taking the long way home

15km< xiahe – xiahe

16km 151 alti meter

again a cold rainy night in the tent. we ride into the village and check out the chinese, the muslim and the tibetan district with the labrang monastry.

horzang xinggo – 15km< xiahe

59km 673 alti meter

it rained hard all night and morning so we started late. the friendliness of the people around here is amazing as we see lots of smiling faces all day (although not all of them like to have pictures taken of them) while we cycle upstreams towards the big mountains.

15km> linxia – horzang xinggo

55km 429 alti meter

my speedometer doesn´t work proper anymore, so i couldn´t take a picture of the 30.000 km of this trip. the day started with some maintenances (new brake pads and some wheel tuning) before the downhill to town.

yongjing – 15km< linxia

67,9km 1347 alti meter

nice ride in this amazing landscape with farming terraces and a majority of muslim hui people.

lanzhou – yongjing

82,35km 886 alti meter

in the morning the bikes arrived at the train station. we left the not very friendly city following the river and then we headed into the mountains.

jiayuguan – lanzhou

before taking the train to the capital of the gansu province, we check out where the great wall takes its way east… we arrived late in lanzhou and on top of that were the bikes not on the same train!?

the staff from the train sells all kinds of gadgets and games…

… which keeps everyone busy for a while…

jiayuguan – the end of the great wall

on the way to the end of the great wall museum we passed a big muslim mosque and a buddhist temple. interesting to see that the different religions seem not to have any conflicts existing so close together. the fortress and the river mark the end of the great wall. beyond that starts the desert where the caravans of the silk road exchanged goods with the west.

chengdu – jiayuguan

to “survive” 33h on a train we booked the so called “soft sleeper” (4 beds in one small room) and it turned out to be quiet a smooth and enjoyable ride.

our “home” for almost 2 days.

big snow capped mountains in the background

sunrise…

chengdu – rest day

we checked out a couple of the outdoor stores in the area of the hostel and bought train tickets to jiayuguan. chengdu seems to be a big stoppover for tibet tourists. in our hostel stayed a couple chinese chengdu-lhasa-cyclists (we would have liked to take that route, but that seems for individual travelling not chinese people at the moment not possible!?)

meishan – chengdu

125,85km 212 alti meter

arriving in the big city after a fast smooth ride, although the road is not in a very good condition at times. nice to meet one of our chinese cycling friends again. he and his friend took us on a shopping tour around town and later to a good dinner place.

baoguo – meishan

87,25km 342 alti meter

tourist sights are not always easy to find! it took us about 1h to finally find the cliffs of the thousand buddhas. (which is a nice walk along the river and ends at the paper / printing museum.