Asia on a tandem

We were lucky to have a second crack at China, we loved it this time. I can say I miss it, even. Once again we did very little riding but what we did was incredible.

This time we had a friend coming over to ride a couple of weeks with us, so we planned a small, closed loop from Chengdu so he could fly in and out easily. Sichuan is an incredible place, the people are more chilled, you can see a bit of counter-culture here and there, and the food is so, so, so spicy and delicious. To the West of Chengdu there is a mountain range leading to the Tibetan plateau, and that’s where we headed with our bikes.

Once you pass Kangding you are in Kham Tibet, one of the three main Tibetan territories (two of them are outside the ‘autonomous region’). If we had all the time and the money, perhaps we would consider visiting Tibet proper but it’s difficult to overlook the fact we’d be lining the pockets of the oppressor to visit the oppressed. Visiting the Tibetan area in Sichuan was an amazing experience because we could see different cultures at odds with each other without having to financially support one over the other.

The other reason why we wanted to ride in this area is to see how we’d feel at altitude, some sort of training for Central Asia. It was definitely testing, I couldn’t believe how weak we were in the first days above 3,000m. Any bump on the road required granny gear, I felt like a particularly unfit grandpa. After a few days we were coping ok, good enough to ride the 4,500m Balang Shan pass. This was definitely my most incredible day on a bicycle, ever. The beauty of the pass, the altitude, having my girlfriend and my best friend with me, the sketchy descent in the rain and fog, the group of Chinese cyclists that mobbed us on the road when we rejoined the highway. It was so beautiful it surpassed my previous best-bike-day-ever which was just three days earlier descending from Bamei to Danba, a 50km descent from almost 4,000m to 1,800m on the narrowest of gorges. I wish I had a good picture of that day, but we were just so blissfully happy coasting down that we didn’t really stop until we noticed a nasty gash on our rear tire (a rudimentary fix with zip ties got us safely to Danba where we bought a new one).

Because it was our friend’s first time in China we wanted to spend a bit of time in the big city, so we headed back to Chengdu to hang out and drink beer for a few days. It’s a brilliant place, we were all a bit heartbroken to leave it (and Sichuan too).

My journey out of China was a sequence of trains via Xijiang. Another part of the world where the Chinese are obliterating local culture, I saw some really sad things in Turfan, whole Uighur neighbourhoods being bulldozed, an unpleasant vibe. I’d have liked to go to Kashgar, even if just to see it before it’s transformed beyond recognition. It’s a complicated thing to digest, now I have true affection for the Chinese at the very same time I kind of hate China. I had an amazing time, perhaps the best time, in a country I profoundly disagree with. I find this complexity stimulating, it’s a fascinating country to visit once we learned the ropes of it, and both me and my girlfriend agree that from all countries we visited up to now China is one of the two we’d come back to over and over (the other one is Japan, but that’s just pure love).

Anyway, for anyone interested in the logistics of crossing from China to Kazakhstan without riding your bike through the desert, I’m afraid I can’t help. My girlfriend had a work commitment in Europe so she flew via Almaty and dropped the bike at a hostel, where I picked it up a few days later having come from Urumqi on the overnight train. I don’t think that train would have taken a bicycle but you might try your luck if it’s boxed, I guess.

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