October 31, 2014
How to survive a night on the cold Tibetan Plateau with a cheap summer sleeping bag: Be a ruthless negotiator
I set out early from the cheap hotel, this time with both vim and vigour, not to mention a healthy determination to get somewhere close to cycling one hundred kilometres for once. The air was cool and there were patches of snow on the grassland, but it was not too cold and I climbed very steadily all day on a gentle incline. The road was generally quite peaceful now, the surroundings beautiful and the cycling very enjoyable, but this day was all about the night, and my thoughts constantly returned to how I was going to survive out in the cold close to 4000 metres above sea level.
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I had one interesting meeting during the day when I spotted three camper vans parked up with European license plates. There is a requirement when you bring a private vehicle into China that you must have a guide accompanying you, and as a consequence of this these were the first non-Chinese vehicles I'd seen in the whole country. Naturally I stopped to have a look, and found three couples, from the Netherlands, France and Spain. There were a few kids running around too, and a rather out-of-place-looking Chinese tour guide. They offered me a coffee and we exchanged stories. It turned out that they only needed one guide even though there were three of them, so they had all teamed up for the Chinese leg of their various Eurasian adventures. They were all very nice of course, and it was interesting for me to speak with Europeans again, having been living in my own world for a while. They were enjoying China, but finding the tour guide a bit restrictive, having to stay in expensive hotels and follow a set itinerary and register with the police frequently. The bicycle is definitely the ticket to freedom in China (and everywhere else.)
I was talking with the Dutch couple about Mongolia when they told me that they had met an English couple traveling through there on bikes. My thoughts turned to The Sloths, the lovely couple that I had cycled with in Tajikistan, who I knew would have been in Mongolia at the same time.
"Was it Gayle and John?" I asked.
"Oh... I don't remember their names," the Dutchman replied.
"The guy is quite tall, not much hair, kind of funny looking, has a habit of threatening young children in a strong mancunian accent."
"Oh, I don't know, maybe, I'm not sure."
"Was there a tall Hungarian man following them?"
"YES!!!"
He then relayed a funny story about how he and his wife had been staying in a temple and at eleven at night there had been a knock at the door. It was Gabor, the aforementioned tall Hungarian, asking if they had seen an English couple on bikes. It seemed Gabor's obsessive pursuit of the poor Sloths had no end, stretching now from Iran across Central Asia, Siberia and on across the Mongolian desert. I imagine the official adoption papers will follow soon.
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I continued, edging slowly towards the highest point. But then in mid-afternoon, the skies again darkened and a few snowflakes fell silently upon me. This, of course, was trouble. As with the day before I could not afford to get any of my clothes wet because I was going to need to wear them at night if I was going to survive camping out, so I hid under a bridge for a while. The snow didn't get any heavier though, and I soon pressed on, at which point of course the snow got heavier. Then I came across a number of tents at the roadside, and there were many people outside. Some of them, who looked like Chinese tourists, had just finished riding horses and were leaving, and others, who looked like the nomadic tent-owners, were counting money and staying. From this I concluded that the nomads were running a business of some kind, probably involving horse riding and possibly also involving renting out tents. A boy waved me over.
I was led to a tent by the whole family and shown inside. There was a stove inside, but otherwise the tent was rather empty, except for a hard wooden bench with a couple of blankets on that it was suggested I could sleep on. I asked how much it would cost and was shown a 100 yuan note. 100 yuan! I thought about the hotel the previous night, at 30 yuan for a warm bed and hot shower and wifi. Compared to that, how could I justify paying 100 yuan for what was essentially just a larger version of what I was going to sleep in anyway. But it was still snowing, so I kept my cards close to my chest, and hung around for a while.
We all went to a small building, a little chipboard shack with a corrugated roof, and sat around a hot stove, where they tried to drown me with a never-ending cup of tea. The immediate family was a mother and father and teenage boy. There was a young woman too, with a bundle on her back that I was pretty sure contained a baby but was 90% blanket, and a younger boy, although these three soon left. The others sat and chewed sunflower seeds and spat the shells into the fire. The males played with I-phones and counted big piles of money. Whatever businesses they had up here in the hills certainly didn't seem to pay too bad. They were friendly though, and it was nice to sit there and watch the steam rise from the stove.
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It took a long time for the snow to stop. But it wasn't settling anywhere, so there was no problem for me to continue when it did. There was only a half hour of daylight left but I couldn't justify paying 100 yuan and so I went to get my bike and at least act as if I was going to leave. I didn't really want to leave, but I was hoping this strategy would put me in a good position to negotiate them down to a more reasonable price. Once they saw me pushing my bike back towards the road they came running over to me and beckoning for me to stay. 'Good,' I thought, 'Let the negotiations begin!' If I could get them down to 30 or 40 yuan I'd probably stay. I imagined it would not be easy to bargain them down that far though. Well, whatever happened, I wasn't going to accept their first offer, I was going to be a ruthless negotiator here.
"No money, no money," they all said, "Just stay, it's very cold. No money, no money."
"Okay" I said.
Ruthless. Negotiator.
They showed me to a different tent where I could sleep for free. There was no stove, but it was actually much better because there were about fifty blankets. As I tucked myself up nice and cosy in amongst them I thought about how lucky I was to have met such nice people. They had even gone on to insist on feeding me dinner for free too. I felt bad about not paying them anything, so I taught the boy and his mother my best card trick (which coincidentally happens to be my only card trick.) It is a very, very impressive card trick, easily worth 100 yuan. I also thought about how lucky I'd been when I woke up the next morning and looked at the world. It was looking much more white than usual:
Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 31,975 km (19,856 miles)
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