by Ray Kreisel
After another day of riding, I rounded a corner to see what looked to be an empty truck parked on the side of the road. Once I passed the first truck I could just make out another one on the horizon. Only later as I sat inside the cab, did I learn that this second truck was made in Hungary and driven by an older Chinese man, while the first truck was Chinese-made and driven by a Uyghur man from Kashgar. Both of these vehicles had broken down just a couple miles apart. The problem was that they needed replacement parts that could only be bought back in Yechen, Xinjiang, about 300 miles [500 km] away. Both drivers had already waited for five days. They thought that it would only require three more days before a friend returned with the needed parts. This land remains a long ways off from Federal Express and next-day air shipping. Everyone also had a corresponding different level of expectation and stress in situations like these. Just to complicate things more, major road construction blocked the Mazor pass, located 200 miles [333 km] ahead. This pass only opened to traffic three days a month in each direction. I knew that I would not make it to the pass on a day that it officially opened in my direction. Being that I traveled on a bike I hoped that I would be able to make it through anyway.
The older Chinese truck driver went out of his way to make sure that I had hot tea to drink and noodles to eat. I knew that he had an extremely limited amount of food left and little fuel for cooking, so I tried not to consume too much of his resources. The simple meal of noodles with a little chili sauce tasted wonderful. Unlike all the noodles that I had been eating, these had been properly cooked in a pressure cooker. Most all the truck drivers that travel in Tibet carry a full-size pressure cooker with them because they often become stranded on the side of the road for a day or two or spend the night camped out just off the road. They also carry a small blowtorch gadget that can be used to cook with. The blowtorch burns the same fuel as the truck engine. When it is lit, it roars like a demon from hell, with flames a foot [30 cm] long. It is often just aimed at the side of a pot of water or a pressure cooker to make boiling water for tea or noodles. Truck drivers also use the torches to weld metal parts of their trucks that have broken. In times like these I was happy to have my own independent transportation no matter how difficult things got. Each morning when I awoke I decided when and where I would travel, the decisions of other people never constrained me. I controlled my own movement, my own destiny.
Entering the Mountains of Darkness
As I climbed out of the Askin Chin, I entered into the valleys of the Kun Lun Shan Mountains. This range forms the northwest edge that separates the Tibetan plateau from the great Taklimakan Desert. I had shown my Chinese maps to many people along the way, trying to find out where I would be able to buy food and supplies. I knew that reality and maps often did not match. Some of the towns shown on my maps had been deserted many years before.
Hongliutan was the first settlement I entered after the Askin Chin. It consisted of more of an abandoned military base than an actual town. Most of the buildings were falling down, with windows broken and doors missing, but most importantly there was a place that I could buy food and get a bed to sleep inside. What passed for restaurants looked like broken down third-world shacks, a mix of plywood, sheet metal, and sheets of plastic all held together by a few strands of wire. Despite the run-down appearance I was interested in only one thing, a bowl of rice and some cooked vegetables. Han Chinese women from Sichuan Province ran both of the two eating establishments in town. For the last few weeks I had seen only a couple of women, this part of Western China was a land of male military personnel and truck drivers, not one of women, children and families. One of the things that I enjoyed the most about places I have traveled in the third world is the dirty snotty-nosed kids who run wild in the streets and villages. With kids it does not matter what language you speak as long as you can juggle or balance a stick on your nose.
“Lung” was one of the Chinese words that I did not know. Two Uyghur road workers tried to explain to me why it was a bad idea to sleep by the side of the road. I had stopped by a small stream to fill up my water bottles and take a break, when I met two young guys who spent their days fixing bumps and potholes on the roadway. Each member of their crew has responsibility for maintaining a few kilometers of the road. It looked like these guys were just relaxing by the creek and snacking on their daily lunch ration, a couple of pieces of hard bread in the shape of bagels. When I told them that I felt tired and was thinking about camping on the side of the road, they insisted that I must keep riding my bike, because the “lung” would descend from the mountains during the nighttime. They described some sort of animal that lived high up in the mountains. During the nighttime it descended to the valley to eat the sheep that grazed by the river below. They finally said that it would be okay as long as I carried a gun to shoot the “lung.” They seemed surprised when I told them that I did not own a gun. I had a feeling that I destroyed their image of the rough and tough American who carried a gun wherever he went.
A few weeks later I discovered what kind of animal a “lung” is. Kashgar is famous for its fur market, where you can buy a pelt from just about any animal in Central Asia. The shopkeeper happily showed me his “lung” pelts. The size of the wolf skin that he brought out shocked me. From the nose to the end of the tail, it must have been at least eight feet [2.5 meters]. It was now all too clear why the two road workers did not want me to sleep by the side of the road. When I finished looking at the wolf pelt, the shopkeeper pulled out half a dozen new snow leopard furs. Of the estimated 1000 animals that remained on the planet about 70 had been killed and sold to the shops in Kashgar. When I asked, the shopkeeper told me that he sold the snow leopard furs to people from every country: USA, Germany, Japan, France, England, etc.
Since Ali I had heard that major construction was taking place on the Mazor Pass. Mr. Lee had informed me that the construction crews only opened the road three days out each month in each direction. By the time that I reached the foot of the pass, I knew that the official days for traveling remained at least two weeks away. I figured that since I traveled by bicycle I could haul my bike around any missing sections of the road, besides I had no interest in waiting in the road construction camp for an extended period of time. By late afternoon I had stopped in a small shack near one of the camps to grab something to eat. A few of the workers told me that only five miles [8 km] separated me from the top of the pass. With this in mind I took off for the pass, I figured that since the sun had started to sink low in the sky most of the road workers would be finished for the day. I pushed my bike under yet one more turnpike that blocked the flow of motorized traffic and started the ascent. As I had expected most of the workers passed me by on their way back down to the camps. A quick climb brought me to the top, where I saw that the entire far side of the pass had been torn out, with shovels, picks, and bulldozers. From the top I plotted a course down the small foot trails and dozer tracks. As I gripped my brake levels with all the strength that I could draw on, I slowly made my way through the ultra-steep mounds of loose dirt and rubble. A little ways off to the right side of the canyon a large explosion rang out, shortly followed by a small trail of debris that slid down the mountain side. Thoughts flashed in my mind of the other times when I wandered into blasting areas on a roadside. I yelled down to a gang of workers below me, asking if they planned any more dynamiting for the sections of road farther ahead. Fortunately they reported to me that it looked all clear, there was nothing else going that afternoon. For the remainder of the descent I dodged a few bulldozers, wound my way through construction workers and hauled my bike across a couple landslides, all straightforward obstacles.
When I heard the thunderous sounds of large rocks being tumbled downriver by the enormous forces of the white water I knew that the river crossing would not be a trivial one. Leaving my bike behind I removed my socks and carefully placed one foot at a time deeper beneath the muddy brown water. By mid-stream it became difficult to keep my feet planted on the bott
om of the river bed, the swift current wanted to wash me downstream. I made mental notes of my planned course and returned to my bike. The tougher the river crossing the more loads I had to ferry across the river, I just could not carry as many packs in the deep white water. I pulled all the packs off of my bike except one. The first trips to the far side of the river went slowly but successfully. Once more I returned to get my bike and the final pack. I slowly worked my way through the water, first positioning the bike ahead of me, then moving one foot at a time forward. Once I reached mid-stream the deep water poured against the last remaining pack on the bike, the force pushing the bike downstream was more than I could handle, it started to knock me off balance. Once the water started to flow under the only part of the tires touching the ground, the bike floated up. I held on tight to the handlebars as the back end of the bike swung violently downstream. For a moment I thought the river would wash me, the bike and one of my packs down with it. I struggled to regain my balance and kept a tight hold on my bike. I hoped that no rocks would come tumbling downstream rolling over my feet or smashing into my legs. I surely had to move quickly in order to not get hit. With all the strength I had I managed to slowly make a couple more steps to higher ground and dragged the floundering bike behind me though the water. Once I reached the far side I dropped the bike in the middle of the road, unzipped the pack to empty the water I collect during the crossing, and collapsed on the dusty road surface. After the blood started to recirculate in my feet and toes, I began getting my bike and mind back together again.
Just before the village of Kudiyah I saw my first tree in two months. Kudiyah is a small Uyghur town, on the banks of a desert river. It was my first Uyghur town. I missed the spirit and magic of Tibet and the Tibetan people. I missed the prayer flags, the prayer wheels, and chanting monks. The Uyghur people lived in the desert for centuries. They did not like the mountains and did not know how to live in cold harsh climates. They built homes of adobe and surrounded them by small groves of poplar trees. The villagers planted each tree by hand, carefully maintaining each one. Any natural forests had been cut down long before, only cultivated ones remained. These practices have gone on for hundreds of years. Since Uyghurs follow the Islamic religion all the women keep their heads covered. In China this is usually practiced by wearing a light scarf over the top of their head, whereas in Pakistan where there is much stricter enforcement women cover most of their face. One of the byproducts of the hard life Tibetans live is general equality between the sexes. A young Tibetan woman can carry an 80 lb. sack of grain on her back just as easily as a young man. With the easier environment and the Muslim religion, this equality of the sexes disappears among the Uyghur people.
All day long I worked my way down out of the mountains. The valley grew wider, while the sand started to cover more and more of the tan and brown landscape around me and of course the temperatures grew hotter and hotter. Uyghurs on camelback replaced the Tibetans on horseback. The camels that I followed down the road seemed to let out an almost continual stream of farts as these seemingly awkward beasts moved along.
When I approached the desert, the sky filled with a thick gray haze, and I left behind the high-altitude deep rich blue skies of Tibet and the clear running streams and rivers. As the Kun Lun Shan Mountains faded away, the desert consumed all the horizon with flatness. The town of Pusar marks the location on the road where the transition takes place. It was the first town that had shops selling almost everything I wanted, peanuts, candy, noodles, and dried fruit. The town even had a local TV station. This was civilization. My reentry into the world that had I left behind months before had begun.
Riding on a flat road does not have the same kind of challenge that a mountain road has. Riding on the flat is just a matter of putting in time turning the pedals. I would check my maps, my speed on the bike computer and look at my watch, it all became predictable. As the temperature went up and up, so did my water intake. I drank gallons of the bad-tasting brown water that flowed in the rare desert streams, but I would only pee out a couple cups here and there. With the thermometer at 90F and higher, I would stop in the shade of the rare tree, or under a bridge. I would do anything to get out of the direct rays of the sun. During the middle of the day I would try to find a spot of shade to sleep in, preferring the somewhat cooler hours of the morning and evening to ride in.
Yarkant is the old name of the city that the Chinese now call Yechen. This oasis marked one of the main stops on the southern silk road to Xi’an in North Central China. Today a large military base, with ubiquitous concrete buildings that stretch for miles in every direction, sits on the edge of town. Most of the women wore the latest in Uyghur Muslim women’s fashion -bright red, blue, and pink sequin encrusted dresses, making the women easy to spot in this bleak desert environment. But the main thing that interested me was the ice cream for sale. With an unending 24-hours-a-day supply of electricity came certain luxuries, like refrigeration. The shops carried an assortment of ice cream in flavors from a tropical fruit bar, to a frozen block of brown ice with baked beans embedded in it. Unfortunately I had mistaken the latter for some sort of chocolate ice cream bar.
Yechen marked the first turn I had to make in 1200 miles [2000 km] of ridding. It did not require anything too tricky. I watched the kilometer markers on the side of the road count down to zero and made a left hand turn on to the last piece of road that would take me to Kashgar. From a little before Yechen the road surface had changed to asphalt. With a slight tail wind and paved road I could cover 100 miles [166 km] in a single day. That same distance in Western Tibet would have taken three or four days. The miles on this paved desert road became mind-numbing. For the first time on this trip, I just wanted to get to where I was going. For the months before, I enjoyed the process of moving ever closer to Kashgar even though it remained some 3000 miles [5000 km] ahead on the road. With Kashgar only a couple days ride away, I lost track of where I was and only watched the kilometers to Kashgar rapidly count down. I kept an eye on my bike computer to make sure that my average speed stayed high enough to keep on schedule. I stopped in the small villages for slices of watermelon and peach soda, doing everything I could to stay hydrated in the 90F heat. I was tired of riding, my entire body ached and I knew that Kashgar meant a place to rest and relax.
Life in the Civilized World
Once I entered the city of Kashgar, I headed straight for the Seaman Hotel. The guys whom I met back in Ali had informed me that the Seaman was a decent place to stay. It sat across from “John’s Restaurant,” where you could place international phone calls and get an endless supply of french fries delivered to your table. The Seaman actually occupied the old Russian Embassy complex. You could tell that the days of splendor and elegance had passed this hotel by long ago. When I got there the pool sat empty, while old age and gravity slowly peeled the remaining paint from the walls, but hot water flowing from showers and clean beds certainly made up for any deficiencies in the decor.
Over the course of the next week, I just rested under the shade of the umbrellas at John’s, eating french fries, ice cream, and Sichuan chicken. I knew that it would take a while to gain back all the weight I had lost in the past months, but I was anxious to start working on it. Most of the travelers in town had come up from Pakistan, traveling by bus on the Karakoram Highway. This rugged mountain road, which connects Pakistan and China, opened to foreigners in 1986. Nick Danziger tells an hair-raising tale in Danziger’s Travels of how he wrangled his way across the Chinese border from Pakistan to become the first Westerner to travel this road. He assured the Pakistani border officials that the Chinese had already given him permission to cross into China while he promised the Chinese that the Pakistani officials approved of his crossing. The Chinese police quickly pursued him a day or two after he crossed when the web of stories became uncovered.
While I stuffed my mouth with an unending stream of food, I saw a couple who looked somewhat familiar. Damien and Dominique called over to me. A
fter a moment I realized that the French couple whom I had met in Western Tibet sat across from me. They told me how they just arrived in Kashgar. Only 48 hours before, they had left Ali. They had ridden with a crazy Uyghur truck driver that made a non-stop high speed trip from Ali to Yechen. Talking to someone else who had lived through some of the adventures that I had just emerged from excited me. We had traveled the same roads, they just moved at a much higher rate of speed.
During my stay in Kashgar I met many travelers who had just come up from Pakistan and wanted to travel the route across Western Tibet and on to Mt. Kailash and Lhasa. When word got out that I had recently come from that direction, groups of people formed who wanted to talk to me about the details of making the journey to Lhasa. I tried to give a realistic picture to people as to what the trip would entail, but I always tried to caution fellow travelers of the dangers involved. The most dangerous problem with traveling from Kashgar to Western Tibet is that the altitude increases too much, too fast. Kashgar sits at an altitude of only 4,000 feet [1219 meters]. Once you leave Kashgar you will most likely have only a couple days until you enter the Askin Chin, which sits at an awesome 17,000 feet [5182 meters]. If your truck breaks down in the Askin Chin and you have any kind of altitude sickness there is no way out and no way down. When you cross a mountain pass you can always descend quickly in case you get altitude sickness. Since the Askin Chin consists of a high altitude basin there is no way down. Every year one or two travelers either dies or comes close to death on the road through the Askin Chin. While I rested at Mt. Kailash I heard about a Japanese traveler who almost died in the Askin Chin. After I presented my view of what the journey would entail, most people decided not to travel on the road to Western Tibet but rather opted for a safer route through Qinghai Province and on to Lhasa. Nevertheless a small handful of hard-core folks started asking for even more details of how to survive the trip. Just about all of these people were headed to Mt. Kailash.