Pedaling from the Black Forest to the Yellow Sea

daily distance: 114km
total distance: 14,466km
riding time: 6h 

There isn’t much to report. It was a dull and grey day for the most part. I am starting to feel the pollution in the air here which is getting worse and worse the further I seem to go East. My lungs were burning, but maybe this was just my imagination. Who knows.

Later on I got into more rural areas which made things better … and the sky turned a nice blue as well. And the area is hilly. A few days ago I thought that I would be out of the hills and that back then I would be doing the last climbing. I was so wrong again. China is always misleading you. Here is what the story of the day was. One after the other. Constant ups and downs. Stiff drops and steep climbs on the other side. But they were good and the riding was nice.

I am now less than tata … 1000km (make that 620 miles) away from the coast. Too bad this is much more than the sign on the freeway, which indicated less than 880km today. But at any rate, I am drawing closer and closer now. Keep the fingers crossed that things are going well.

I found a shed for the night to hunker down … I was really, really tired.

daily distance: 112km
total distance: 14,352km
riding time: 6h 

I did some more shopping and then set out into the madness that is Chinese large city traffic. Not that the craziness is much less in smaller places. And eventually found my way to the Terracotta Army over bumpy and muddy and unsigned roads. Orientation points were a river, a couple of highways, train tracks and the sun. Good enough. But before you get there, you head back to Egypt … don’t ask me why.

As I was standing outside the mausoleum (which I didn’t really want to visit), I noticed that someone took my picture. Wondering why I looked quizzically at that person and it turned out to be Ping / Sara. The former being her Chinese name, the latter her English name. We spent the next few hours together and had a great time visiting the Terracotta Army. I was uncertain as to whether I had wanted to go really, but figured I should not pass this opportunity up. And the place is pretty amazing.

Here is a small pit … pretty huge if you ask me.

And here is the amazingly large Pit 1, with a great number of soldiers standing guard for the afterlife of the ruler. Pretty amazing … the number only being rivaled by the number of visitors, though this was a slow day. Here now is the large pit …

And here are some more detailed pictures …

I am grateful for having met Ping. She put a number of things that happened / didn’t happen over the last days in perspective, confirmed some of my hunches and thought that some of my observations and experiences may have been aberations. I would hope that they were. And she has a great personality on top of all that. Thanks for taking the picture to start with.   

Needless to say there was an issue with the bike. Where to put it? When we located the luggage storage a self-righteous policeman tried to tell us that it was for luggage only and not for bikes. Well, I left it there and locked it figuring that since he didn’t give me an alternative there was no other place.

The rest of the day was riding in the rather bleak (sky is dull and grey) area here. I found G310, which I will remain on for the rest of the trip.

I was looking for a place when darkness decended and it was getting a bit iffy to ride any further. The fog contributed to this of course. Things turned out well, a small village had a little hotel and some good food to come along with it. All was well.

The plan was to do a bit of sightseeing today and not much else. This is what I did. First off, a mosque which doesn’t strike you as such unless you take a look at the skullcaps on people’s heads. Otherwise, it is Chinese-style and my comment that mosques have been replaced by temples was a bit premature. Islamic faith is still pretty strong here it seems judging by the number of mosques I have encountered up to now.

Then, it was on to the Large Goose Pagoda. Pretty impressive building I must say. The tourist groups were out in droves though. Here is the square - another big one:

And here is the actual pagoda - also big.

There was small stuff though too …

Other than that a restful day full of food and the like. I will be heading out again tomorrow to cover the remaining distance to the Yellow Sea. Unsure how I feel about this overall, but this is just the way it is. On the one hand I am seeing the goal in sight (1200km, roughly 750miles to, not much in the grand scheme of things - which sounds strange for most I gather), but it also means that the trip will then be over (at least the biking part). Will have a few days to ponder this though. And just as I need it, the weather report indicated rain and snow for the area I am heading into … starting tomorrow.

A short night of sorts and I so wanted to rest up. I couldn’t sleep well … maybe it was the coffee that I usually don’t drink but didn’t feel that I should refuse yesterday. No laundry at the hotel and I didn’t feel like looking around for a place so I did it myself and then set out to take a look at the city.

There were even more hairdressers than I thought and many, many modern buildings that are supposed to look old. Xian strikes me - at least in the center and the main roads - as a modern place and one that has shed part of what I assume is its old glory. Once you wonder into the side streets things tend to get a lot better though.

But I had two missions today: get new spokes just in case and look into return flights. The first one was easy (though the length wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it was within range), the second wasn’t. I was sent from this place to the next and finally got to a place that would do the booking on the spot. Good. What should have taken 15 or 30 minutes was in the end a three-hour affair. No fewer than six people handled the issue. Now, understand that Xian gets a lot of tourist traffic and this was supposed to be the place where the foreigners usually go. One guy spoke broken English, everything was complicated … even questions as to whether what the situation was to fly back from Shanghai instead of Beijing caused concern. And took a long time to answer. And I got a total of six answers as to whether I can take the bike on the plane. From: sure, no problem to everything over 20kg will be 35EUR/kg and no oversize boxes. We shall see what happens.

So, after two hours we were set. I plunked down my credit card and said here you go. The card didn’t go through they said. Then they figured out that they used the wrong slot on the machine. Only one person in the office was allowed to use this machine and she didn’t have a clue. It was classic. All I wanted was a ticket. In the end I went to an ATM and got cash out without a hitch. This meant that the day was shot really.

With the ticket and the spokes secured I didn’t care much though. Things were settled and I am bound to fly out just after mid-December. Updating the website and just relaxing was the order for the remainder of the day.

Here is the last picture (and this is best viewed large, so click on it and then the plus icon on top of the picture).

daily distance: 140km
total distance: 14,240km
riding time: 8-9h 

So, for the last few nights I have been saying that the nights were cold. This one was really, really cold. The night was OK, but the morning saw this …

It wasn’t nice. The site was in the shade which didn’t make things much better and the shoe that had gotten stuck in the mud last night was frozen. My shoes being leather this wasn’t a good thing. What to do? The sandals weren’t good enough for the temperatures. It was good that I had wiped the shoes clean last night and so I stuck the shoe under my jacket while packing up and warmed it up to make the leather more pliable. It worked and without cracking the leather things went from there.

The tent was wet though - or rather full of frost as I packed it up. I tried to get most of it off, but there was still plenty of moisture on the inside left. The inner tent had a good crust of ice on it - not sure what I could have done to prevent it.

So I set out in the freezing temperatures, it was now -12C as I was heading up the hill. Which was good because it meant that I could warm up without a downhill to contend with. After a period in the shade I got into the sun and found that the spot that I had chosen had been the best among bad ones as the valley was narrowing considerably and no real space to stay for the night.

The remainder of the day was warmish then. After getting over the climb with lots of nasty traffic and bumpy roads I passed a series of towns as I was heading to Xian. The street signs were fun to follow …

I had had no intention of getting there given the slow morning. But then it became apparent that Xian was within reach and Xianyang beforehand was another metropolis meaning that I really didn’t have a chance to camp anywhere and may as well run things in.

It would be a close call. But then I saw a church in the distance and as I was approaching I couldn’t resist to check it out. I was given a quick tour by the priest, followed by some apples and coffee. It was time for me to head out though if I wanted to have a chance to make it to Xian. It would now be an even closer call. But it was well worth it.

Then the maelstrom of the big cities started and you sort of get sucked in … unless of course another spoke goes bust in the process. I was doing well in terms of daylight when another spoke gave up. This time I fixed things up within about 10-15 minutes and was back on the road now racing … but of course it was futile. I took this when I was still 20km out - and I was supposed to be really close already.

But: good news … despite the darkness I managed to get into Xian amidst the traffic and lots of other cyclists and found a hotel within 5 minutes that would take foreigners in. It wasn’t any of the hotels that I had been told about (one of them was indeed hard to find), but the place I am in has plenty of room and a good hot shower.

The first thing that struck me about Xian (apart from the huge walls surrounding the city) wa the plethora of hairdressers. More about Xian tomorrow. The idea to make it all the way was to rest for a couple of days in one place, drying things out and not worrying about finding a new place. It worked out in the end though I do need the break now.

Note: I have been able to access flickr again, but still can’t access the larger size pictures that I used to post. For the time being, this is the best I can do. If you click on the pictures, you will get to the larger sizes. Thanks for bearing with me.