Galed Into Insignificance 3

My Hood

My little hotel was in a super interesting district.

Right across the road was the main market, a fascinating place to explore, because there was so much there that I'd never seen before.

Again, I appeared to be more of an attraction than the wares. If stall owners didn't smile and squeal at me so much I'd swear they hated me for taking their shoppers' attention away.

More caps (doppa) than a Trump text

So much new fashion

Sale away

It was magic checking out these carpets

Another veritable feast. I've had many bowls of jiaozi soup lately, it's a staple here, although every one is different. This one had loads of fungi, beans and tofu in it. And the chilli was combustible.

So many bright colours.

Spices and medicines, many of which I've never seen

Silkworm cocoons. Where there's mulberry trees, there's silkworms. Where there's silkworms there's silk. Where there's silk there's a Silk Road.

Beautiful building design

Doesn't look like China around here does it? But it well and truly is. You just need to look down the street, at all the police vehicles, or at the police on the street, many of whom stop and question people, seemingly at random.

Red date juice. It was delicious, watered down and chilled with ice. It constantly flows through the yellow hose and then into the hole in the fridge, and goes round and round, and gets cooled every time on the way through. So cute. They just fill up the cups for you as needed.

Plastic waste is a massive problem in China. It's absolutely everywhere. You get bags, cups, straws and other unnecessary plastic rubbish thrown at you whenever you buy any tiny thing. Another item on the list of things to sort out here.

My drink spot .....

..... right next to the headscarf fashion store. So many options a-veilable.

Fried egg rolls

Literally Blown Away.

I've now been cycling for hundreds of days on this trip, and, as you probably know, I've faced all sorts of challenges on the road at different times.

But today was, without a doubt, one of the hardest of them all.

Looking at the big picture just for a minute, I've gotta say that there's loads of different things that can affect any particular riding day.

Firstly, there's the condition of the road itself, how good or bad it is, whether there's a shoulder, and whether the traffic's heavy, light or even nonexistent.

Then there's the incline, whether it's a steep up or down and hugely swervy, or a gentle slope, or undulating, or even totally flat.

How my body's feeling at a particular time is obviously important too, and late on a long riding day fatigue can make it really tough.

And then there's the wind factor.

Out here in the flat desert lands that's become the number one thing - and it can make my day incredibly easy, or seriously challenging.

I've experienced some brutal winds on this part of the trip, and been battered by sand and dust storms that've made it almost impossible to ride.

But today was next level.

The wind was so brutally fierce that it actually became physically impossible for me to ride. It was so strong that it was also almost impossible to even walk with my bike, and just attempting that, which I was forced to do for a long time, was a hugely challenging physical effort.

It was quite still when I left Turpan, to continue my northwesterly route to Ürümqi, the large capital city of Xinjiang Province.

Remember Turpan is situated in a geographic salad bowl, at over 150m below sea level, so I spent the first couple of hours of the ride climbing out of it, and then continuing to rise in elevation.

The vast expanse of western Xinjiang Province. The sky was clear and the land stark. No gritty sand storms in sight.

Arabic Mandarin signs are now commonplace as I head further into Muslim lands.

At one point along that first stretch, a brand new empty ute stopped in front of me on the road, and the driver kindly asked me if I wanted a lift with my bike. I thanked him but said no thanks. He didn't seem to want to take no for an answer, but eventually drove off.

Later in the day I was to rue that moment.

The traffic was pretty light, and eventually I got to a place where my road, the only one available to bicycles, was completely barricaded and closed. That happens in China. They don't just do major roadworks and allow the traffic to continue around them. They just close up the whole road, sometimes for months at a time.

Luckily for me there was a police booth at the barricade, and so I went to ask if I could go through the barricade anyway, which they've allowed me to do in the past, because bikes aren't allowed on the expressways.

But there was no one there. Hmmmm. I had a snack, and turned around with my bike and started to think about what the fuck I should do next, when suddenly a friendly policeman appeared from the booth and called me back. He'd obviously been sleeping. Sprung!

He said I could pass through, and helped lift Bewdy over the barricade.

I got the feeling that Bewdy appreciated being touched by another man for a change. But she wouldn't openly admit it to me.

The longest single lorry load I've ever seen in my life. And it's just one blade of a massive 3-bladed wind turbine. I estimated at the time that this one load was as long as four back to back full length semi trailers, including their front cabins.

And a lot of them went past, all loaded in exactly the same way.

There were a few wind turbines about, but as I rolled along the road I noticed the most humongous collection of them in the distance, all starting in a line at one place, and then stretching right off to the horizon, as far as the crosseye could see.

As I rode towards them it seemed they were multiplying. There were literally hundreds of them.

And then, wham!, it happened.

At the very moment that I finally reached the beginning of them, the wind hit me like a ton of mudbricks.

Suddenly, and completely by surprise, I was now riding headfirst into a complete gale. It was an absolutely unbelievable and immediate change. It was like finally getting to the top of the hill at the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuṯa, Central Australia, and stepping into a fierce gale.

But this gale was a million times stronger

I had to switch to my lowest gear straight up, and suddenly could now only ride at an agonisingly slow crawl. Sometimes huge gusts would blow me right across the road, and not just onto the lane next to the shoulder I was trying to ride within, but right across to the other side of the road.

But, thank Buddha, Allah, Jesus and all the goddesses, there was no traffic around at all, because that whole wind tunnel, disguised as a road, was closed to everyone but me. And the very very occasional service vehicle.

At least that.

I stopped here, in the shade under the expressway, for a little while. But it was so windy and unpleasant that I couldn't stay very long at all.

I tried to carry on in a grindingly slow forward movement, but the gale, and the gusts, just got stronger and stronger.

And then they became too strong. After a couple of close calls, when the wind threw me and my bike towards a huge drop off on the side of the road, and I had to slam on my brakes, it then actually suddenly threw me around till I was almost facing the road behind me before I could stop.

True story.

I gallantly tried to be heroic for awhile and push on, but resistance was useless. It eventually became impossible.

I then struggled trying to walk the bike for awhile, but the wind would sometimes catch it and almost throw it out of my hands, or slam it towards my body. It was pretty hellish, and really challenging physically.

And the thing is, it's not that I had a huge litany of alternatives in front of me. It was the complete opposite. I had none. I was on a road all by myself, no traffic was going past, and there was no way of me getting to the distant highway, where the vehicles were, to try and get a lift, because not only were there no roads leading to it, but it was also completely fenced off by impenetrable barriers. I am in Xinjiang after all.

Camping was impossible, there was no shelter anywhere, and there’s no way I could’ve put a tent up in that gale, and probably no way it would've stayed up anyway.

Actually there was one alternative option. Turn around and ride back, with the wind at my back, and then carry on all the way back to Turpan.

But after all my effort so far, that option wasn't particularly palatable, and was the absolutely very very last resort.

So, what to do?

Just try and keep going, bit by bit, and see what happens.

So on and on I went, at an excruciatingly slow pace, muscles sore and straining, hurling expletives at Mother Earth whenever she nearly threw me and Bewdy to the ground. Which she did over and over again.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t hurl the expletives. They hurled themselves, spewing forth from my mouth with no resistance whatsoever. And when I think about it, they weren’t directed as an insult to Pachamama for being such a fucking bitch today, but were more of an exclamation of incredulity at the immensity of her overwhelming power and might.

And, of course, I’m just a flying grain of sand to her. She had galed me into insignificance. The wind was so strong that its deafening roar drowned out the sound of pretty much everything else. I could explete as much as I wanted, but my loud fucking just disappeared, splattered against her great wall of sound, and instantly vaporised into nothing, like piss on a hot rock.

And the noise, and the gale, didn’t stop for a second. It didn’t stop for hours. It was relentless.

Looks quite peaceful doesn't it.

On and on I struggled.

And then, suddenly …. nothing happened.

And then, finally, it did.

I reached a recently closed police checkpoint, and, at last!, could get some shelter and rest from the wind for awhile.

But there was noone there.

Eventually I walked off again into the gale, and then for awhile could actually ride along a brick outer wall, which provided some shelter.

And then, there it was, my salvation. Another police checkpost.

I would never have imagined that I would ever string those two short sentences together in a non-sarcastic way.

But there it was, a busy police checkpost, and an opening in the wall for me to get to it.

It’s so funny when you’ve been struggling with such a physically and mentally demanding gruelling task, and then suddenly you reach a place like this, where all the air conditioned vehicle-bubbles and the tour buses are parked up and people are buying melons and dried apricots at the stalls, sipping iced teas, and walking around trying to stop their sunhats from launching themselves into the desert.

I think that’s what‘s called a juxtaposition. I’m not totally positive about that, but that’s juxtaposition I’m taking about the whole matter right now.

So anyway, I knew exactly what I had to do.

I had to get a lift.

And I knew exactly what I had to do to get it.

Visit the cops.

Of course I knew that visiting the police checkpost building would mean I’d have to physically replay the same weary old podcast of “My Life As A Bicycle Tourist, Who I Am, Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going and Where I’m Definitely Not Going, Don’t You Worry Guys,” all the while trying to answer their questions before they have a chance to ask them, trying to boost my ego by outwitting them with my cleverness, but knowing deep down that they’ll always find new questions for me that I haven’t thought of, generally because their questions have absolutely nothing to do with anything relevant whatsoever, and they’re only asking them because they’re supposed to be the ones asking the questions, and I'm the one who needs to answer them, xie xie.

But hey, going through that tired routine is like drinking a freezing cold coconut shake on a hot day in the desert, compared to trying to face that horrendous body and soul destroying gale again.

So of course I went through with it.

I also had a cold drink. This is the best flavoured tea I’ve ever had. And not just because of what I’d just been through to finally get my hands on it. Apricot skin tea is now my all time favourite drink in the whole universe.

The police were, as usual, incredibly helpful. After I described my predicament, one of them got up from his counter, nonchalantly slung his big semiautomatic weapon over his shoulder so it was hanging in front of his body, and left his secure room to come over and chat some more with me, and to practise his few words of English.

As he talked and laughed and moved around, right next to me, his death weapon sometimes clattered against the counter, or the wall, the pointy killer end of it swinging around in all directions, including towards his own face, and towards mine. He was completely oblivious to it all, and treated this very real very lethal weapon as if it were a plastic water gun at Songkran festival.

It was unfathomable to me. The first thing I thought of was, “what the fuck, watch out you fucking idiot!,” and then, “how can you be so blasé about it?,” and then, “maybe it’s not loaded,” and then, finally, “maybe it’s not real.” I honestly couldn’t understand his attitude to it.

Anyway, he eventually said he could help me, and then I followed him and his machine gun with my bike to the truck section of the checkpost, he immediately waved down the driver of the first smaller truck to come through, and basically ordered the driver to drop me at the next town, about 40 clicks away.

The driver was a young Uyghur guy, he didn’t seem to be too keen on the idea, but knew he couldn’t refuse a policeman. I felt a little bad about the whole thing, and gave the shy little guy some cash at the end of it all.

In fact, once we were on our way I discovered the driver was going all the way to Ürümqi, which I’d planned to ride to the next day. I immediately checked the weather app, and discovered that the forecast was for westerly winds for all of the next day, and even stronger ones than today.

Well fuck that! I’m not doing that again!

So I asked if I could stay on, and the young driver said he’d take me to where he was going in the city. That was fine by me, I’d ride to wherever I needed to go from there.

Beautiful views from the truck.

Chinese bullet train

Hitting the city in the truck ...

...and on my bike

He dropped me close to the centre of the city, and I had to ride another 20 clicks to get to a hotel I'd booked online from the truck. That took me another two hours, because it was peak hour, it was still windy (but much less) and, surprisingly for Chinese cities, Ürümqi isn't particularly bike friendly, for the most part.

I finally made it to my hotel, it was dark, and I went to get some food, and then strolled back.

Wow.

What a day it'd been.

I'd ridden 90 kms, most of which was headfirst into a gale. It'd been a huge huge challenge, and my body was reminding me of it already.

As soon as I finally laid down on my bed and closed my eyes I was immediately back on that highway, the roar of the wind and the constant struggle against it completely vivid and real.

But my fatigue was overwhelming.

It quickly overtook me.

And I died.

Back In The Big Smoke

So now I've got a little bit of time left to explore Ürümqi. It's a big city, the capital of Xinjiang Province, and a complete melting pot of cultures.

There's so many amazing things to see here.

My visa's nearly dead now, and I need to get to Kazakhstan in a few days.

Soon my China journey will be all over, suddenly, and I'll be in yet another completely different world.

Because, as we all know, there's just so many worlds in this world❤️

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