 |
| Lindsay in Lu Ding, Sichuan |
The following is an account of my sister's and my travels around Western Sichuan before I left China August 7th. My whole family came to China in early July and traveled for 2 weeks, then my sister and I returned to Sichuan for the following adventure. It's long, it's detailed, and (I hope) it is a little exciting. If you have time, get a cup of coffee or tea, lean back, and read on.
July 26th, 2012
The beginning of
a crazy idea. Buy a motorcycle in China
and drive around the western part of Sichuan (AKA The Tibetan Plateau) for 2
weeks. The idea was kept as a tight
secret for anyone outside of China. Here’s
why:
When I was a
freshman in college, a co-worker arranged a group skydive lesson. I signed up immediately and ran it past the
parents before hand. They reluctantly
approved, but the day before, mom approached me in a nervous breakdown, asking
me not to go. The stress and worrying
had gotten to be too much. And so I didn’t
go. A day later, she told me, “Matt, if
you ever want to do anything like that in the future, don’t tell me until after
you have done it. It will be easier on
both of us.” I think this motorcycle
trip counts as such.
So, what do you
need for such an adventure? I have spent
the last few months and especially all of yesterday preparing.
1)
A motorcycle. This one is a GT 150 XY Chinese brand dirt
bike, 150cc motor, high clearance, with an extra heavy duty rear shock
purchased on China’s eBay. Bought second
hand from a foreigner from The Netherlands in Chengdu for 2,900 RMB (~500USD)
and has had many check-ups, oil changes, and almost all moving parts replaced.
2)
Tools. Here’s what is in a duffel bag strapped to
the back of the motorcycle: 1 quart new engine oil, 10W/50 synthetic, 1 tea
bottle of used engine oil for chain lubricating, a very long a wide flat-head
screwdriver (for tire changing and big engine screws), two long metal tire
levers for tube changing (exact same process as pedal bikes, but bigger), two
replacement tubes, one small Phillips screwdriver, one small flathead
screwdriver, crescent wrench, spark plug tool, 15/13mm open ended wrench,
12/14mm open ended wrench, pliers, 8/10/12mm socket tri-headed tool, two grease
rags, extra spark plug, and extra transmission sprocket. All together cost about 300 RMB (50USD) with
lessons on how to do everything. I feel
like I could rebuild the bike with what we have.
3)
Clothes. 2 full changes of clothes plus an extra pair
of socks, rain gear, extra shorts for laundry day, plastic knee pads,
motorcycle riding jackets with body armor pads, helmets, gloves, cameras, a
dry-bag, and a backpack. Not bad, eh?
4)
Navigation gear. 1 road atlas of Sichuan in Chinese, 1 smart
phone with enabled Chinese GPS, and one US Garmin GPS with Sichuan road map
installed.
We left Pengshan
at 10:30 in the humid heat of the Sichuan Basin. When driving at speed, we were cool in our
ridiculous amount of clothes (everyone who was wearing T-shirts and shorts
stared as we went by), but anytime we stopped, we had to strip
immediately. We quickly developed a
smell that lingered.
Our first day was
smooth as we crossed the Sichuan Basin and headed into the mountains. This was Lindsay’s third day riding a motorcycle
and she does great. What do you think
about when you drive a long distance on a bike?
If in China, you honestly only think about the road. It’s like what Dana Burgess once told me: you
have a meditative focus on only that one thing ahead—the next turn, the next
hole in the trail, the next tree in the way.
For motorcycle riding, China style, I’d only add the cars to that
list. You have to be constantly
predicting what they will do next, looking for ways out of a potentially bad
situation (like oncoming cars passing when you’re coming on a narrow 2 lane
road). So that leaves passenger time as
sight seeing, thinking time. For our
first, day, I was still mostly absorbed in the road, shouting encouragement and
advice (needed very little) to the sis.
As the road began winding up the first hill in Hong Ya （洪雅） and into the bamboo forests,
we caught glimpses of the river at the base of the red cliff we were driving
on. At Ya An (雅安) we could see the outline of the
Himalayan plateau high up in the smog.
It truly towers over you, making you crane your neck up to see it in the
mist. It’s a little overwhelming to
think that we’ll be driving up there. The
road between the two was surprisingly empty, and we discovered why halfway through
when we came to a bridge across a river that was in the process of complete
demolition and reconstruction. There was
a little pedestrian/temporary bridge up along side it that people were pushing
their scooters across, but it had cross beams across it that hit our bike right
at the handlebars. As best as I could
understand, the guys at the bridge sitting in lawn chairs said we can go across
or back and around on the “big road,” which I remember no such thing on our
map. So I pushed our trusty steed
across, laying it down on its side until it took up the entire bridge (the
width of a person’s shoulders, give or take) and jimmied the mirrors under
it. We made it with everyone
staring.
Such a bottleneck had its
benefits, and we had a smooth and peaceful ride through the bamboo forests, the
road to ourselves for a long time.
 |
| Lindsay eating 饺子 (jiao zi): my favorite Chinese food |
 |
| Route planning with a map in Chinese and a GPS phone program also in Chinese |
Past Ya An we rediscovered the traffic, with
all of the big trucks and buses going to Tibet and Western Sichuan crammed onto
this rotting, two lane road. It is pure
madness. At one point Lindsay turned to
me and said, “It is as if multiple earthquakes came through and ruined the
road. I’m thankful to be on a dirt bike.” We made full use of its suspension. We are going into the Plateau via the Ya Qiao
River (雅雀河), driving
along its course to its headwaters, then breaking through to the other side of
the mountains. The view is stunning as
the cliff walls rise into the sky and (as Lindsay pointed out) the sedimentary
layers are easily visible with their uplifting.
It’s fun to have a geologist along.
We stopped in Tian Quan (天全) for the night. We were shockingly sore and tired after a day
of sitting. Lindsay said it was from all
of the steering. We walked around the
town watching downtown dancing, looked at bugs on a stick that looked to be
real—we couldn’t tell if they were real bugs glued to the stick or really,
really good fakes—ate dinner, and drank beer.
An excellent first day.
 |
| The tall corn of Tian Quan |
July 27th 2012
I woke up in the
early morning to loud noise outside. One
of those loud noises that you think isn’t quite right and gets you out of
bed. Even with my contacts out and
everything a haze, I knew that it was raining hard. I went back to sleep.
We waited out
the rain, eating baozi and staying in bed.
To the west, the weather looked clearer, so we saddled up and left
town. The rain let up and we had a great
drive up into the mountains, but it was slow going as the road was worse than
the day before.
 |
| It's great when you get to drive |
A truck was stuck in a
corner, all the right wheels stuck in the ditch. A car had been hit on its side, the front end
stuck in another ditch and people rocking it.
The drive up the canyon was magical, rusting cable suspension bridges
crossing over the void. Pagodas high up
on the ridge, no roads through the jungle leading to them. The midst grew thicker and as we neared the
top, it began to rain again.
There’s a
gateway to the Himalayas; on one side is the Sichuan Basin, on the other is the
Plateau and the largest mountains in the world.
This gateway is over 2 kilometers long, dark, turns, and is dotted with
red and green lights. The Tunnel. You drive through a mountain and on the other
side, you come out onto a jaw dropping view of terraces, peaks, and
villages. OR so I had promised
Lindsay. What we saw was fog, rain, and
more fog. It was so thick the car in
front of us disappeared and reappeared from view. The fog broke and we caught sight of the
Danba River far below, mountains standing high over it, and terraces along the
mountainside. Everything was green,
magical.
 |
| The bridge in Lu Ding |
We stopped for
gas in Lu Ding and I noticed that a long bolt holding the engine onto the frame
was coming out. The washer was rattling
against the frame, accounting for the new noise we had been ignoring (our bike
is very loud). We coasted through town,
asking around and the answer always being the same: “keep going straight.” We ended up at a repair shop run by two
19-year-olds (cause for concern, but little choice), where there was lots of Chinese
exchanged and someone drove away on a bike. I talked with people coming and
going, one guy staying and telling us everywhere we should go. They all had one thing in common: they all
said our bike was not a good bike. And
it isn’t, I know; it is a “third tier” Chinese company, but come on! It’s still a bike!! The young’un returned with a new bolt and
tightened it. When I had arrived, I had
said I had a small problem. When they
saw it, they said, no no no, this was a big problem. This replaced bolt was the main motor mount
bolt—not a good one to break. After an
inspection, we were also missing the small motor mount bolt on the bottom of
the engine, which probably caused the big one to break. Motorcycle problem: fixed with some new
Chinese vocab learned.
We were out of town
by 6:30 and made a mad dash for Kangding, against the advice of the people at
the motorcycle shop. The road was smooth
and fast, racing the sunset to Kangding.
We arrived in the dusk and rain, following a small hand-drawn map to the
hostel on my smart phone. A drive down a
tiny road, down a steep hill, and we found paradise—a small hostel called
ZhiLam on the hillside overlooking Kangding.
We had a great chat with the owner Chris, born in Sri Lanka, raised in
America and travelled through Alaska and an avid motor biker. We ate Yak Burgers, dried out, and fell
asleep in a small dorm room on dorm beds colorfully colored in Tibetan style
artwork. 幸福
July 28th, 2012
 |
| The morning ritual of maintenance |
Our mad dash was
worth it. We awoke to an unfamiliar orb
in the sky, suspended on a backdrop of blue.
The sun- what an unfamiliar sight!
The clouds were clearing and as we ate eggs and toast for breakfast,
Chris told us that today could clear all the way and we might be able to see
Gong Ga Shan. Inspired, we asked him for
day trip ideas and he directed us up a mining road outside of town, where “at
the end of the road, you can find a trail going up to a mine shaft that goes
through the mountain and from the other side you can climb to the peak.” We were sold and were driving up the innumerable
switchbacks shortly after.
 |
| Lindsay upping her babe status |
 |
| Kangding in the background |
Driving a dirt
bike is like riding a mountain bike, without pedaling. Or maybe my mountain bike is like a dirt bike
you pedal….. Either way, I had a great
time driving up the dirt bike single-track.
We switched and Lindsay drove, me staring at the mountains in the
distance, Kangding in the basin, and the deep blue above. That’s when it happened. On a spot of soft rock, the tires dug in and
Lindsay lost control. On a mountain bike
it’s easy—you just stop pedaling. But a
motorbike doesn’t stop. It keeps going.
And Lindsay’s
bike kept going into the side of the mountain.
We fell over as it slowly fell, and we jumped right back up. Her leg had a patch of what looked like road
rash from an abrasion, but we didn’t think anything of it. Tied a bandana around it (no blood) and kept
going, only our confidence and speed diminished.
We found the end
of the road high up, and hiked up the drainage, poking at rocks as we
went. Traveling with a geologist is
great, especially when in the Himalayas.
We came across multiple abandoned mine shafts, probing to the end with
our headlamp and remarking how they had mined the “nose” of the stressed
layer.
 |
| Looking in..... |
Chunks of rock covered in azurite
and borite (I think) and speckled with other minerals were everywhere. I drove Lindsay mad with outbursts of “you
HAVE to see this one!” and “Quick, quick, look at THIS one!”
 |
| Lindsay had a great time talking about what everything was. I had a great time learning |
 |
| Spelunking |
We eventually found the highest tunnel that
was an active tunnel for the tractors moving ore to the highline on our side
from the active mine on the other side.
Not bad, I thought, not bad at all.
We didn’t summit with sunset nearing and rain clouds looming, but we did
see snowy peaks in the distance. Not the
tallest one, but tall ones.
 |
| Lindsay running down, overtaken by the scenic wonder |
Going down on a dirt bike is even better
than going up.
This place is absolutely stunning.
 |
| The high elevation villages typical of life in the high mountains in Tibet |
 |
| That night Lindsay wanted to try China's infamous liquor, Baijiu. I reluctantly joined her. |
 |
| This was the result of one sip. Baijiu is awful, a mix of rubbing alcohol and gasoline. Immediate tears and headache. Why, China, why?? |
July 29, 2012
Our day started
in Kangding, where the sun was blasting through the windows. Blasting is an adequate verb in this
instance, because at this altitude without any clouds to hinder it and after
three days of rain, it does feel like blasting.
What a beautiful day. The only
clouds were at the horizon. I sat down
with a big pot of coffee and took advantage of the wireless and applied for
more jobs. Still no success. We left Kangding at 11:30, getting gas on the
way out of town. The 60 km from
yesterday used 2.5 liters of gas. Still
not bad!
Driving out of
Kangding is going up. And going up. And going up.
You fall into a trance-like state going through so many hair-pin turns. But these are some of the most fun moments in
motorcycle riding—leaning into a turn and gassing uphill. The ride was smooth and continually up for 2
hours. We passed an incredible amount of
bikers going to Tibet, some pushing, some listening to music, some pushing
their girlfriend’s bike, some resting in the shade. Before this trip I had no idea how popular
this bike journey was with Chinese. Now
I am getting an idea and I’m impressed.
 |
| Us at the pass |
Our climb ended
at a saddle with Tibetan monuments covered in prayer flags. You can’t help but marvel at their celebration
of color and how it makes you smile. On
the other side of the saddle, the expanse of grassland began, a sign of “The
love song of Kangding” was written in white rocks on the hillside in the
distance. It was a marvelous scene.
Then the switchbacks began going
downhill. I discovered the peace of
coasting with the clutch in, the silence of the surroundings filling in the
void where the engine noise had been. It
reminded me of descents when bike touring, how those were the days that are
still the freshest in memory. Downhills
were never bad days.
We stopped and
bought a braided edible thing from a boy selling them on the side of the
road. After asking over and over, I
decided that you didn’t have to cook it and discovered that it was yak cheese,
slightly sour, but like mozzarella.
After a short break after the first try, I found it delicious. We made our way down the valley further in the
sun and bliss.
We ate lunch in
Qin Du Qiao, where we pointed to eggplants, mushrooms, and tofu. What we got was new to me and delicious. We decided this way of ordering is really
fun. A family/large group of Tibetan
people were eating next to us and both of our groups took turns stealing
glances. Lindsay and I found them to all
be beautiful.
 |
| Our chef for lunch. On the wall you can see the typical Chinese kitchen knife--a cleaver. With that they can make anything |
 |
| Xin Du Qiao had a wild west feel, including the cows walking down main street and the cars getting out of its way. |
Our drive out of town was
on the beginnings of the road from hell (or so the Tibetan highway after Qin Du
Qiao is known as), which was a dust field riddled with potholes and rough
stretches. We were thankful to be on a
motorcycle, driving around traffic jams and stuck trucks. We turned right on the road to Ta Gong and
left behind the traffic and entered empty, smooth pavement through the
grassland. That part of the afternoon
was also bliss.
Something
interesting happens when you become a motorcycle rider—you talk mostly about
the road and what it is like. I noticed
this too when on the bike tour, but now it’s to an even greater extent as a motorcycle
rider. When people ask about a place,
the first thing you mention is the road.
What part was smooth, what part was dirt, what part was slow or
fast. If someone were to ask me about Ta
Gong, my first words would be, “The road is incredible. No traffic and amazing pavement.”
And here we are
in Ta Gong, high in the Himalayan Plateau in a Tibetan town. Everyone is quick to smile, horses and yaks
are walking through town, and most people are dressed in monk’s clothes. We are staying in a guesthouse that Chris
recommended and the dogs are barking under the sky filled with stars. We met a German named Kristin who wooed us from
the start when she arrived on a motorcycle.
We spent the night drinking wine, eating yak momo’s and potato gratin
with yak cheese, and finally watching Olympics.
Life is sure grand. When the sun set, Buddhist horns echoed throughout
town, signaling the end of the day. Deciding to stay another day was an easy
decision.
 |
| Lindsay walking along Ta Gong's prayer wheels |
July 30, 2012
I awoke to the
horse in our courtyard whinnying at daybreak.
I fell asleep, to wake up to the sounds of children yelling. I fell asleep and woke up to the sound of
breakfast being made in the kitchen. I fell asleep again. Such disturbances are momentarily annoyances,
but really are the joys of waking up in a village. The day was bright blue and felt warm when we
got up this morning, despite our cold toes throughout the night. It feels good to be cold again.
Our morning was
a lazy one in Ta Gong. Drank coffee,
wrote in our journals, and ate yogurt and omelets.
 |
| Our breakfast companion, the cafe owner's daughter. It was her day of the week to eat sweets, and we quickly understood why. Hyper, but SO cute. |
Lindsay and I went to the Buddhist monastery
before noon and walked through the temples, the candle resin coating the inner
walls and paintings. There is a sense of
oldness in such a place, a sense of candles burning every day for as long as
the collective memory goes back. Today
the room was full of candles, the smoke burning your eyes as you walked around
the Buddhist statues. The feeling of
reverence for something you don’t understand is an odd one. The solemnity of the people there was
contagious. It is a feeling I will take
awhile to process. For now, I know I am
still too young to understand. I do know
that this is really Tibet.
The afternoon
was spent watching the Buddhist monks dancing in front of the monastery. Horns blowing, cymbals clanging, and the drum
beating irregularly—it was the epitome of something you don’t understand. The dancers jumped on one foot, swirled, spun
with their colored flags, and did such things to arrhythmic music. It was trancelike just to watch. The heat was brutal for them and it was clear
that they were tired. Well done monks.
 |
| Everyone was dressed up for the event |
“We” now
includes Lindsay, myself, and Kristen. She
is the German girl on the motorcycle who arrived the same day we did. We’ve spent all of our time together since
meeting and decided today we will travel together. We had lunch together at a Tibetan restaurant,
drinking Yak butter tea and eating yak meat things. We then drove on the dirt roads behind Ta
Gong, going high into the grasslands and exploring old stone dwellings. It reminded me of the Scottish Highlands,
rolling hills extending as far as you could see. Tibet has really impressed me and is not what
I expect. At the saddle, we hiked to a
hilltop and saw that the green hills went on past the horizon. Small wonder that all of the nomadic tribes
still living their traditional existence here—it seems endless and timeless. Our journey ended with a drive through a
Chinese army camp, where the sight of 2 foreigners riding a motorcycle through
camp caused quite the ruckus and garnered many waves. Thankfully, we were not arrested.
In town Kristen had her clutch cable replaced for 10 RMB—again the cheap price of parts and labor astonishes me. And the evening was spent watching Olympics, drinking beer, and talking to people in English, Chinese, and Hebrew. It’s a fun life we live.
The next day we stopped at a monastery in the hills where there was a pavilion over an expanse of prayer tables and flowers everywhere. Walking around, we met the head monk and another monk studying under him. They invited us to sit and eat with them and in between the best yak yogurt, and best yogurt period, I've ever eaten, we had a wonderful chat. The head monk didn't speak Mandarin, but the younger monk did, and so with me talking to the girls in English, him and I in Mandarin, and him and the head monk talking in Tibetan, we had a great talk. My first time translating in a conversation of 3 languages, and something I will never forget.
 |
| Our intermediary friend who spoke Mandarin |
 |
| The head monk |
August 1, 2012
Notes from the Tibetan Highlands
We are truly at
the toe of Tibet now, halfway descended down the mountains, yet still the
people in the street are wearing the vibrant, happy colors on black cloth that
typify this area. The hillsides are
dotted with ancient villages high up on the mountain sides, old towers dotting
the outskirts and middles, their color a dusty brown that shows signs of
decay. Sometimes these villages are so
high up you have to crane your neck to see them. Sometimes they are so high that you think no
one could possibly live there anymore.
At first we speculated that they live there for defense, but gradually
we realized that they are there out of necessity. The canyons are too steep to have valley
floors. Instead, up high on the benches
is where the crops can be grown, where land is flat enough to utilize.
 |
| Kristen finds a baby pig in the high village |
We drove up to
one outside of Danba today, the road climbing like a ladder up the mountain
side. Up there, you can look across at
the facing village, and yet it feels so far away. Up there, your neighbors are those next to
you and the ones across the valley are farthest away, even though they could be
the closest. Up in the village, it was a
different, quiet world. Pigs ran free
everywhere, Ma seeds were in harvest along the roads and in the fields, and
birds sang in a rich medley. You just
felt the calm resonate in you. I didn’t
want to leave, indeed, Lindsay said she could live here for ten years. Looking across the way at the old, weathering
brown village high up in the opposite valley without a trail to it anymore, we
made plans to live in our own valley and have town parties three times a
week. We hung prayer flags in the trees,
an outward symbol of the serenity we garnered from there. It was nothing short of magical.
 |
| The village across the valley |
Today I broke
the chain tensioning screw on the rear swing arm of the bike and drove into
town to replace it. The mechanic turned
out to be from Pengshan and the whole 15 minute chain shortening-bolt
replacing-re-tensioning cost 5 yuan. I
love this country.
We ate lunch up
at the village, in a very warm welcoming place where you sit down and they
bring you the food, no ordering required.
We gorged on 7 dishes and ate them all, attributing our success to
Kristen’s alleged tapeworm. At dinner we
named him “tapey”. Shopping in town for
the afternoon and we watched the locals dance downtown. I love this place’s energy and smiles. Everyone seems to smile at you, and if they
don’t, their magical colors do. The old
men are still handsome, the old women still beautiful, and everyone is
dancing. Happiness is contagious and
everywhere.
The end of the
trip approaches and today I knew that I want to return here again with a
motorcycle and 60 days or more to drive it around. There is just too much to see and this place
is amazing.
August 3rd, 2012
We left Danba
and planned to drive to Wu Long Panda base, the first Panda base and the most
scenic, covering mostly wild Panda habitat.
Such a proposition was 200 km, our farthest drive yet. We packed up early and stopped by our healing
lady next door, who checked Lindsay’s leg bandage and gave us some more
bandages and pesto poultice. And we were
off. The road wound along a raging
tributary of the DaDu River (大渡河) and it looked as if it was in flood stage. Definitely Class 5 rapids, and I spent my
time in the back seat imagining kayak lines.
We stopped at a Buddhist temple in a small town, where the place was
covered with prayer flags and the air steeped in incense. We timed our trip into Tibet perfectly with the
holy 20 day period of “when the Buddha first spoke” holiday (as best as I can
understand), and every temple and monastery is filled with people. Lindsay and Kristen took pictures furiously
while I wandered and walked around the prayer wheel circle, spinning golden
prayer wheels. Between the smoky incense
and the bright colored prayer flags, some of which show their age by their
fading, you get caught in the magic of this place. And as Kristen says, “It’s quite nice.”
This
was a day of driving. We drove higher
and higher into the mountains; the road was smooth and quiet; the environment
became dry and the weather grew hot—a sign we were approaching the basin
again. We stopped for lunch and a lady
ran out of her restaurant to steer us in.
We followed gratefully to her enormous kitchen, where we picked out
mushrooms, egg and tomato dish (we ate this everyday), and eggplant. We picked out the biggest mushroom she had,
none of us had eaten it, and it was a really good mushroom. It was the size of my hand spread out. But when I went to pay, it was 100 远 for 3 dishes and one beer! Baffled, I asked why. Turned out that was a 60远 mushroom. Delicious, but not 60远 delicious. Oh well.
The
scenery was lush, sunny, spring time bliss.
We drove through fields lining both sides of the road and through small
towns, stopping for tea and hot water.
Kristen pointed out that there were pot plants growing everywhere, and I
laughed when I noticed that she was right.
They were the weeds growing along the road and at the edge of the
fields. We drove higher and into
rain. The road continued to go higher,
the rain continued to fall lightly, and the river we were driving along shrunk
to a creek. The trees became shrubs and
then disappeared all together and we were switch-backing up the pass and into
the fog. Poor Stella (our bike’s name,
derived from Steel Magnolia) doesn’t do well up high, and wheezed up the steep
road. It got so cold that both Lindsay
and I were shivering, our gloved hands numbing and poor Stella wheezing (being
cold was not something we expected when we left The Basin, sweating profusely). I discovered that the best part of being on
the back was that you could put your gloved hands on the exhaust pipe and warm
them up. Lindsay and I switched near the
top and made it over the pass, thinking we had smooth sailing after that. Nope.
We entered a world of fog, an eerie and cold world where you could only
see 150 feet in front of you. All I wanted
was to fly down the hill to the warmth below, but instead we suffered and
crawled down the switchbacks, keeping our bike and Kristen’s in eyesight. That girl really impressed us today; we could
switch and warm-up and sing together, but she couldn’t and persevered through
it all without a complaint.
It
was through this fog and surreal world high in the mountains when we were going
around a turn and saw in the ditch a horse looking at us. Looking at us from the ground. With a leg sticking straight up. Only one leg.
And missing a lot of hair. And
three other legs.
We
came to a skidding stop and went back to investigate. Our best guess was that it was grazing when
it slipped and fell, dying either from fright (as its eyes indicated) or the
fall. Someone must have come by and
harvested as much meat as they could, but we couldn’t shake the eerie feeling
tingling in our spines looking at this dead horse in the ditch. We continued on.
Down,
down, down we drove, singing songs in our full face helmets, warming up as we
went. Traffic was incredibly low, and we
squeezed through rock slides and tree fall along the road, wondering why it was
in such bad shape. The fog opened up and
the view was stunning—mountains all around us and we could see out the valley
to the foggy expanse of the basin in the far distance. The mountains were covered in steep jungle
and everywhere was remarkably quiet and seemingly undisturbed (rare in China). When we hit the river down low, we pulled
over and I lay on the road side, sucking in the heat as well as giving my
aching bum a long deserved break.
Sitting on the back of Stella has its advantages and disadvantages. First and foremost of the latter is the thin
foam of the back seat does little against the constant vibrations of a dirt
bike on pavement. Oh, it hurts after
awhile. This was the final push to Wo
Long (卧龙) and we
were still early. As we drove down the
warm valley, happy as could be, road-side farms began pooping up again and we
saw cabbages and mixed greens being harvested and carried in woven
baskets. We reached卧龙 saddle-sore and hungry, finding a
饭馆 (literally “food
inn”) on the edge of town that was both cheap and delicious. Upon inspecting her leg in the bathroom,
Lindsay came out almost in tears, exclaiming “it’s not any better. I’m so pitiful!” After which, she sat on the bed, reached for
a beer to drink her sorrows away, and the cap exploded off and knocked her in
the chin. Just when things seemingly
couldn’t get any worse, they do in China.
I almost peed my pants laughing in a curled up ball on the floor. (Don’t’ worry, her leg was fine)
 |
| Her leg after 3 days of Chinese poultice |
 |
| Reapplying #4 (note the red outline of a beer cap on Lindsay's chin) |
Dinner
of tomato and egg dish, eggplant, and potatoes; Olympic badminton, and beer: 幸福 (happiness). We slept soundly after our longest day of
riding on the whole trip.
August 4th, 2012
Wo
Long deserves its fame—it is gorgeous.
Nestled in the steep mountainous folds of the earth caused by such
upheaval of the Himalayas and quilted with jungle vegetation, it feels like a
foray into Jurassic Park. As we loaded
our bikes, I talked with the bike travelers who stayed at the same hotel the
night before. They were also doing the
bike tour pilgrimage to Lhasa that is so popular in the summer, but they were
the only ones we met going this way, the lesser-traveled NW route from
Chengdu. They had to right idea because
this route is not called the “Tibet Highway” and the traffic shows why. I’d call it the “Tibet back alley.” We talked about gear, the road (as all 2
wheeled travelers seem to do), and wished them luck as they left in high
spirits.
 |
| Lindsay and Stella for washing day. Little did we know we had 4 hours of dirt road ahead, making this completely useless washing. |
We
were very excited to see some Pandas that morning. Very excited.
But we had no idea where to go.
So we drove down the road and asked at a small shop. The owner was incredulous; “You didn’t see
it?” “No, from the mountains we came.” “OH!
Impossible you don’t see it. Just
drive.” (translated) And so we did, to a
rusting gate labeled “Panda Garden.”
What
a shock Panda Garden was. Metal pipes of
scaffolding everywhere; two closed hotels; a pair of cement skeletons of
hotels; a bridge leading to a hillside that had catastrophically slid and was
covered in scaffolding and new cement retaining walls. The workers said it was open and we could go
in, so we parked our bikes and walked across to a scene from Jurassic Park 2
(or 3). The place was completely
deserted, but left as if everyone had just ran out in the middle of work. Walking through the research building, rooms
with test tubes dates going back to days before the big earthquake sat on
tables, cabinets of medicine were unlocked, a freezer of samples was still
being cooled.
It was as if they all
planned to come back the next day but never did. The Panda enclosures were also eerie—a broken
glass wall where it looked like something broke out, pens with dried bamboo
still in them waiting to be eaten, rooms with Panda trinkets littered across
the floor. Eerie.
Someone stopped us as we walked by a
building, saying we couldn’t go further, that it was closed. “But we want to see some Pandas,” I
replied. He shook his head, “No Pandas
to see here, they are gone. You can
watch a video of Pandas inside if you want.”
So eerie.
We
were deeply confused by all of this and wondered when dinosaurs or killer
Pandas would jump out at us. Such a
beautiful place left to rot seemed such a tragedy. Walking back, the 8 workers were high on the
hill, working on their honeycomb of cement retaining walls. They yelled “HELLO!” from up high. Lindsay shook her head, “As a geologist, I
have no faith that that will hold back another slide.” We got back on our motorcycles and as we
pulled out onto the road, a 3-wheeled truck pulled into the garden with a huge
load of freshly cut, small bamboo. Now,
at the Chengdu base I have seen this bamboo carted into the Panda enclosures
and watched Pandas happily chomping this particular age and size bamboo. This bamboo has no other human use as far as
I know, and now we saw it being driven across the bridge into the abandoned
Panda base. Driving along the road and
looking across the river at all the unexplored Panda Garden, I felt sure that
there were secret Pandas still there.
The
next five hours of driving showed why Wo Long was so abandoned. We had only 80 km or so to go that day, but
it took the rest of the day. I don’t
know how to express this best with words.
I’ll try this: we spent twice as much time on dirt detour roads as we
did on pavement. Another way: there
simply wasn’t a road anymore.
Better. This: the river had eaten
the road. There were times when we would
be driving in the narrow dirt road (which had Chinese semi-trucks on it in
single file) and I would look over and see the old cement road in the river. We went through a tunnel which was filled
with dirt and cobbles, the road right before it eaten away into the river. It was clear that the river made a detour
through the tunnel during the flood. The
entire trip was a scene of devastation.
The going was very slow, but being on a dirt bike, it wasn’t a
problem. It took us half as long as some
of those trucks probably took. And this
road devastation lasted almost 50 km.
There were crews there in the process of rebuilding with excavators,
cutting into the huge rock slides that had fallen from the cliffs above and
trying to build a new bank. As we went
lower down the river, the rebuilding efforts were farther along. A new dam that looked mainly to hold back the
cliffs above and weather the rock slides was one of the last things we
saw. Using my trail building eye,
however, I didn’t see a solution. There
was nowhere to put a good road in that narrow, winding, slot canyon. No matter what they built, the river would
get hungry again or the earth would quake and it would be gone. But the Chinese built on anyway… And that was why Wo Long was untouched. Maybe they were waiting for the road to be
finished before they began rebuilding (rebuilding is unquestioned in China by
the way). They will be waiting a long
time…..
Our
destination, and our last night before going home, was Du Jiang Yan (都江堰). The last 30 km was through
roads winding high above a tall dam reservoir, overlooking the steep peaks that
make up the toe of the Himalayas. It was
a gorgeous ending to our drive through the Himalayas, but I only remember
snapshots. I was driving for most of it
and all the traffic one would expect from nearing a 14 million person
metropolis was on the road and I hated it.
The quiet roads of Tibet were calling me that afternoon. So ask Lindsay for details about that bit of
drive. I do remember eating ice cream at
the side of the road, looking at the world’s first dam project that Du Jiang
Yan is famous for. And we ran our tank
to the small tank for the first time that day, coasting to a stop on the side
of the road and switching over to our reserves.
Found a gas station in time after that.
We
got into town at dusk and drove into downtown following wikitravel’s directions
to a hostel downtown. Turned out to be one
of Du Jiang Yan’s most uppity hotels. On
to attempt number two: an apartment building on a very local street with no
signs indicating a hostel. But the old
guy who we woke up informed us that it sure was a hotel and showed us a
luxurious room (by my standards) for 100 RMB for the three of us. Done.
We were so dusty and tired, we didn’t care. Parked our bikes and I began telling the
owner’s son that Kristen wanted to sell her motorcycle (she was going to Japan
in a few days) and asked for his advice.
He said we’d do it tomorrow, because everywhere was closed. So, showers, dinner, beers, and bed in a
hurry.
August
5th, 2012
Selling
a motorcycle in China is far easier than buying one. With the help of our hotel owner’s son (about
22 years old), we drove around to all the mechanics he knew, asking if they
would buy Kristen’s motorcycle. She had
a few things going against her: 1) she is a foreigner 2) it was bought from a
different province 3) its registration was expired, but she had the title 4) it
isn’t really a great motorcycle. It’s
the typical Chinese red motorcycle with a broken fender bar in front. It was a nightmare selling it. We ended up driving 30 minutes out of town to
a smaller village where we asked 4 shops in a row, all of them not even
considering it, and Kristen melting down and trying to explain to one owner in
English why he should buy it (he didn’t speak any English). Our friend Frank (the owner’s son) was an
absolute hero, going place to place and eventually bargaining to 800 RMB for
her bike (half of what she paid for it and I thought was awesome). He then bought us drinks and drove the girls
back in his car as it rained; I had no jacket and got soaked. But this was my first time on the selling end
of bargaining in China, and I found it rather enlightening. Really, it is the same as bargaining when you
buy. You try to have them say a price
first. You throw on a big show, point
out good things about it, and eventually, fake walking away to get the price
you want. It worked thanks to Frank, who’s
patience in the 3 hour ordeal we dragged him on was heroic. Another big win for Chinese people and how
wonderful they are. We never would have
sold it without him.
And
so Kristen got on a bus to Chengdu to catch a train to Shanghai and then a boat
to Japan. On the road, Lindsay and I had
a hilarious realization that no one ever invited her, she just invited herself
to come along that day in TaGong at the Tibetan restaurant. But I’m glad she did because she was very
entertaining with her cigarette smoking, German accent, and enormous bag on the
back of her bike.
The
rest of the day was spent driving fast through The Basin back to Pengshan. It was about 150 km and neither of us wanted
it to end. However, the heat was back,
and so we made few stops. Driving
through endless farmland, thinking about how I was going to be leaving China in
3 days, about everything we had seen and everyone we had met the last 2 weeks,
I was sad for all of it to be over. This
is a magical place—great food, great people, great places—and being on a
motorcycle let us see that side of this place.
I spent the time on the back seat just looking at everything.
The last bit of
road was across farmland on a small road fenced with big old trees on both
sides, children playing in front of some of the houses, and with farm tucks
putting along. It was the perfect
ending, one of reflection, calm, and marvel at what we had done. When we got to Pengshan, we stopped downtown
to get Lindsay some mangos.
Our arrival to
Jinjiang was a quiet one, but it felt like we had never left. We carried our bags and helmets up the
stairs, sweating buckets under all of our gear, and marched proudly down the
hall. We dropped our stuff in front of
my door and banged on Luke’s door. He
opened the door and we announced the news: “We didn’t die.”
Epilogue
It has been over
a month since Lindsay and I completed our adventure around Sichuan. I still can’t believe we did it. And I love telling people about it. When I first came to China with Luke in August
2011, I was enamored by the idea of driving a motorcycle around China. I don’t know how this idea was planted into
my brain, me having never ridden a motorcycle and being completely terrified of
Chinese traffic. When winter break
approached, I read blogs online about people who did such a drive across China,
but such dreams stalled and died and became nothing. Then, in the spring, when looking on the
Chengdu foreigner classifieds website, I saw Stella for sale and that little
spark of an idea reignited. Lindsay and
I were in the process of planning a trip together after our family trip in
China, and we were planning on trekking in Nepal or in western Sichuan, when I
mentioned the motorcycle idea, more as a joke than as a serious matter. And as a joke/dream it would have remained if
it weren’t for her enthusiasm about the prospect, which certainly surprised
me. Almost against my will and better
judgment, she prodded and pushed me into going to Chengdu and buying that
motorcycle from the Netherlands foreigner.
The morning before I left, I got lessons on how to start driving from my
girlfriend’s co-worker, which was mainly starting from neutral 4 times, then we
called it good. I went apprehensively
and rather terrified to Chengdu and drove back to Pengshan. For her ruthless and relentless prodding, I
will forever be in my sister’s debt.
When I tell
people about this trip, I call it our drive around Tibet. While not technically in Tibet’s legal
boundaries, the culture that welcomed us and the sights we experienced were
undoubtedly Tibetan. Those two weeks
were one of the most incredible adventures of my life. We really did not have a plan besides drive
to Kangding; we just had 2 GPS’s and a road atlas. Now I know that this is the perfect amount of
planning and the perfect amount of stuff.
The goal of any traveler in a foreign place should be to get off the
beaten path. If you surprise yourself,
you will surprise the people around you, and in the process stumble across
authenticity. I vividly remember the
looks on people’s faces when we would walk into restaurants on the side of the
road, and see their faces light up when we would take off our motorcycle
helmets as they would see our foreign faces.
I always felt taken care of out there in Tibet and everyone was just
curious—curious about where we came from, curious about what we thought about
their home, curious to tell us about themselves. My limited Chinese improved a lot as we went
to new places and opened some incredible doors.
In Ta Gong we stayed up late watching Olympics and cracking jokes with
the Inn owner’s husband in Chinese. At
the mechanic shop in Lu Ding, a nearby shop owner talked my ear off about where
we should go in Tibet and was so happy to just be listened to. And I’ll never forget our morning with the
Buddhist monks in the hillside monastery near Ta Gong, talking to the Buddhist
monk and the master (the earlier being used as a translator between me (in
Mandarin) and the master (who didn’t speak Mandarin). We were open to the suggestions of people we
met along the way, and we benefitted greatly for it.
A motorcycle is
an incredible tool to travel around China.
First, it was ridiculously cheap.
We spent about 200-250 RMB for gas in 2 weeks, which is 35-42 USD. $35-42 We had lots of flexibility to shop for the
cheapest hostel or inn, to go find a good place to eat, stop along the road to
see things, take a detour if we wanted, or best of all, go for a side trip up a
mining road and go caving. The freedom of
being on a motorcycle was incredible. I
have a Sichuan map in front of me now and looking at our route, a nice big
circle starting in Pengshan and twisting through the Himalayas before returning
back to Pengshan, it is clear that there would be no other way to do this unless
you rode a bike, walked, or hitchhiked.
I think we made the right choice.
An incredible
tool, but a motorcycle is also an incredibly dangerous tool. When we returned to Pengshan safely, a huge
weight lifted off my shoulders and I realized that I had been tense the entire
trip, nervous about anything going wrong.
Coming from American driving, it’s not easy to drive in China. The split-second decisions are different,
sometimes counter-intuitive, and Chinese drivers will often surprise you with a
pass around a blind corner or when a large truck is approaching. On the last day, driving back to Pengshan, I
found the words to describe the way we drove for the trip: we drove like any
problem would be our fault. Even if
someone else did something clearly illegal, even in China, we had no room to be
self-righteous. The reason is that if we
did have an accident, the police would be called, no matter if it was our fault
or theirs. When the police came, we
would be asked to produce driver’s licenses we didn’t have; when we couldn’t
produce such documents, I’m certain that the only course of events would be
jail time and losing our bike. As my dad
says about being apprehended by the Russian military, “I knew not even Ted
Stevens was going to get me out of that one.”
When I imagine sitting in a Chinese prison, that’s what comes to
mind. So we drove very cautiously,
sometimes being the only ones going the speed limit in town. Roads in China that aren’t the toll roads are
notoriously bad, so our max speed was 100 km/hour, which we rarely went
anyway. We took all the precautions we
could--suffering the heat in our padded jackets when it was too hot for
anything but T-shirts, always wearing helmets and shin guards—and we were
fine. Lindsay did have a minor crash and
burned her calf, but the resulting problems were of our own creation. We didn’t give it any attention for 2 days
after, ignoring the open wound that started to show early infection on day
three. It was my fault for not thinking
of it; it was Lindsay’s fault for not telling me that the pain was growing to
the point where it hurt to walk. She’s
tough. But once we made the effort and
asked for help, help was plentiful and when I left Lindsay in Chengdu, her leg
was fully healed.
I like to brag
about how I bought a motorcycle and drove it out of a city of 14 million people
on my first day of driving a motorcycle, but it was the culmination of riding
taxis in traffic for 7 months already and taking notes, of driving rented
scooters around Pengshan and practicing in traffic. What’s truly admirable is my sister, who
after 2 weeks of being in China, had to courage to climb on a dirt bike and
drive in unfamiliar traffic on an unfamiliar vehicle, with me on the back
giving constant animadversion. I must
have been insufferable. But my sister is
shockingly brave, commendably patient with me, and really, really smart. By the third day of driving she was a pro and
around day 4 or 5, I spent most of my time looking at the scenery, enjoying
riding on the back, and even feeling calm, trusting her judgment. Bravo sister bear. As I told her on the road that had been eaten
by the river outside of Wo Long, “This really ups your babe status sis.”
Before I went to
China, people told me that you develop a love/hate relationship with China; what
matters is which emotion is strongest.
After a year in Pengshan and around 中国, I get it. For me, the love
greatly outweighed the moments of misery and unhappiness. However, Tibet was an exception. I can’t think of any moments when I hated
it. Maybe on that awful Tibet Highway,
but even then I held a respect for how everyone made such a bad road work. The far western part of China was easily my
favorite. The delicious food, the culture
of colors and dancing, the unobstructed blue skies, the mountains of mystery
and colorful rocks, the villages high up the mountainside, the people who were
forever smiling, even the foreigners. I
can’t think of anything bad to say about such a place. The foreigner Chris, who ran ZhiLam, the
hostel we stayed in and never wanted to leave in Kangding, was inspiring to
both of us. He came, fell in love, and
returned for good, being the first foreigner to live and run a business in
Kangding. He joking told me to come back
and work for him. I don’t think he
suspects how tempting that is……
An unexpected
appreciation I gained on this trip is my respect for Chinese bikers. I am stunned with how many people were bike
touring to Tibet on that God forsaken highway.
After crossing the tunnel, we stopped and talked with a girl who was going
down and waiting for her friends. She
said that this was their second day of riding from Chengdu. That was our second day of driving a
motorcycle from Chengdu. I was
stunned. The trip takes about 1.5-2
months to go from Chengdu to Lhasa. I
had no idea that so many Chinese people are so fearless and driven. I can’t even guess how many bike groups we
saw on that highway; far, far more than I expected. Bravo China.
To me, the question
of if I want to go back isn’t applicable.
The question is when do I go back. Already I have lines drawn on this map for a
longer trip around the area, doubling back on my sister’s and my trip to say
hello to old friends. Chris said that
when he travels, he just stays with friends he has made in the area—no more need
for hotels and inns. I feel that I have
a few friends out there now and want to find more. I am dreaming of getting another motorcycle,
maybe newer but not much different, and with more time at my disposal, setting
off again with a map, 2 changes of clothes, and hopefully some better Chinese
language. I’m still studying for this
dream. Want to come along?
It’s going to be
harder to fool my mom next time after she reads this.
Thanks for
reading and good luck with your journeys.
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment