Tunnel Vision

The adventures never seem to cease, another week passes by in a flash with plenty of surprises along the way.  Dunhuang proved to be a great place to spend a couple of days. More compact and laid back than other towns so far with less traffic, although crossing the road was just as hazardous with the lethal electric scooters which you don't hear coming. After being presented with a stuffed camel from the hotel for his birthday Jeff and friends headed out to the dunes and crescent lake, rode camels and slid down the dunes on rubber rings. Others headed down to the “beach” and had great fun playing on the bumper boats with water canons. Everyone came off soaking, much to the locals amusement. Chinese tourism at its best. Dunhuang also marked the entry into our second province, Gansu.

Jeff's birthday camel

Ryan and Nick

Laura and Pip

Di

G Rod, Pip and a bit of foul play

Jim, Julia and Di going head to head

Julia & Jim

Dunhuang dune

A lung burning climb up the dunes

Dunhuang night market

Fellow travellers are few and far between in this part of China so stories are often exchanged. We've met a friendly group of Swiss Citroen 2CV enthusiasts a few times who are driving a convoy of 4 cars and truck carrying spares (they had to use a spare gearbox in Turpan!) all the way from St Moritz to Beijing and back via a different route, delivering medical supplies to remote places along the way, another enviable journey.

A short drive onto Jiayuguan which marks the symbolic end of the Great Wall and was one of the defining points of the Silk Road. There isn't much left of the old town, but just outside are some sections of Great Wall and the fort, one of the classic images of Western China. We enjoyed a scramble up the wall, first constructed in 1539 and reconstructed in 1987. Not content with climbing to the top of the wall, some explored a network of spooky tunnels underneath the wall, with heavy metals doors at each end. Some then went on to the fort and had a dash round before the rains came. Jiayaguan Fort, built in 1372, was the last major stronghold of imperial China, the end of the 'civilised world', beyond which lay only desert demons and the barbarian armies of Central Asia.

Ascending the Great Wall

Betsy

Chris

Laura

Nick emerging from the caves

Great wall posers, Rogs, Ryan & G Rod

Hels underneath the Great Wall

Irony struck as we drove into Zhangye the next day, spotting a familiar tyre brand logo we pulled over to see if they had tyres in our size having struggled to find them in previous towns. While signing, drawing pictures and comparing tyres in the shop George darted in to say air was leaking from one of our tyres! One of the ones we had planned to replace had decided to give out at that very moment. Our luck wasn't quite in though as we couldn't find any in our size so the group went ahead to the hotel on a bus whilst we whipped the rear two tyres off and swapped them with the spares that we already had on the back. Crowds gathered on the busy road in fascination, always handy when heavy wheels need to be lifted back onto the rear of the truck, they were only too pleased to be able to help. A couple of hours later we rolled into Zhangye, drove past the hotel twice before finding it, then topped off the day nicely by spending the next hour doing a 45 point turn in a car park designed for scooters. Anyone for a cold beer or seven...?

Tyre change crowd

View from under the truck

The brake drums take their revenge on Rogs

Fitting shiny new parts!

Mid air window cleaning

Hmmm... how to get out of this one....

The group used the afternoon to explore Zhangye, the town where Marco Polo stopped for a year, local authorities honouring his legacy erected a statue of him. Also home to China's largest reclining Buddha, 35m-long in the Great Buddha Temple dating back to 1098.

Balloon transport

Julia and Cher working out

Jim on the parallel bars

Di & Pip

The following day we covered miles and miles of rather uninspiring motorway to Lanzhou, a city divided in two by the Yellow River. Not that we can complain, the Chinese road building machine has been busy, in previous years journey times have been much longer. It's easy to forget when undertaking such a big trip the time these vast distances will take to cover. It's all part of the journey and the days on the truck allow time to read, write, play cards, listen to music or just gaze out of the window, watch the world go by and contemplate life.

Lanzhou dumplings

Hels and Rogs, a bit muddy after shopping in the market

Lanzhou dragon at night

Elephants

Jeff, Rowan & Betsy

Puppies for sale

Group exercise

Rowan & the dragon

A short drive the next morning to Bingling Si and the Liujiaxia reservoir which at high water allows access to some Buddhist grottoes. A pleasant afternoon was spent on a small speedboat seeing stunning scenery around the lake, terraced hillsides and the grottoes, carved over a period of 1,600 years by sculptors dangling from ropes down the dramatic canyon walls.

Bingling Si Buddhist art

Mikkel

Later on we were at last rewarded with some beautiful scenery and exciting mountain roads, carving our way along the ridges, terraced rice fields lining every hillside. Shame it wasn't the right road or even the right direction. Our GPS only showing an arrow on a blank screen for the last couple of weeks and leaving a trail like breadcrumbs behind us. Onwards we went for a good 3 hours, searching for what was scheduled to be our last bush camp of the trip. The sun dropped over the hills and darkness fell quickly. We hadn't been choosy up to then but by that point beggars really couldn't be choosers so we pulled off the road at the first track we could, investigated on foot and decided we could make it work. A flat area to park and cook, and a further flat area 50m down the track for camping. The locals multiplied by the minute, you don't imagine the Chinese to be as curious about Westerners or white faces as other countries but in these rural parts they certainly were. We sought refuge in the truck as Wimbledon final updates came through by text from England and we enjoyed a delicious spaghetti bolognese near midnight feast. Slowly we, and the locals, went to our beds wondering where the road would take us the next day.

Stunning scenery en route to the bushcamp

Jody attracting quite an audience with her cheese grating

Shelagh and friends

Breakfast with a crowd

A five pronged attack to find our way to the correct road in the morning, sending GPS co-ordinates to the office, who were also using our location from Spot Tracker, pouring over maps, asking the locals and eventually resorting to switching on Hels UK mobile roaming to look at Google maps. It may sound extreme but we had so much conflicting information and no idea where we really were, or even whether to go left or right at the first turn. If you happen to use our GPS data in the future, the point marked 'Great Bushcamp', somewhere West of Lanzhou, should be disregarded. It all came good in the end and we headed back the way we'd come the day before, and then down a concrete road towards the dam and a small ferry port to barter our way onto the next available ferry. This involved much negotiation, playing good cop bad cop with George and the ferry officials. Us shouting and waving at George, him shouting at us and then the officials and them shouting and gesticulating angrily, us turning the engine off in a defiant stand that we would not be moved from the front of the queue which admittedly we had queue barged our way to. Bloody tourists hey. Eventually they tired of our antics and smilingly promised we would be on the next ferry as long as we moved a little to let some local traffic through, which of course we obliged. Once the other side we had a unusual shorter than expected journey to Xiahe, at nearly 3,000m above sea level and set in a beautiful mountain valley, we were relieved to be back on course.

Boarding the ferry

Nice day for a cruise

George is the boat driver?

Trying to squeeze a few more in

Xiahe, in Gansu province, used to be part of the Tibetan region of Amdo but locals still consider themselves as part of it, often we were asked if it was our first visit to Tibet. It really was as close to being there without being, monks wandering the streets in their crimson robes, juniper incense in the air, Tibetan food and crafts for sale and women wearing traditional dress carrying their babies on their backs with swathes of colourful fabric. Some awoke at sunrise and walked the 3km kora (pilgrim path) around the perimeter, joining the local pilgrims spinning hundreds of prayer wheels. We enjoyed a tour of the Labrang Monastery, the largest monastery outside of Lhasa and the most important outside of Tibet, visited by thousands of rural Tibetans every year who come to pray, prostrate themselves and seek spiritual fulfilment. An English speaking monk guide showed us around, although you had to fine tune your ear to pick up everything he was saying, the words melting into a chant like sound. The tour ended with a quick look around the largest temple that can seat over 1,000 monks and which we saw with around 200 at morning prayer all chanting in rhythm, similar in sound to an orchestra of didgeridoo's, deep and resonating, mesmerising us all. It was a wonderful chance to experience a taste of Tibet for a couple of days.

Chris and Gill

Jody, Gill and Gareth up early

Labrang monastery complex

Nick

Popular Nomad restaurant in Xiahe

Prostrating, immense religious devotion

Perhaps rather optimistically we decided to try and find one last bush camp en route to Xi'an. We woke to a drizzly, damp cold day which didn't improve, even once we'd dropped down from the mountains. Gloomy faces peered out of the windows in the back, wondering if they would be forced to camp in the rain. Some hasty research and we managed to arrange a lovely homestay in the Maiji Shan (haystack mountain) area, set among wild and lush green hills. It was a literal breath of fresh air from driving into hectic big cities for a night. Nestled amongst the forest we divided into basic rooms across 3 houses with rock hard beds and enjoyed an evening in one of the houses small restaurants.

We now seem to have tunnelled our way to Xi'an (and our 3^rd province Shaanxi), an astounding number of tunnels along the way, some more than 7 miles in length and totalling at least 50 miles. Small sections inside with spot lighting and pot plants giving drivers some light relief from the endless dark hole ahead, a nice touch. Road signs and general translations are a constant source of amusement in China, one particular favourite which passed by too quick to photograph must have been translated with the help of a passing Scot, reading “Tool Ahead, Slow Doon”.

It's not just the road signs that keep us amused

Apart from a wasp sting on the bottom for Hels whilst driving to keep her on her toes that's about all the adventures for now. We're off to see the Army of Terracotta Warriors in the morning and then to Chengdu to say hello to the pandas.