The road was mayhem. Absolute mayhem. There really is no other word for it. Well, 'chaos' would also work I suppose. Bedlam. Madness. Insanity. Okay, there are lots of words for it. But mayhem covers things nicely. It was the morning rush hour on what was supposed to be a small road from the Rainbow Mountains to the town of Zhangye, and everyone was going everywhere. Thankfully there was a wide shoulder, but even that was a dangerous place to be, with bicycles and electric bikes and motorcyles and little three-wheel trailers and all sorts of things in it and about half of them going the wrong way in it too. And the road itself was busy with cars and trucks and crazy overtaking going on everywhere. And there were side roads all along with all these vehicles turning into them and others emerging suddenly from them and let me tell you one thing for sure, none of them would ever slow down and give way when merging into the main road. Dear Lord no, why they would just shoot on out into the madness and if the road was busy they'd just drive in the shoulder the wrong way until there was space to get out and that was really annoying when I happened to be cycling the right way in that shoulder. And then there was the horn beeping. Just constant horn beeping from all and sundry (apart from me.) The motorcycles beeped as they passed the bicycles and the cars beeped as they passed the motorcycles and the trucks beeped when they passed anything. Anyone racing out from a side road beeped to announce their arrival and anything already in the road beeped to warn them not to hit them. And the trucks and everything else beeped whenever they passed anything in the shoulder, which seemed quite unnecessary seeing as they were in the shoulder. It seemed as if the warning beep was only to tell whatever was in the shoulder not to suddenly dive across the roadway. Then I realised that the pedestrians and bicycles and motorcycles actually were liable to throw themselves suddenly across the roadway at any moment, and the warning beeps actually were quite necessary. I should also mention that before all this, on the previous evening after leaving the Rainbow Mountains late I had also cycled on this road during the evening rush hour, in the dark. But that was an experience I'm trying to put behind me.

Somehow I made it into Zhangye, wondering just how a road with a two metre wide shoulder could possibly qualify as the most dangerous road I'd ever cycled on. If this was the price I was to pay for coming out of the desert and arriving in populated China, then I'd really rather just go back to the desert. But at least it wasn't boring anymore. The first thing I did in Zhangye was stop at a hardware store where I bought some cable ties as I needed some more. I also bought a new orange hi-viz vest for the back of the bike, seeing as how my yellow hi-viz was now grey on account of the fact that it hadn't seen a washing machine for two months.

Then I passed a bicycle shop and I stopped to see if they had any tyres, mine being somewhat the worse for wear. Well the shop only had one tyre left and it wasn't what I needed, but the man spoke English and was very friendly. I asked him if he knew of anywhere that I could use wifi and he told me I could sit in the shop and use theirs. This I did.

"What's your name?" I asked the man as I sat down and flipped open my laptop.

"My English name is Hunter" he said.

"Cool. Didn't you used to be on Gladiators?"

"What?"

"Nothing. What's the wifi password please?"

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Hunter was nice. So was his wife. I couldn't comment on his daughter. She seemed happy though. I had an email from Suzy and Dino in my inbox telling me that they hadn't been able to extend their visa in a couple of smaller towns and they'd had to take a bus to Lanzhou to extend. That settled it in my mind that I would also try to extend my visa in Lanzhou rather than taking any chance anywhere else, which meant I'd have at least four or five days off the bike when I got to that city. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!!!!!!!

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I met a slightly crazy but wonderfully friendly middle-aged Australian woman in the town centre who gave me a useful address for a hostel in Lanzhou. I couldn't talk for long though, I had already wasted so much time. On leaving Zhangye I decided to head back to the G30 as I couldn't handle any more of the crazy roads, but when I got there the toll booth staff shouted at me to stop. I didn't stop though, I was on a bicycle and they were trapped in a booth, but it was clear that they didn't think I should be cycling on the expressway now. Of course it was perfectly safe and so very peaceful and quiet to be back cycling on the motorway where no one beeped their horns or emerged unexpected from side roads, but I was also worried that a police car was going to come by and pick me up. So I cycled as fast as I could for 20 kilometres until the G312 arrived from the left and there was a chance to exit onto it. I could see that it was now a good road with a shoulder and not so very much chaotic traffic as the earlier road, so it was a no-brainer to move onto it now rather than risk being forced into a cop car.

As I took the exit the toll booth staff called me to a halt and I saw no reason not to stop now. They looked at me in disbelief and said things in Chinese that I couldn't understand but I could take a good guess at. I replied in kind. "Yes! Oh thank goodness. That was an expressway! I can't believe I was allowed onto that! It was terrifying! Horrendous! What a mistake I made! Please, I must go back on the very peaceful and safe G312 now. Thank you! Thank goodness that ordeal is over!" And I decorated this speech with very extravagant sign language as well, and then cycled off onto the minor road.

The G312 had a lot more traffic on it now that it was a proper road but there weren't so many motorcycles and things and the shoulder was good, and so long as I cycled straight and didn't turn my head or do anything else that might suggest I was about to throw myself across the road I mostly avoided being beeped at. Still I did see a minor accident when a car pulled out of a gas station and a truck that was driving along the road blared it's horn with a ferocity that certainly implied he wasn't about to stop. But the car didn't stop either and carried on into the path of the truck and then there was much braking on all sides and this was just enough to avert a major disaster and the two vehicles only just scraped one another. With both now stopped the driver of the truck jumped out and angrily smacked the car with his fist with great force, at which point the car drove off. All of this I saw in my rear-view mirror, just behind me.

Then I reached a big town called Shandon and the chaos returned to greater levels. The climax of all this was reached at a roundabout in the town which, although it was clearly supposed to be a roundabout, nobody was actually going around. And because most of the traffic at all three junctions wanted to turn left, and did so by the shortest possible route, the end result was that almost everyone ended up exiting the roundabout on the wrong side of the road. The funniest thing was that there was a traffic policeman standing at the edge of it all, hands on hips, with a 'there's really nothing I can do here' look. As for me, I needed to turn left myself, and had no idea of whether to try and follow the traffic or go the right way around the roundabout, and ended up doing neither and just doing it the Chinese way and cycling across the middle of everything and hoping everyone else would swerve around me. Which they did.

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As I left Shandon the G312 became very quiet. I could see the G30 again to my left and I looked over to it and thought 'Well I won't be going on that again now.' But then the G312 pretty much ended, with just a small dirt track ahead, and the signs were pointing that all traffic should rejoin the G30. I went over to the toll booths, expecting them to shout at me and tell me not to go on the expressway, but wanting to ask them where else I was supposed to cycle. "Can I go this way?" I asked the man at the toll booths. He didn't understand me. "Is this the way to Lanzhou?" I tried, pointing at the expressway. "Yes! Lanzhou!" He replied, and waved me through, as if a cyclist on the expressway was absolutely the most normal thing in the world.