China Part 6: Xi'an to Pingyao

The cheap hotel we found in Xi'an was on the 9th floor of a building near the ancient city walls. As soon as I got there I phoned DHL on the hotel phone and was told that they would deliver my parcel, with the replacement Rohloff hub casing that day - excellent!. I really hoped they did because if not, the two weekends either side of the week long national holiday next week would mean I wouldn't be able to get the replacement part for 10 days, by which time, we'd nearly be finished in Asia.

After cleaning up, we walked to the train station, via a couple of food shops, and got a bus to the Terracotta Army. It was incredible, the amount of work that must have gone into making every one of the life-size warriors. The Terracotta Army is 2,200 years old and was buried with the first emperor of China to protect him in the afterlife. Wikipedia says 'Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits.' It was an amazing thing to see.

We left the Army and headed back to Xi'an to hopefully return to the DHL parcel and an evening of bike maintenance. It wasn't there. I eventually tracked it down to the DHL warehouse on the outskirts of Xi'an and was told it was too late to deliver it and the reason it couldn't be delivered earlier was that I hadn't paid the £17 import tax on it! A double-blow, that was a lot of money for me compared to my £5 per day allowance in China. Anyway, after eventually finding an operator who could speak good English, I was told I could go and pick up the parcel tonight. The hotel phoned a Taxi and Phil and I whizzed off to DHL, the Taxi driver didn't disappoint us with his driving speed and made sure we arrived before the warehouse shut! I picked the parcel, paid the "import tax", and headed back to the hotel thoroughly relieved. That was the start of getting the bike fixed, next I had to rebuild a hub then a wheel, two things I've never done before! I couldn't afford to pay a bike shop to do it, and anyway I doubt they'd have seen a Rohloff hub here before.

The next morning I got up early and followed the manual to take the hub apart, fit new seals, put the new casing on, change the oil bath and reassemble it. It looked good and seemed to work OK! Next I used my bike as a wheel jig and attached a cut off cable tie onto the frame, positioned next to the rim of the wheel. This would show me how close to straight the wheel was. I followed instructions on which order to put each spoke into the wheel and eventually got them all in the right positions. I did the spokes up to a tension which pinged at the same note as the ones on the front wheel and put it on the bike. It worked!

Very pleased with myself, I chilled out for the rest of the day. Phil and I found a roadside BBQ that night and we celebrated reaching Xi'an, it seemed like the beginning of the last leg of China.

The next morning, after a bit more bike maintenance and ordering a few replacement bits for Laura to bring to me when we meet up in San Francisco in a couple of weeks, we set off. We went to a bike shop on the way out and they let us use their tools and hydraulic fluid to re-bleed Phil's rear brake which wasn't working. Really kind people, they wouldn't take any money for it and gave Phil a free bell!

It started pissing it down in the afternoon. We got out of the city and found a sheltered place under a railway bridge to stay for the night. The next morning I woke up to find that Phil was really ill with a tummy bug and had thrown up a few time in the night. We stayed there and rested for the morning, hoping that Phil would feel well enough to move on in the afternoon. A local guy walked past around 11 and looked concerned when he saw Phil. He returned an hour later with 2 policemen - brilliant! The asked us for our passports, I stalled them while Phil had to go behind a bush for a number 2! They were so annoying and asked for all our details and wouldn't leave us alone, so we followed them off the field and cycled off, very slowly because Phil had no energy at all. We stopped at the first hotel we saw and got a room. Phil relaxed, I went and updated my blog in an internet cafe.

We were both feeling the pressure a bit. We had to get to Beijing by the 16th if we wanted to see both the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and still had about 600 miles to do in the next 9 days - very possible unless you're ill. Phil was a bit better the next day and we cycled through pretty average scenery, a few nice hills and small gorges. To Phil's massive credit, he managed 63 miles despite being very ill. I could tell he was knackered. Luckily that night we were given a back room in a Shell garage to sleep in and the use of the kitchen which was brilliant timing. Phil told me later that he was close to stopping and hitching a ride to catch up with me. It wasn't an option to stop for any more rest days or we wouldn't make the coast in time.

Over the next couple of days, Phil got his strength back and we cycled through some boring scenery and huge industry. Massive coal power stations spurted out pollution and coal dust, which we got covered in! We reached the Yellow River again, which we couldn't see across because of the huge amount of pollution. It was considerably bigger than when we'd left it a few hundred miles ago. We tried staying in a SINOPEC petrol station, after our success Shell. To our delight they gave us a large cupboard to use. Unfortunately the manager for the night shift came along after about an hour and wasn't so welcoming, telling us we had to leave. After arguing for a while (we'd been given permission by the other manager and had unpacked everything, brushed teeth and about to go to bed) we realised there was no way we could stay there. The manager called up his son, who could speak English OK and told us he would put us up in a hotel in the next town. A nice gesture but unfortunately it meant packing everything up and cycling another 10 km in the dark. We did it in the end and the hotel was OK, it was good in hindsight to have got that extra bit of distance done.

The next day was uneventful in the morning. At lunchtime, we got a free lunch, really nice boiled chicken stew. This was in exchange for photos of us with the restaurant staff! They were planning to put them on the wall. I'd love to go back there one day to see if they did!! After more flat road with not much to look at, we found a place to sleep, in a wood with loads of huge black and yellow spiders in webs strung between trees.

After escaping the wood without spider bites, we lifted the bikes onto another motorway and nailed a few miles. We spent the whole day on the motorway, anxious to catch up miles and stopped to eat in service stations, that were gradually improving as we approached the rich cities of the East. England got knocked out of the Rugby World Cup by France, bugger!

Finally the next morning, it wasn't raining! More motorway riding brought us to the ancient walled city of Pingyao. It was fantastic, although very touristy. The walls were in good condition and it was a lived in city centre, with traditional houses next to the tourist sites. We had a looked round and chilled out, ready for the final stretch to the coast. We'd now settled on Huanghau Port on the East Coast as the best place to finish. We'd get a bus from there to Beijing.

China part 5: Linxia to Xi'an

We got up early and had a breakfast in the hotel room of fake croissants and biscuits. Got to the bus station, got a lift to another bus station then got the bus to Xiahe, where Labrang Monastery is. It's the second most important Tibetan Buddhist monastery after the one in Lhasa. We had lunch in a cafe, Tiibetan soup and watched the Tibetan monks in their maroon robes on their shopping trips out of the monastery from the balcony we were eating on. We headed up to the monastery and saw western faces for the first time since Dunhuang. The monastery was amazing, beautiful buildings in mountain scenery, Buddhist artwork and sculptures and bizarrely yak butter carvings. This is a traditional gift from local Buddhist families to the monastery. They are kept in a specially designed room to keep them cool and to stop them melting. There was an odd smell but the carvings were amazing!

Our tour guide, Tin Jin,  was a nutter - no other word to describe him. He'd been a monk since the age of 13 and had been at Labrang for the last 5 years, studying a Philosophy degree there. The degree takes 25 years! It involves debating and discussing ideas with the teachers. A degree in traditional Chinese medicine at the Monastery takes 15 years, they have to collect the ingredients and manufacture the medicine as well as knowing how to prescribe it. We saw tombs, a large prayer hall that could hold 1,000 monks at a time. Unfortunately didn't have that much time as the last bus was a 5 o' clock, we got on it and got back to Linxia in time for a great dinner. We went to a cafe where they have heated plates in the middle of the table. You put a wok on it, buy a soupy broth and cook seafood, meat and vegetables in it. It was good fun and tasty.

We had a long lie in the next day, left the room covered in mud, not much we could do about it unfortunately and checked out. We had to argue our way out of being charged for a chip on a mug in the room we're pretty sure we didn't chip then were allowed to use their boiler room to wash our bikes. I discovered my headset was falling apart and took it apart, greased it and had to replace the ball bearings individually. Phil had to fix his gears that were full of dirt and not working properly. We cleaned the bikes using a hosepipe and toothbrushes from the hotel room. After fixing all the problems, the points score of the bike problems were 5 - 2.5, not looking good for me!

We left Linxia via wonton soup and noodles then bought loads of snacks to take with us. We found an amazing bike shop, a large workshop with bits of bike lying around everywhere. I bought some bolts to fix my panniers and some ball bearings to top up the headset bearing which was missing a few. We got onto the motorway into the evening and found a campsite just off the side in a wood. Two Muslim boys came over and "helped" Phil put up his tent. We made a fire and cooked tea on it - Ace day.

It was pissing it down when we woke up so we lay in a while then had breakfast in a tunnel under the motorway. We left the the tunnel, cycled along the motorway for 10 miles and left at a town and got noodles soup for 60 pence! We went to a workshop and got the pipe from my stove blasted with a compressor, which unblocked it. We realised the problem, we'd been given diesel rather than unleaded petrol at the last petrol station we filled up at. It was blocking the pipe. We bought some unleaded and that evening got the stove burning again. We camped in another wood by the motorway, had a fire and cooked marshmallows on it and used the stove to make some tea.

In the morning, we lifted the bikes up a very muddy bank back onto the motorway and got going early. Uneventful morning on the motorway until it ran out and turned into a main road. Went past loads of building work on the outskirts of Huichan. We had absolutely appalling food - just awful - from a street stall: fried gelatine, and gross noodles, we thought it was potatoes! We then went to a bakery and the baker tried to overcharge us by about 300% so we left the town quickly. We went down a nice road that evening, past a few villages, and saw a group of old men, still wearing the communist-style blue suits from the time of Mao. They were playing some card game with some complicated looking symbols on them and gambling. We bought a load of delicious muffins that night from a bakery that didn't overcharge us and had a beer at a nice campsite on a hillside. Luxury!

We woke up on the hill and had a decent breakfast, finished the muffins and obviously had jasmine tea, as we do everyday. A man with a herd of goat and sheep was snooping around the tents in the morning. I thought it was Phil so I said hello and he scarpered. We descended for a while in the morning and followed a reasonable road for a few miles but got deafened again by the bus and truck horns. We tried to get on the motorway at lunchtime but the toll gate guard wouldn't let us through so we cycled along a country road for a while then lifted the bikes onto the motorway at a bridge. We spent the rest of the day getting some miles done on the motorway, going through tunnels (we got shouted out in one by a lady on the PA system). The police stopped us and told us to leave at the next junction, we said of course we will, we didn't. I passed 10,000 miles and took some photos of the occasion, not a beautiful place but great to get onto 5 figures on the speedo! We stopped at a service station and were allowed to put our tents up around the back.

We left the service station and used the fantastic new bathroom there! We continued along the motorway all morning including a 8km long tunnel. Not beautiful but great to miss out on the massive mountain in went through! In the middle it was pitch black and I was glad of my brilliant Hope bike light. We left the motorway at Tianshul and got a big lunch, cycled through and left the city on a small road along a railway. The road switchbacked up and down hills, it was amazing cycling but slow. We stopped at  a garage to shelter from the ever present rain. We got coffee there and carried along the Yellow River valley. We camped under a railway bridge and it was dry but it was a bit noisy when the train went over. I fixed my tent zip using the zipper off my wallet and we had pot noodles for dinner.

More rain the next day. The railway bridge had done a good job of keeping us mostly dry. Unfortunately trains woke us up about once an hour all night because they honked their horn before crossing the bridge. We had jam and bread for breakfast then cycled along the Yellow River valley. It was good and flat/downhill and we made good progress. We stopped for a coffee with a man who had 2 seats under a parasol. We passed a small town, ate wontons, fried bread with veg in, dead good and cheap. Phil got 3 punctures from some glass, fixed two on the front wheel and one on the rear later on. That evening we reached Boaji, a large city and camped in an industrial wasteland next to the motorway. It finally stopped raining!

We woke up, lifted the bikes onto the motorway and got going, Phil fixed his rear puncture, score now 5 - 4 looking better for me, I stand a chance now! I had to contact DHL, the parcel has reached Xi'an but there is a problem with the delivery address. Not much happened that day, or the next, we followed the motorway into Xi'an and camped in a maize field. We saw a huge spider/tarantula at the campsite. The ride into Xi'an was easy enough, we reached the old city and went through the city walls. We found a cheap hotel for 4 quid a night on the 8th floor near the West gate. We planned to visit the Terracotta Army that afternoon.