Don't mention the traffic: I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it

October 25, 2014

I have made a decision not to talk about the traffic anymore. Clearly I talk about traffic too much. I'm sorry about that. I won't talk about the traffic anymore from now on.

Unfortunately this means I have absolutely nothing to tell you about the horrific experience that was cycling out of Lanzhou. Oh, except that I took this picture of the Yellow River, and the river does look a bit more yellow.

Beyond the city limits the road I took to the south predictably climbed up a pretty big mountain pass. Approaching the summit the road went through a tunnel, but there was a dirt road that led up and over the top and I decided to take this because I am afraid of the dark, and it proved a good decision. Even though the dirt road climbed steeply this was blissful cycling, not only because it took me away from the horrific... erm... you know... the erm... t-word, but also because I was in the mountains and the mountains were beautiful. Autumn was in full swing here; vivid oranges, yellows, greens, browns and reds vying for space on the cliffsides and here was the proof that the desert was once and for all behind me.

After coming down from the first pass I turned west too soon and went the wrong way into these mountains, which were also nice. I now know I could (and should) have kept going this way, but I backtracked to the main road

By now the road I was on had flattened out and ran through heavily-populated areas. Look, I'm sorry, I can't do this okay! I really would like to write about other things, but the problem is, if I just write about other things, I may inadvertently give the reader the impression that China is in some way a pleasant place to ride a bicycle. The traffic was sh!t okay! There, I said it.

I could have just taken a photo of the nice stuff on the cliff, but you, dear reader, deserve the whole picture

Now clearly this white truck has no business to be attempting an overtake here. Complete lunacy! But in China, all it takes is a well-timed beep...

There were a lot of mosques as I turned west and started heading towards the town of Linxia, and evidently the population through the valley was almost entirely Muslim, judging by the quantity of skullcaps I saw. Linxia itself seemed a more mixed place ethnically with a greater number of Han Chinese, although I didn't explore much of the town and only stopped long enough to check my emails.

This tree looked very, very old. There was an information board, but it was all in Chinese apart from the numbers 800, 470, and 8. You can take your own guesses as to how old it is then.

This man proving that even losing a rear pannier need not end your tour

That kid in front didn't care much for his friend being in the photo

No, not bananas! Corn! Corn was drying out everywhere, usually on any available flat surface but here they had innovative methods

Hoping that I might have had some maps of the road ahead sent to me by some of my little pixie helper people out in cyberspace I stopped outside a rather fancy hotel and tried to steal myself some wifi. As the wifi had a password that wasn't going to happen, and so I went inside and sat in the restaurant to use it instead. It was, as I said, quite a fancy place, and the soybean dish I ordered was certainly above my usual dining standards, but, with food being cheap in China it was a long way from being the most money I'd ever splurged to gain Internet access.

About half the price of a Siberian orange juice

Now I have to say I don't usually eat in restaurants by myself. That is partly because I'm too independent to enjoy being waited on, and partly because I'm not a millionaire, but it is also largely because I just feel really rather uncomfortable sitting in a restaurant all by myself. Fortunately this wasn't an issue on this occasion because, and I'm sure this has happened to everybody, the manager of the establishment took it upon himself to sit opposite me throughout my meal.

Zhou Kang (correct spelling, I took his card) was a nice young manager and he was very happy to meet me, and kept passing me his I-phone with very difficult to understand questions translated on it. Another bonus of his prescence was that he took pity on my pathetic attempt to jab the above dish with chopsticks, and incredibly a fork was somehow found and brought to me by a waitress, who had to unwrap it from its original packet for me. After I finished eating Zhou Kang insisted on a prolonged photoshoot with me and my bike, leaving him very satisfied, although this wasn't enough to score me a free lunch unfortunately.

Now I was moving south again on the G213 and the road became terribly, terribly busy. I could see a new expressway was being built parallel and it looked almost finished and it was badly needed to take away some of this traffic. Thankfully there was a shoulder on the road and it wasn't really the risk of being hit that most annoyed me about such a lot of vehicles, it was just the endless beeping of horns. I think it must be difficult for you, dear reader, to understand exactly what I am complaining about when I talk about these horns, and as a means to try and quantify how big of a problem this is in China I took it upon myself to count how many beeps I heard in ten minutes. Take a guess how many. Go on, take a guess. On a road that was outside of a city, not actually in a very populated area at all now. A road which, were it in Europe, you would almost certainly hear not one beep in ten minutes cycling on.

Well have you taken a guess? Then I'll tell you. 55. In ten minutes I heard 55 beeps. That averages out to one every 11 seconds! Can you imagine what that is like when you're on a bicycle? And people have to live in this country! Ahh! It drove me mad!

We were climbing up into the mountains again and I was wondering where in hell I was going to be able to camp away from all this noise when the road once again dived into a tunnel and I took a diversion around the mountainside on a smaller road staying close to the river. Well this was a lovely little detour and it took me through a little Buddhist village, my first one, and there was an empty abandoned plot of land that looked just the ticket for a secret little camping place where no one would see me. But there was a group of five people outside of a temple opposite and so I waited until they went inside a nearby building that I took to be their house, and then I pushed my bike to the back of this empty plot. I was hoping that nothing else would come along the village road as I was doing so, naturally preferring not to be seen. I made it to the back of the plot of land, where there was a big rock to hide behind, just in time before a motorcycle went along without seeing me. Phew. That was a close one. Then I looked back. The five people were all staring at me.

Well I'd been seen, so no point hiding now. I walked over to them and indicated that I would like to camp in the empty plot. One of them was a very nice man, and suggested instead that I come over and camp next to their house. The ground did look a lot nicer for camping, and, although I could be seen by the road, being next to their house was good security. And of course it would be wonderful to spend the evening with these people. So I brought my bike over and set up the tent, not worrying about being seen from the road. Some of the men even tried to help me get the tent up as they all watched on with great curiosity. Soon it was up and I wondered whether they would invite me inside for dinner, hoped they would actually. It would be great to see how they lived and... oh... they all walked off down the road and left me. This wasn't their house at all.

24/10/14 - 30km

25/10/14 - 97km

26/10/14 - 83km

Today's ride: 210 km (130 miles)
Total: 31,586 km (19,615 miles)

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