eyes
China: Pingliang to Changwu
117km, 5h 45min ride time

Those thought to be potentially stuck up the monastery mountain made it home, late, but well. They had not been stuck but had taken a different way down the mountain, but did end up having to wait half an hour to for a taxi to collect them and return them to the hotel. From what I have been told the monastery was quite picturesque but did include a very high gondola ride and climbing many steep and dangerous stairs...neither of which sounded appealing to someone with vertigo!

Although starting out a little warmer due to cloud cover, today did not warm up in the absence of the sun and by lunchtime the temperature was still hovering around 10 degrees. The terrain was a little kinder than yesterday with a mostly flat to slight downhill all day with the exception of one 8km steep climb in the middle of the afternoon.

Pollution in the air is becoming increasingly noticeable and for the past few days the consequence has been very sore eyes at the end of a day of riding. Breathing was noticeably affected today and uncomfortable enough to now prompt digging out the carbon filter breathing mask and starting to use it from this point forward. We are in for a tough day tomorrow with lots of climbing and 140km to cover, so I am off to bed to try and get in some good preparatory sleep.

28-Oct-08: Not So Bad
China: Changwu to Chunhua
137km, 7h 11min ride time

After being built up for a really difficult day today turned out to be not so bad. The route was new for this year, having been discovered last year by the support vehicles which had to detour around a tunnel backed up for 20km with coal and apple trucks. The day included 4 challenging climbs but otherwise was predominantly flat and so allowed us to make good time between the climbs.

As I had resolved to do, I tried my face mask today but abandoned it 20 minutes into the ride when it became soaked in sweat and just too hot despite the cold weather. I think I will just have to battle on and accept that I may die in future of some chronic lung condition!

29-Oct-08: Survived the Stretch
China: Chunhua to Xi'an
93km, 4h 13min ride time

Our last day of cycling into a double rest day turned out to be a short and relatively easy one. Aside from a flat tire which slowed me down a little, everyone arrived at our lunch stop in good time. We gathered in small groups for the final complicated route into town. The traffic was crazy!

There just does not seem to be any hard and fast road rules...if the light is red cars still go...if the light is green they just go faster! There were cars doing U-turns in the middle of roundabouts and trucks driving towards us the wrong way up the road! To a point it is just a matter of close your eyes, go and hope for the best. And it will only get crazier from this point onwards as we get closer to Beijing.

30-Oct-08: A Bit of the West
China: Xi'an - Rest Day

Xi'an is by far the largest city we have come across since entering China. Historically, it was the capital city and the end of the silk trading route. The old city walls standing 4 stories high and surrounded by a water filled moat are still in place and surround the primary city centre. We went for a walk from our hostel into the walled city area and generally wandered around.

There are 4 major gate entrances into the city walls, one at each compass point. Each gate is marked by an elaborate architectural structure. Unfortunately we had very poor weather today and the pollution combined with rain made visibility very limited and especially so for photographs.

We had lunch at the first Pizza Hut we have seen in as long as I can remember...it was pretty ordinary but the ease of ordering won out over having a language battle. And lunch was topped off with a McDonald's ice cream sundae. Despite the existence of many fast food chains, the Chinese still don't seem to have mastered the art of 'fast' food...it took about 20 minutes to get 2 ice cream sundaes!

After lunch I returned to a massage parlour that I located in our wanderings. I walked inside and saw 2 lounge chairs, one of which was occupied by a sleeping Chinese lady. I tried to rouse her with a few repeats of 'hello' and 'ni hao' but could not wake her and was not really all that sure if she was staff or a customer so did not really want to forcefully wake her. Searching upstairs also did not rouse anyone and so I noisily made my way back to the reception area, at which point the lady awoke, wiping the drool which was running down her chin and groggily inviting me upstairs again. She proceeded to give me a fantastic massage which was very attentive to any area which did not respond the way in which she knew it should and painful as a result. At one stage she was pressing so hard on my skull that I thought her thumbs would go through it like an egg shell and pierce my brain!