Simon: "We flew into Ulumuqi on Wednesday and stayed downtown in a nice 3 star hotel. Being that the museum ( a must attraction as not much remains of the ancient cities except ruins now) was closed both Wed & Thurs we set off for TianChiHe (heavenly lake) at about 1pm.
About an hr later, thanks to Simons navagational blunders, we left the city proper and made our way through desert dunes, past camel herds ( which Ed harrassed) and finally started climbing the 2000m (5hr) ascent to the lake. The lake was truely picturesque ( though not untouched by Chinese touristic annoyances: loud speakers, fake bird songs in hidden speakers that looked like rocks...) we spent that night in a fantastically decorated yurt. Tough climb. Melting heat. Exilirated and exhausted."

The lads Day 2 in Ulumuqi


Cruising


Climbing


Noddles lamb or lamb noodles?


Enzo Climbing Ed Swimming.... Just too hot...SPLAAASH!


Siesta


PART III / Climbing the hill up to TianShan pass :: June 21st 2010

An epic ride for our three riders, a long climb up to TianShan pass, the highest peak on their road toTurpan...

"It took us 2 days to get here, 1 day pushing over 1200 v metres...
We ran out of  food on the first day and ended up riding/ pushing through the night (18 hrs) to get down. Unfortunately we found a dusty desert instead of an oasis, slept 3 hrs on rocks & then were scorched out of our skins in 46 degree c relentless sun on a 57k ride to turpan. We haven't eaten since Saturday lunchtime!"

The valley we start riding


On mountainbikes, we a minimum of gear, this would be awesome!


Finally arrived to the top


Simon just sent us a SMS:
"Xinjiang crew nearly didn't survive their trans-Tianshan mission. We suffered from dehydration in the desert (no more water), starvation (48 hrs no food) exhaustion (18 hours mission), heat stroke (cycling 4 hrs in 47 degree haet), altitude including nausea ... Really hard time descending the high altitude pass...
Luck, good weather and will power were on our side & we are now in Turpan!"

Apple cider and Lamb Kebabs in Turpan


Chiling in the desert near Turpan



PART IV / Second stage of the trip = KASHKAR :: June 24th 2010

"After a 23 hr train ride across stunning high alpine passes and the taklamakan  desert we will shortly be arriving in Kashgyr. After sorting Simon a new bike ( he smashed his derailier dropout off getting the bike onto the train) getting Ed a haircut and all some supplies, we plan to get Manu, JC and Kevins friend Abul Hamel to drive us to Karakol lake on the Chinese side of the Karakoram Highway. 

From there we plan to spend 4 days making our way back to Kashgyr exploring the lake, valleys and taking in the 7000+ m peaks on the way ..."

Cozy


And now... STAGE 2!




PART V / Across Tianshan, the complete story :: June 27th 2010
By Ed AKA Doudou who tells us more about their incredible trip across Tianshan montains in the story...

" The plan was simple...

From the town of Jimsar we would ride south
across the plains for about 60km, before crossing the Tianshan over a
3400m pass, and then dropping down the other side to find a town with
a hotel to sleep the night. The next day, we would continue the
descent all the way to Turpan, the second lowest spot on earth.
That was the plan, anyway...

The day started well enough as we slowly climbed up towards the
foothills of the Tianshan. The landscape was vast, with wide, rolling
plains dotted with tombs to either side of us and the snow-capped
mountains we were to cross in front of us. After a few hours of slow
but steady work, we stopped in a small town for lunch and to drink a
couple of litres of liquid each. What I didn't know, as I left my
plate of noodles half-eaten, was that this would be my last real meal
for 48hours.

After lunch we escaped the afternoon heat by napping in the shade by a
small stream. Everything was perfect- relaxing in the warm shade,
feeling full of food, bathing in the cold steam, eating watermelon
that we cooled in the stream and looking forward to the challenge
ahead.
After our siesta, the road steepened and the terrain quickly
became alpine, with green meadows and pine tree-lined slopes. We were
making good time. There was a cooling wind. People smiled and shouted
hello. It was great. Then the road turned into a dirt path, with 20km
to the summit and over 2000m still to climb. Now, what we should have
done is stopped right there and wondered why the road on our map was
actually a rocky path being used by shepherds, horse riders and
intrepid chinese guys on motorbikes. But instead we all thought 'REAL
riding!', and charged on up the path. On and on we went, up the valley
past stunning pine forests, remote yurts and shepherds hand-shearing
their flocks, all the time with a rushing river beside us.

We even found some abandoned beer by the path, and just as we were going to
remove a bottle for later and leave cash, the owner came motorcycling
down the path and gave us a bottle each to drink with him right then.
After a few hours of this, it began to dawn on us that the pass was
not just around the corner (the fact that Enzo's altimeter put up at
only 2100m elevation was disconcerting). On top of this, we'd been
going uphill over 10 hours (we were shattered), and it would soon get
dark. No problem, we had some spare food- and we'd brought tents etc
precisely for this. So, we picked a (nearly) flat spot between the
river and a steep forest and set up camp. Enzo and Simon built a fire,
and we sat down to a meal consisting primarily of a peanut butter
sandwich, with stars and satellites overhead.

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of the last peanut butter
sandwich, we set off again with the aim of quickly reaching the pass,
finding some food in the nearest town on the way down, and then
pushing on to Turpan. Unfortunately, we were soon pushing and heaving
our 30kg bikes and luggage over a path too steep or rocky to ride. It
was unrelenting- and as the hours went by and the sun grew hotter, we
slowly ate all our remaining food (a couple of energy gels each, some
raisins and nuts), just to keep going. Time after time we came to a
point we were certain was the top, only to see an even bigger slope
beyond it.

We saw only one other person.
We left the trees.
We passed snow.

Rock gave way to sand, making progress even harder. The air
became thin, so that every minute or so we had to stop pushing to
catch our breath. I was sunburned, my lips were cracked, there were
sores inside my mouth, I had a headache, my vision was impaired, I
felt dizzy and the only things keeping me going were the knowledge
that we had gone too far to turn back and get to food that day, and
the hope that food and a place to rest lay just beyond the summit. The
others were suffering no less than me. We barely spoke- each man was
lost in his own thoughts. 6 hours and 40 minutes after we set off, we
reached the summit of the pass.

A glacier-covered peak lay in front of us. We were surrounded by bare
rock and black sand, and the silence was total. But time was getting
on, and we still needed to find food and get off the mountain that had
taken us 17 hours to climb, before attempting the 100km+ traverse of
the desert to Turpan.
Pressing on, we soon found that the southern
side of the mountains was totally different: a seemingly endless
expanse of sun-blasted rock. We were reduced to pushing once again, as
the path followed the bottom of a river composed entirely of large
rocks. Enzo's pannier kept falling off. Simon got the first of his
punctures. Time wore on, and our altitude hardly decreased.

By late evening, we had hardly seen a plant, let alone another person or a
village. But eventually the track became rideable again, and we passed
a yurt with 5 shepherds in it. Out spirits lifted, and off we rode
down the now broadening and grassy valley, stopping only to push
across rocky riverbeds or to reattach Enzo's magic self-ejecting
pannier. However, the sun was now setting, and we were still clearly
no where near any habitation. The landscape became huge, as more and
more valleys converged with ours, and then in the distance we saw a
most welcome sight- a parked truck. Trucks mean roads, or at least
landrover tracks, and this means higher speed.
Unfortunately, as we reached the gravel road, we were also confronted with the valley it
was in: wide, flat-bottomed, rock-strewn, waterless, straight and very, very long.

As we made our way down the road, Enzo's pannier self-destructed requiring a rebuild,
and Simon ran out of inner tubesthat didn't leak.

By now it was past 11, and we rode by the light of
the moon, stopping every km or so to reinflate Simon's tire.  We did
not want to stop in that valley as there was no water, we had no food,
and there was nowhere to pitch a tent in between the rocks. So we
pressed on, navigating by two head torches after the moon set. And
then around 3am, the road turned the wrong way and started to climb.
Demoralized and with no idea where we were, at 4am we pulled off the
road and crawled into our sleeping bags without pitching tents. We
fell straight asleep, despite Simon having found a fist-sized spider
shortly before...

Three hours later, the sun was up and it was time to press on.
Luckily, things began to turn our way. Just around the next corner the
gravel road became a tarmac road. Within an hour, we passed a stream
and were able to refill our water bottles, which had been empty for 6
or 7 hours. Within two hours, we were down in the desert, and sat by
the highway in a service station trying to get food into our empty
stomachs. Curiously, none of us felt like eating much. More curiously,
we had managed to come down the mountain by a route seemingly unmarked
on the map- and we were now only 50km from Turpan.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get Simon's tires to stay up- it was so hot the glue on the
patches melted. After sitting on the forecourt for nearly an hour, we
managed to get one inner tube to stay inflated- and with that we were
off, cycling down a dead-straight road, downhill, in 47degree heat, at
55-60km an hour, racing the glue on Simon's inner tube. The glue won,
and we stopped in a landscape composed of gravel pretty much as far as
the eye could see, and hid from the overbearing heat in a storm drain
under the road. But Simon was not beaten yet; he re-patched the tube,
and then sellotaped the patches on to the tube. This bought us another
few minutes, and off we went again, battling a headwind in the
afternoon heat. We finally reached Turpan nearly 20 hours after
leaving the summit.

What we had planned to do on our first day took us 3 days, and what we
wanted to do on our second day took a few hours.
We were exhausted, we'd gone 24 hours without food and 48 hours without more than a snack
whilst doing arduous physical exercise, and our bikes were all
suffering.
If anything had gone wrong, we would have been stuck with
no supplies and no phone signal in an area with no other people and
with no way of knowing where we were.

We had pushed the limits of our physical and mental endurance more than ever before, but we made it.
And most importantly, we'd had an adventure we'll never forget. "

Part VI / The last part of the saga - Kashgyr :: July 5th
By Simon Grimmer

The heat, lack of amenities, 12 days of nonstop travel, sleepless uncomfortable nights, living out of a pannier, inadequate food, altitude and being in the constant company of either a kiwi, an Italian or a Pom meant that we were all pretty tired and relieved on reaching Kashgyr for the second time. Somehow, none of us had looked at a calender or a watch closely for the past few days, and we actually arrived a full day ahead of schedule convinced to the amusement of hostel reception and girlfriends that “today is Monday”, when it was only Sunday.

With 2 days up our sleeveless Specialized riders club edition jerseys, we decided to stay with in the city limits of Kashgyr and explore it;s sights, side alleys and byways without the added burden of panniers. A to B rides, as Enzo wisely pointed out, often miss out on experiences, sights and potential adventures because either the riders aren’t willing to deviate from their route (usually highways) or they don’t have the time to explore the surrounding countryside as they have more clicks to halk off tomorrow. For the last 2 days of our tour of XinJiang, we used the Kashgyr old town youth hostel as a base for numerous trips in and around Kashgyr and this couldn’t have been more rewarding.

Kashgyr old town

According to our untrustworthy map ( or perhaps it was our map- reading skills), the ‘three immortal caves’ lay 35 ks to the North East of the city. We decided to aim for this landmark more for the journey by bike, than the prospect of visiting bat infested, dank, dark holes in the dunes. We never actually found the caves and as we found out later, they were long since collapsed and abandoned.  However, we discovered for ourselves a fantastic rural Uiger orchard district full of ripening apricots and nectarines and with farmers sidetracked hand-threshing wheat, helped ourselves to their bounty. We also discovered a reservoir worthy of a swim and a moonlike landscape that was full of some of the most exciting and inspiring (think red bull rage) ridable terrain.  

We played for half an hour or so, before realizing that we were lost, tired, thirsty and hungry and made our way, plundered apricots in hand, back through a cemetery and eventually to the road back to Kashgyr.

Freeride!

On our last full day in Kashgyr, Simon developed the green apple splatters for his second time since leaving Shanghai. He attributed his infliction to a number of causes - general bad hygiene, the heat, uncooked liver, unprocessed yoghurt, weakness of character....

It bears mention that Enzo only told him of the presence of a Western toilet at the hostel after he was well on the road to recovery again. In between quick trips back to the hostel to ummm... recuperate, the lads spent the day exploring Kashgyrs awesome oldtown on bike, cementing deals with carpet merchants, outrunning peddlers and relining abused stomachs with more of Kashgyrs culinary delights (usually mutton based). On his third tour of the oldtown, Enzo suggested running from the tour operators who were wanting to collect a legitimate entrance fee ( a mere 8 rmb per person) and like children sneaking into a movie, we turned, feigning ignorance and legged it on bikes through the mud-brick back alleys and back onto the streets of Kashgyr.

Kashgyr city

All in all, an unforgettable and inspiring trip.

It was just for 2 weeks, but after all their experiences Enzo, Ed and Simon felt they were coming back to Shanghai after an absence of months. They have cemented their friendship (although are keen to have a break from each other for a while) and would like to thank Specialized for hosting their stories and photos on the web and TOPEAK for the product support.

They are more than happy to give logistics and equipment advise and travel info to anyone now who wants to travel to Xinjiang or do any distance cycle touring in China and have a few ideas already in the pipeline for future missions. They also have over a 1000 photos and some cool video to share at the next Specialized meeting."

PART VII / The Last report :: July 8th
By Ed aka Doudou

"After a shorter than anticipated break in Turpan, we boarded a 24-hour train to Kashgar.  As we were driven to the station, we passed a Norwegian guy that we’d met the day before.  He was taking two weeks to cycle the same route- straight across the desert.  As we passed him (he’s done about 10km in 3 hours), a gust of the same wind that had pushed us into Turpan at around 60kph suddenly blew him over a meter sideways, and to a dead stop.  The train was definitely the right choice.

Unfortunately, Simon’s trusty city bike (the one that has survived being used for Cyclo-X racing, XC racing, the odd bit of DH, and of course That Tianshan Crossing) did not survive the train, so our first task was to replace it, after which we commandeered a truck and drove up to Karakul Lake, which is approximately 200km away from Kashgar and at 3400m elevation (somehow, after our previous days’ experience, nobody really wanted to ride up there…).   We found accommodation near the lake, and spent a day exploring, buying marmot/camel-based products, meeting friendly donkeys and of course riding.

160km of solid downhill followed by 40km of flat sounds like easy going, but things don’t work out like that when you’re touring.  A combination of heavy weight over the back wheel and a stiff headwind meant that we were often pedaling just to keep moving forwards- which didn’t seem very fair, really.  However, the physical effort was forgotten with the amazing scenery that you take in on this route; from an isolated lake on a high plateau, following a stream down through huge snow-capped peaks until it becomes a churning torrent capable of moving boulders the size of your house, and eventually out the bottom into the floodplain where it widens out and calms down, before being fed into a vast network of irrigation channels that waters a vast area of small farms and orchards around Kashgar.

We decided to camp one last time before we hit the hostel in Kashgar, and stopped in a small wood attached to an (almost) abandoned hydro-electric plant.  It had once been a small village, but now only the plant manager and his family (and sheep) lived there.  We arrived early, so we set up camp and sat about enjoying the cool of the trees and the ability to breathe normally (we’d dropped a couple of thousand meters elevation).  The bike ‘condom’ that we were generously lent by Topeak (ok, it’s really a tent, not a condom- but look at the pics for an explanation) is ideal for this kind of fine-weather camping.  The condom is held up by your front wheel, which makes it very small & light (no poles to carry), but did mean that I had to dismantle my home in the evening when we cycled to a village to eat!

The Top Peak Tent

The next day, we made excellent progress early on (the wind blowing up the mountain only gets going later in the day), and so decided to take a detour off the highway, making our way to Kashgar over smaller roads.  The area we found was like nothing else we’d seen in China; packed with mudbrick farms and walled compounds, small water channels, fields, orchards, and cooling trees everywhere… With hardly any traffic and the occasional village to top up with the local yoghurt/ice drink, this area really is ideal for a relaxed bike ride.  Ideal, that is, unless you accidentally ride into a ‘Restricted Area’ and then stop for something to eat, giving the local constabulary plenty of time to gather all their mates and come find you. But no matter; after a quick photocopying of passports, and the realization that both the cops and us had the same short-term goals (us leaving the Restricted Area- quickly), we were on our way again.  From there, it was a relatively short hop across the plains to Kashgar, where we chose our accommodation on the basis that it had a huge fridge full of a wide selection of COLD beer in the entrance.  Happiness.

Cold beer

Karakul lake

Big Montains and big smiles

Good-bye Mustagata

Surprisingly hard work for a Down Hill section

Lamb soup

There are sheep in Xinjiang

The South area of Kashgar

Hostel in Kashagar

S-riders Club, WE RIDE....

RANDOM PICTURES:

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