Bloody Blasted

Parts 1 and 2

Laojunmiao

Wow. This is a super interesting town, and I stick out like a sore bum.

I just walked through the narrow one-lane market, and pretty much everyone who walked towards me did a double-take, some gasped, a few kids cried out, the oldies' eyes just suddenly widened. It's so funny.

I'm out in the sticks again, in a small mining and electricity town, there's power stations around, a few mines, a few factories.

Quite a few men, and some women, are getting around in their mining overalls, and everyone looks a little rough-around-the-edges.

I love it.

I just sat in a tiny little eating place and had some dinner, I was close to the open door, so whoever looked in could see me right there, and I may as well have been Hagrid or Chewbacca or even a gorilla, for the reactions I got.

Of course, people are super friendly, and will bend over backwards to help me. Some will bravely try and converse. Some will just burst into rapid-fire Chinese, expecting me to understand. That's how unused to a non-Chinese speaker they are around here. It's quite amazing.

Not only is this town well away from the secondary highway heading west, but it's also in the foothills of the beautiful ranges I've been skirting on my left side all day.

Today was a pretty easy ride. 70 clicks, with a strong wind at my back, and even though I climbed about 600m in elevation, I didn't feel it too much because that breeze was pushing me along nicely.

Those beautiful mountains

Lunch stop. Even though I can't read Chinese I'm now familiar with what eating places in tiny towns look like from the outside.

Lunch. Note the delicious soft goji berries in my green tea.

Electricity lines and power stations blocking the view

The beginnings of a little revegetaion

I found a hotel, and, as usual, it was at least a half hour rigmarole to get myself checked in, due to the whole foreigner registration process. And again, as usual, someone knocked on my door a half hour later and needed my passport again for awhile, to get more details etc etc, ho hum.

I've never been to any country anywhere in the world where the government is so obsessed with getting as many details about me as this one is - all of my personal details of course, but also all of my movements inside and outside the country, and answers to multitudes of questions about what I'm up to. That aspect of life can get pretty tedious here if you're travelling like I am - independently - and particularly if you're staying in places that never get foreign tourists.

It's not the people here, of course. Everyone is as kind as can be, and it's all done in a super friendly way. The problem is the centralised system, and people's fear of not doing what they're supposed to be doing. And with regards to foreigners, they don't actually know what the hell they're supposed to be doing, because foreigners never come here.

District police poster about violence and fighting. I had to translate it, it's quite interesting.

How about the bit about your crime having an impact on three generations of your family. Pretty intense huh.

These stunning curtains were at the top of my hotel stairs. I really wanted to sit down and watch the show.

Rubber toilet seat overlay

Ok, these are the trippiest sunflower seeds I've ever had. Someone gave them to me. They're peach flavoured. So, by some crazy trick, they flavour the actual sunflower seed inside the kernel, and it tastes strongly of peach and is even slightly peach-coloured. But the thing is, if you suck the whole kernel, it has no peach flavour whatsoever, and is completely sealed, like a normal sunflower kernel. How do they do it?

The narrow Laojunmiao market laneway

Yes of course I bought some, they remind me of the sort of plain sponge cakes my mum used to make

Sunset through my dirty hotel window

Yumen

Well, I'm finally in my hotel, and I hope no one kicks me out again.

I'll tell you about all that in a tick.

It was such a cruisey ride again today, because I was going downhill for the first third of it, and I had a super strong wing at my back for pretty much all of it.

It's so nice to have it easy like that sometimes.

Downhill, no traffic, and the wind at my back. Aaaaah.

Irrigated water makes its way down here. The snow on those mountains is melting right now.

The cute little town of Chijin

Classic old truckie stop. It was open.

This is what Baidu Maps looks like, just out of interest. This is my main navigation tool here. It's pretty much the same as all navigation apps, even if the language is different, you get used to it after awhile.

Gorgeous fragrant blossoms

The new, grand, and completely manicured small city of Yumen, with a population of nearly 200,000.

So I rolled into town and found a cheap hotel. It was so smooth checking in. Unusually so.

I unloaded my bike, and went up to my room.

After 30 minutes the receptionist came to my door and asked me for my passport again. Happens all the time, no probs.

So I settled in, showered, made an immediate mess in my room, played some guitar, read ... and then at about 6.30pm the receptionist returned to my door with another woman to inform me that I can't actually stay at this hotel, and gave me the name of another one to stay at.

"Oh fuck, really?" I thought. "I mean, do I really have to pack everything up again, load up my bike, and then go through the whole rigmarole somewhere else?"

Of course, it's not their fault. The receptionist was just unaware of the draconian regulations regarding foreigners. But the thing is, they also seemed unaware of what a hassle it was for me, or at least they pretended to, because they just kept smiling and asking me questions about my trip as if nothing was happening.

And so that was that. I packed up, and finally got down to the lobby to leave, and the receptionist and her daughter were down there waiting, so they could chat with me about everything under the sun, and do the selfie thing etc.

"Ah, the joyful bliss of ignorance," I thought to myself.

So I rode around to the hotel I was apparently able to stay at, but, surprise surprise, I couldn't stay there either, could I.

The receptionist there told me there was just one hotel in town that would accept devious aliens such as myself. So I just booked a room there online and that was that.

The problem was, it was twice the price, and the room's not as nice as my original one.

And the irony is that I'd already seen this hotel online earlier in the day, but didn't book a room because it was a ripoff.

Ah well, them's the breaks.

And yeah, I'm still talkin' Chinese prices, it's not like I'm in Paris or Geneva or anything.

But it's all pretty tedious from my side, all this fear and super strict compliance with silly rules.

And I also understand that it's serious business from their side, so I'm not surprised in the slightest. There's real consequences if you don't do what you're supposed to do, particularly when it comes to public security.

For them this type of situation only happens once, or very very rarely. But for me, it's happening regularly.

I finally made it to dinner about 8.30pm. The two tofu salads were particularly good.

Another urban sunset

The hotel that let poor poor pitiful me stay, and heavily charged me for the privilege.

Amazing lobby vase

A cross between a Western toilet and an Asian squat toilet. Never seen one like this before.

And a bum gun! Yay! Bum guns are the best invention ever, completely bypassing the need for toilet paper. This is the first and only one I've seen in China on this trip so far. China has gone the Western toilet paper way, which is a major bummer.

And ya better carry some of your own paper too, as public toilets don't have any.

Packaged cotton buds. It wasn't a sewing kit. This is what the higher price pays for.

Sand Blasted

Fuck, what an intense day.

I'm sitting in my hotel room cracking sunflower kernels, wondering how to describe the wild craziness of the sand storm that's been blowing at me all day, and actually still is, outside.

Last night, in Yumen, I looked at my map, and saw that there wasn't any settlements at all between there and here, a town called Guazhou, which is a distance of nearly 140km. So I thought that maybe I was ready to try making that distance in a single day, because there's just nowhere to camp much - it's all fenced off sandy plains, with almost no trees.

So I checked the weather, and most particularly the wind, as that has a huge bearing on what sort of distances you can cover. To my great surprise, the forecast was for very strong easterly winds, all day. And I'm generally heading west.

Perfect.

So I got up early (for me), and was on the road by 9.

I really didn't expect the scene that greeted me outside my hotel. The whole town had been enveloped in a swirl of dust and sand, the wind was blowing a complete gale, and visibility was really poor. The sun couldn't even make it through the mess in the air.

As I rode off I was immediately bombarded not only with a relentless gale, but with regular, much stronger gusts, that would hit me and my flimsy bike from all directions. It was a complete battle to ride in a relatively straight line.

For the first 40km or so my route headed north, which meant that the easterly gale was hitting me from right to left, throwing me off the road shoulder and on to the actual one lane road. And it just so happened that that particular part of the route was jam packed with large, speeding trucks.

It was totally trucked up.

The only way I could stay safe was to slow right down, so when the trucks threw me around as they passed, and when the blustery gusts did the same, I could maintain control of the bike and not get thrown onto the road and immediately processed into Polish sausage.

Or Polish mince, more like it.

With the bones still in it.

And just to add to the fun, dust and sand was blowing right across me, and getting into everything, such as my hair (didn't care), my face (didn't care) and my eyes (did care).

My poor waterey eyes are now completely bloodshot from the sand battering they've received. My sunglasses didn't have a hope in hell of keeping all that shit out. In fact, I realised after awhile that the reason for the worsening visibility on my ride wasn't because there was more and more dust and sand in the air, it was because my sunnies were accumulating a Sarah Lee layer huppon layer of dust on them, till they were completely non-transparent.

So after a couple of hours of that rip roaring joy, the world suddenly changed, when:

1. The road swung from the north to the west; and

2. There were roadworks, and suddenly no trucks or cars were allowed on the brand new road, which also had a nice wide shoulder. So suddenly I had the whole road almost exclusively to myself, for the next 80km or so, with a gale at my back.

And while the hype and dust and bluster of the sandstorm was still going on all around me, I could relax about the traffic, and suddenly I positively ripped along the road, often hardly pedalling at all.

What a bloody treat.

I got to this town, Guazhou, by 2pm, which means I covered the whole 140km in only 5 hours, the first couple of which were really tough, and sometimes very slow.

I've eaten, I'm out of the wind (for now), and I'm happy to have made it here in one piece.

Albeit a very dirty and sandy piece.

Leaving town in the morning gale

Trucked up

Dusty Stingfield

I didn't take many pics. I basically didn't stop, and only got off my bike once, to piss. It was too horrible out there.

Downtown sand-swept Guazhou.

Delicious lunch, with a bitter spinach salad.

After resting, I headed out for food.

A lovely family owned the little eating place. I ordered a seaweed and egg drop soup and steamed rice. They served the soup in a bowl that was seriously as large as a salad bowl. It was delicious.

I chatted with the parents and the teen kids. They were so sweet, and super interested in my journey, and my impressions of China. When I went to pay, they insisted that the meal was on the house. So generous and hospitable.

And then, after 47 selfies, I eventually left.

Decorations getting trashed by the wind

Another Day, Another Gale

Man, I just can't tell you how good it feels to be here.

I'm showered, fed and rested, and I've just been for a really interesting walk through the centre of this large town of Dunhuang.

It's a fascinating place.

I left Guazhou this morning, and the conditions were almost identical to yesterday's - a wild dust storm blowing fine sand everywhere, a super strong easterly wind (although not quite as strong as yesterday), and me needing to head north, so the wind was blowing right across me.

But hey, when you've done it once, you're less fazed by it, you know what to expect.

It was tough though.

My route headed north for about the first hour and a half, and then, again, headed west, so the wind was eventually at my back, and I covered ground quickly.

But, unlike yesterday, I only got to enjoy that for an hour or so, because the wind switched, and I was then suddenly facing a strong headwind - but not as strong as my tailwind had been, luckily.

And that was how it stayed for the rest of the day. I rode 120kms to get here, it was pretty tough riding, and now I'm well and truly ready to reenergise.

I've ridden pretty much the whole length of the desolate and windy province of Gansu now, over 1500 clicks. And that's after already riding another 600 through the hilly Yunnan province.

My body is ready to chill.

Brown sky

Brown plains

Just brown

Ancient tower

Village entrance. Note the woven reed cross stand.

Very sandy

Ancient Buddhist monk meditation cell.

City gate

Dunhuang

Wow. I've finally found a hotel I really like.

An old building with character, with stone walls and no lift.

Besides my little Tibetan homestay in Xiahe, a few places in Yunnan, and a couple of hostels, pretty much every hotel I've stayed in in China on this trip has been the high rise type, with marble lobbies and mirrored lifts, and the ubiquitous cigarette smoke-sullied carpeted hallways and bedrooms.

This is quite the opposite.

I have an airy room overlooking a semi-busy street, and Arabic and Chinese music seems to be playing almost 24/7 from somewhere down there, I love it.

Dunhuang is a small city of a couple of hundred thousand human souls, but there's infinitely more of them floating around in the ether, from its ancient past as a major trading post on the Silk Road.

These days it's a tourism hub, with people coming here from all over the Buddhist world to visit the Mogao Grottoes, one of the world's finest and most extensive collections of original Buddhist art.

So even though it's not the busy season yet, the town centre's still buzzing with people from many other parts of China, almost all of them here for a day or even less, and all wanting to eat and shop.

There's also Buddhists from Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

My street's only a five minute walk from the action.

Bunny home on my street corner.

The night food and craft markets seem to go forever, down various streets and laneways all over the place. So interesting.

Cave art reproductions

Crystal mining loot

The food is super meat heavy here. It's all grilled over coals, fried, baked, you name it.

The balls're definitely not in his court anymore

The dried fruits are amazing here. All sorts of things.

Daddy

Junior

Grandpa (deceased)

This Aries is a little hot over the collar

I vowed not to drink Tsingtao beer ever again, because the last can I drank tasted like it'd been bottled in the tailings dam of the local arsenic factory. But the woman at the eating place just grabbed me this when I ordered a beer, it was a different product of theirs, and, actually, it was pretty damn good. Especially on a balmy eve.

Beautiful Silk Road-themed mural.

This is a Chinese bakery chain that I've dangerously discovered. Their products are incredible, and I'll eat as many of them as I can while I'm here. I actually know that for a fact, I can feel it in my sugary creamy custardy bones.

This woman was doin' her thing way before Jimi Hendrix was even a twinkle in the eye. She's playing a pipa, a Chinese lute, and would've had the crowd pumping doing it like this.

The image has become a symbol of this town, based on many paintings and sculptures in the grottoes.

They really care for their bunnies here.

No, I'm not gonna say it. Stop it.

Shrimp and shellfish. Reminds me of Cambodia. Who knows where they've come from, we're in the middle of a landlocked desert here. Local aquaculture, I guess.

It is actually an oasis town though, so maybe there's underground water supplies.

Local mosque

More Romanesque sculpture

Yet another Fantastic drink.

It's All History Now

The area of Dunhuang originally belonged to local tribes of various descriptions, and first came under Han Chinese rule when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty took over in around 120 BC.

It was the westernmost garrison town of the Hexi corridor, that relatively narrow strip of land that stretches between the mountains of the Tibetan plateau to the south, and the Mongolian steppe to the north. So, strategically, it was extremely important to control the area, as it provided access to the huge but vulnerable fertile Chinese plains.

Even though it was a military garrison and major fortifications were built to defend it, it was such an important place strategically that over the centuries there were still many battles here, and the area came under the control of various groups, including the Xiognu (who ruled the area before the Hans as well), the Tibetans, and the Turkic Tuoba people.

Uyghurs eventually took over the area in 911 (I guess it was quite the emergency), and the Uyghurs formed an alliance with the Hans to  allow continued trading and access.

Kublai Khan's crew took it in the 1200s, along with the rest of China.

The Silk Road was a hugely important trade route between the West and the East, but when China became a major shipping power in the 15th Century, it was vastly cheaper and more efficient to move goods via southern shipping routes. The Silk Road, as a major trading route, then slowly died in the arse.

If you walk around town it looks like the population is quite diverse, and you see Hui Muslims, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians and other groups selling produce and crafts around the place. But actually, the population of the city is 98% Han.

Artfelt

The main reason I came to this place though, besides all the other good things, was to witness the Buddhist art masterpieces at Mogao Grottoes, with my own sandblasted bloodshot eyes.

The art is absolutely soul bursting and mind blowing, and I'll show it to you in my next gripping episode of "Yeah, Yeah, It's Another Incredible Place, Yada Yada," which follows on from my very successful previous series, "Yada, Yada, It's Another Incredible Place, Yeah Yeah."

But until then I'll be super busy trying to get gritty and annoying brown sand out of my nasal passages, fingernails, and other parts of my body that (until now) I didn't even know existed.

But for now, whilst firecrackers explode rapidly outside, it's time for me to further explore this surreal desert outpost❤️

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