Unearthly Delights

Mati Temple

It was the Labour Day public holiday, and the hordes were out in force.

I whizzed down the cold hills from the Mati Scenic Area, after being blown away by the magnificent grottoes there, and stopped near Mati village, at the famous Temple.

Mati means "horse hoof," and the legend goes that in ancient times the Tibetan King Gesar rode his winged flying horse Tianma down from the heavens, and it left a huge hoof print on the stone here, which became a revered site, and eventually they built a temple around it.

The temple itself is another Buddhist masterpiece. Much of it is carved and built into a cliff face. They didn't do temple building the easy way in those days, they demonstrated their true devotion through stunning architectural and artistic feats.

Besides the cliff temples, there's a bunch of other ancient temple buildings in the compound.

The main gate

Just imagine trying to build these things. With no machinery.

It's auspicious to drink the water from this well.

This is an example of how safe and secure I feel here. I left my bike outside the temple, up against a tree, fully loaded up, without even a wheel lock on it, and went in to explore the temple for ages. I knew nothing would be touched.

It was a pretty straightforward ride to Zhangye that afternoon, my next destination, a town of about half a million. It was about  60 clicks, but some of that involved a nice roll down some long gentle slopes. The elevation of Mati is about 2600m, Zhangye is way lower, at about 1500.

Cute mudbrick villages

The blossoms are still out

Eventually I reached the dry, vast plains

Zhangye

Zhangye is one of the most important outposts of northwestern China. It lies in the centre of what is called the Hexi Corridor, which is basically a traversable and relatively arable long and narrow stretch of land that sits between the high mountainous Tibetan Plateau to the south, and the vast high steppe region of Mongolia to the north.

I've been riding right through the corridor, turning off at various places along the way.

As a result of its strategic location, Zhangye was often a battleground, with regular fighting occurring between various Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur kingdoms over the centuries. It was also, of course, an important outpost along the Silk Road, which ran right through the corridor.

It was late-lunchtime when I arrived on the outskirts of the city.

Another delicious  jiaozi soup, basically steamed onion gyoza in a tasty veggie broth. So bloody good.

Caramelised onions and various bits and pieces

My lunch view

I found a hotel on the outskirts of town. You can hire the room for a few hours, and you get the "o'clock" rate.

Note the clock telling Beijing time. Believe it or not, but China has only one time zone, and, surprise surprise, it's all set to Beijing time. This is pretty ludicrous, considering the distance from the far east to the far west in China is around 5000km, which would normally be a time difference of about 3 hours.

But it's all about Beijing 'round 'ere mate, and what's most convenient for the centralised administrative system, which has its heart and soul way over there.

Hotel lobby

I ripped this guy off the back of my neck as soon as I got into my room. Must've hopped on for a bite while I was camping, or sitting under the trees somewhere or other.

Tiny electric scooter

Tucking into a duck, with gloves no less.

More delicious pasta, the original, Chinese way. You do know that pasta originally came  from China right? Not just spaghetti, ie. noodles, but lots of other types of pasta too. The Venetian trader Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy all the way from here. In fact, good ole Marco actually lived right here in Zhangye for a year in the late 1200s, and stayed in China for a whole 17 years.

For the first time since way down in southern Yunnan it was warm enough in the evening for people to sit outside.

Downtown Zhangye

Bummer, it was closed

Beautiful stupa

Finally Resting

I've been going hard. I've been riding every day for the past 10 days, so today I decided to really chill. I'd actually take more rest days if I could, but I have my visa limit, and need to be out of China in a month or so.

It was so good to do nothing for most of the day.

I spent the morning at home, writing and chilling.

In the arvo I rode the 5 clicks into the centre of town to see one of the most important and beautiful Buddhist temples in the whole of western China, the Dafo Temple.

One of the Zhangye city gates

Random street snaps

This electric bus has been made to look like an old tram

Pedestrian mall leading to the temple

Dafo Temple is significant because, not only is it ancient, having been built in 1100, but also because it contains the largest reclining clay Buddha statue in the whole of Asia. Signor Polo himself talks about seeing the giant Buddha in his own book about his travels, Il Milione, or, as it's known in English, The Travels of Marco Polo.

Temple gate

The temple itself is made completely of wood, and is a sight to behold.

Here, allow me to zoom in for you

Every single panel in the building is carved or painted with exquisite ancient Buddhist art

Stepping inside that ancient place, and seeing the size of the Buddha, just blew me away, which I know I say a lot, but I just can't bloody help it. It was just so powerful to be in there, and see with my own eyes what those artisans created here, over a thousand years ago.

As usual, there were no photos allowed inside, so I had to consult the web.

The eyes really got me.

And there wasn't just one chilled megaBuddha in there. There were loads of other incredible statues, huge ones, all over the place.

To get an idea of size, as you can see, the Buddha is lying on his side, and his feet were also lying sideways, one on top of the other. The statue is so big that when I went up to the feet, I could stretch my arms above my head, and still not even be high enough to match the width of just one foot.

See the guy down there?

Yeah, it's so huge, and the sheer size of it really affects you when you go in. You feel so small in comparison, just a human speck, up against this massive artistic and spiritual wonder.

It's very special and beautiful to spend time in these places, it's really cosmic, I'm telling you. You just can't not be affected by the immensity of it, yada yada.

The temple complex itself is also huge, with loads of other temples, shrines, stupas, gardens and other delights all over the place.

And a few of the buildings have been converted into Buddhist art museums, and you can imagine the riches inside there. Unbelievable.

Not bad carpentry huh?

This girl was playing a guzheng, a traditional instrument played with the fingernails and a plectrum. Sometimes the left fingers are used to press down on individual strings behind a bridge, to create a bend or vibrato effect on certain long notes. The plectrum is also sometimes used to play tremolo, ie. playing the same note many times in quick succession, before moving on to other notes.

It's a haunting and beautiful instrument, and is tuned to a major pentatonic scale.

In case you were wondering.

Detail on one of the many stone steeles that are erected in corridors in different parts of the complex.

I chatted with a young mum and her two kids for awhile, they were so sweet, and had loads of questions about what I was doing. I asked the kids if they wanted to hop on the back of my bike and ride to Kazakhstan with me, and they both squealed "yes!!!"

I mean, may as well, I'm carrying everything else on my bike anyway, may as well chuck a coupla kids on there too.

There's cash in this country. China is a fully developed superpower, make no mistake about it.

Badminton's big here. So are pagodas.

More stunning woodwork

I bought these cassava cakes straight out of the pan. They had some sort of palm sugar inside, and were so hot that I steamed my mouth. Ouch. But so delicious of course.

Yeah, eventually Roman did. But not before he'd drugged, abused and raped. Allegedly. Didn't matter that they were just teens, or pre-teens, and he was decades older, and a powerful filmmaker.

Ah, but that's another sad sordid story.

What a treat

My little hotel on the outskirts of town

I stopped at a Muslim bakery stall, and one of the customers insisted I try this "cake." It's not that sweet, but is super super heavy and rich, with an unusual semi-savoury flavour that sorta grew on me. Muslim bakers use a particular spice in their buns and breads here, and I'm not sure what it is yet, but it's very distinct and a little bitter.

It took me 2 days to eat this.

And I tried the seabuckthorn juice just because. It was okay, tasted a little like orange juice with a bit more of a rich flavour. Seabuckthorns are little yellow berries used in traditional medicine for digestive and skin problems, and heart stuff.

Zhangye Global Geopark

I was so excited the next day, because I was off to visit this most incredible World Heritage-listed Geopark, a national park deemed globally significant due to its unique and stunningly beautiful geology.

Heading out of Zhangye

Smooth, long and easy cycle paths led out of the small city, for at least 20 clicks.

Interesting silos

Yeah, it would prove to be extra extraterrestrial in there

At least a mural. That's pretty rare on these new highrises

These guys were just sitting there, all ready to hug.

Nice scenery en route

There's a little town close to the Geopark, to service the 2.5m tourists who visit annually. Yep, 2.5 million. It's actually quiet season right now, phew. July and August are the big months.

Sculpture on the way in to town.

Kitschy tourist development

I found a small hotel run by a lovely old couple. They had a beautiful jade fish.

The old man suggested I rest, and head off to the park later in the day. I'd already planned on doing exactly that. He said he'd drive me over to the entrance. What a sweetie.

I went off for food, and then rested for a short time. It was quite warm, relatively. The temperature's been picking up day by day for the last week or so. It's actually been a bit of a relief for me, that bitter cold wind can do your head in after a while.

Due to the high volume of tourists in the Geopark, everything's organised to get people in and out as efficiently as possible.

Some people were dressed as if they were going on a treacherous long distance hike, whereas, in fact, they were going on an air conditioned bus to a series of lookouts and boardwalks, and wouldn't be leaving the paving.

Others were dressed all ready for their photoshoots.

Sci fi.

More sci fi.

And then off we went on our brand new bus. They drop you off at the first lookout spot, and you can stay as long as you want, and then you just catch another bus to the next spot whenever you're ready. Perfectly efficient and comfortable.

Pics from the bus

A pic from the first lookout

And with the tourists included ...

She turned around just as I snapped. Loads of women were decked out in long (or short) dresses.

Rubbish bin blending in

There's Bactrian camels out this way, the two-humped variety. I know that for a fact because I've seen them before, some distance south from here, on another trip.  But these concrete ones are all I've seen of them this time around.

By the way, we're right on the edge of the Gobi Desert here, the fifth largest desert in the world. When I first saw it this time I was very happy to greet it again.

I said, "allo gobi."

Btw, the largest 2 deserts in the world are in the Antarctic and the Arctic, surprisingly. Third largest is the Sahara, and then the Arabian Desert, which pretty much covers the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. Then there's the Gobi.

The Great Victoria Desert in Australia is ninth largest. It's nowhere near Victoria, but is roughly half in WA and half in northwestern South Australia, on the northern border of the Nullarbor Plain.

So yeah, here we are in an incredible geological wonderland, created by the tectonic uplifting of colourful sedimentary layers, that had been deposited here for the last 24 million years.

I'll let your fingers do the walking.

Check out all the buses

Classical music was wafting across some of the boardwalks, with the speakers made to look like rocks. Sometimes it was actually quite beautiful, but most of the time it was super over-the-top orchestral, cheesy and too loud.

Very tasteful architecture

Staggering

As the sun began to dip the light became even more beautiful.

I met a Polish couple, Martina and Lukas, and their Chinese guide Vivienne. Yay! I got to have a conversation in English! They were so sweet, we chatted for ages, and enjoyed the sunset together.

I really like them, we might catch up where they live, in Wrocław, one day. Or in Oz. They have a whole six weeks to spend in China, which is unusual for working Europeans, and are making the most of their travel, as they're planning on having kids relatively soon.

Travel becomes slightly more expensive then.

Miles from the action

Exit through the gift shop

'Tis indeed a long gift.

Back on earth, and walking back towards town, past the spaceships.

My new friends headed back to Zhangye, and I went searching for more delicious food, and spent the night in the little tourist village.

The surreal and vast beauty of this national park was every bit as stunningly grand as I'd hoped for.

Such exquisite unearthly delights.

My Cycle Cycle

You know, despite the fact that on this type of journey every day can be quite unpredictable, I sorta have a little daily routine, strangely. Not that I've planned it that way, but over the months that I've been on the road cycling, moving from place to place, it's sort of just created itself.

I never set an alarm, and lately have been waking around 8 or so. I get up and have a little wash, but not necessarily a full shower, because I generally do that in the arvo, after a big day's cycling. Whether there's gonna be hot water or not is anyone's guess, and I'm fine with whatever. And even if there is hot water, doesn't mean you're gonna be able to control the temperature in a way you'd like - it might just be scalding hot, with no way of reducing the temperature - or not hot enough.

I definitely prefer to have, at the very least, running water, but even that's not always on offer. Sometimes it's just a trickle.

I've generally got some food with me for brekky, maybe some fruit, some type of bread, pastry or crackers, or even noodles or nuts or something else to eat.

It probably takes me about an hour or an hour and a half to be packed and ready to go.

The packing itself is actually so quick, I know where to put everything, and loading the bike takes me about 2 minutes. I've done it so many times now I could do it with my eyes closed and my nose pegged.

By 10 or 10.30 I'm on the road, my filtered water bottles are full, and I've got something to snack on for when I get peckish. When I get properly hungry I'll just stop and grab a meal somewhere.

I generally have an idea of where I'm headed, with a rough route, but, as much as I sometimes like rough routes, (come on, behave!), I like to play it by ear. Sometimes the wind's super strong, and it can be roaring in from any direction, so that has a big impact on how far I'll get on the day, and generally what my day will be like. And I'm not gonna know that before I get on the road, as forecasts can be so wildly random.

Out here the roads are now relatively straight, and the inclines are steady and long. Sometimes I'll be gently climbing for hours, and then I'll roll down the other side at three times the speed. Or sometimes it's relatively flat, just a few rises and falls, and maybe a few small passes during the day, like today.

It's a completely different riding vibe here than the steep forested hills I was riding up and over for so many months down south.

The roads are generally good in China, relatively, and out here, at least for a reasonable chunk of the time, there's been a fairly consistent road shoulder wide enough for me not to have to stress about traffic too much.

But not always.

Sometimes there's long safety barriers alongside steeper parts or big drops, and the barriers significantly narrow the width of the road shoulder, which can make it a little tricky at times if big trucks roar past at speed, because sometimes they can either suck me in towards them as they pass, or throw me towards the barriers. Then I have to really concentrate on keeping the bike under control, and be super careful.

But generally, if the headwind's not too strong, and it's not too cold, it's pretty cruisey riding out here, and doing eighty to a hundred clicks in a day is relatively straightforward. That's nearly double what I was doing at the start of this trip, all those months ago.

Cruisey riding gives my mind plenty of space to think about whatever it wants to think about. I just love it. I'll arrive at the end of the day having some sort of deeper understanding about something or other, including new thoughts or insights about the people I love, or about the culture of the people I'm with, wherever I am. As I roll along I'll ponder all sorts of questions about the land and its history, culture, biology and geology.

And not just thoughts about this place. I think of so many random things in the course of a day.

It's a precious gift, to have so much time and space alone that my thoughts have the chance to wander to wherever they want.

So I generally stop for lunch sometime between 1 and 3, I try to make it closer to 1 or 2, so I don't arrive during siesta time, and wake the cook and her (or his) family.

Then I just cruise till 4 or 5, sometimes 6, depending on what's around, and then look for somewhere to stay. I haven't been camping in China much, as the hotels are pretty cheap and comfy, and it's been super cold. So I'll generally be riding until I reach a town of some description.

Finding a hotel and then going through the check-in process can take ages sometimes. Most hotels in China aren't allowed to host foreigners, so first I have to find one that's registered to accept me. And then just because they're registered to accept a foreigner doesn't mean they've ever had one turn up before.

Like this afternoon, for example. I tried a couple of hotels, but they wouldn't accept me, and I eventually found the one I'm in now. But the woman at reception downstairs was so flustered by having to check in a foreigner, (she'd never done it before), that she became quite stressed about the whole thing.

I mean, we communicated fairly easily with an app, and I basically explained to her what she had to do, and what info she needed to get from me, as it's always the same, and it has to be provided to the local police.

But just seeing a passport that she couldn't read was a big stress for her. I used my app to translate it for her using the camera function (which is a super handy feature, I gotta say - you can point the camera at menus and signs etc and it'll translate them live into English, or I can do it the other way around for Chinese speakers), but even with that Chinese script staring at her it was all just a little too much for the poor soul.

But she did laugh about it all later though. Eventually.

So then, on an average day, I'll settle into my room, very very happily shower or wash, and then go find some food. If I see a grocery store or market stall anywhere I'll shop for food snacks for post-dinner, brekky and/or for the next day's ride, if I don't have anything already.

Out here in the sticks there's not much to do at night, so after dinner I'll generally head back to my room or some lounge area and just write or read or play guitar or maybe chat to someone somewhere.

In the cities and bigger towns, however, there's loads to see at night, so I'll generally stay out later.

So that's it.

That's a regular day-in-my-life, on the cycling road.

So mundane innit.

Nah, it's really not.

It may be routine-ish, but it's still bloody fascinating.

To The West End of Gansu

It's probably a three day ride to get to my next major destination, the incredible fort city of Jiayuguan.

The Ming era fort and Great Wall situated there are regarded as some of the best preserved ancient military sites in the whole of China.

Perched at the very western tip of the Great Wall, the fort also overlooks the incredible Gobi Desert, which I've been skirting as I've been riding northwest.

And a further 400 clicks down the road are the incredible Magao cave grottoes near Dunhuang, containing what are widely regarded as some of the world's finest examples of over 2000 years of Buddhist art.

But Im not excited about it.

Nah.

And I'm definitely getting ahead of myself.

'Cos there's a lotta pedals between here and there, I can tell ya.

And who, for Buddha's sake, knows what else?❤️

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9