Cycling Silk

cycling silk movie preview

2007-01-12T09:41:00.000-05:00

Here is a 3 minute movie preview of our bike trip! Check it out and let us know what you think.

the latitudes of home

2006-08-30T23:21:00.002-04:00

We came to China to explore - as much as our ignorance and inability to communicate would allow - the rhythm and pulse of life on the fringe. While a bike can take you beyond the beaten roads, boots let you avoid roads entirely. And with many villages in the Kham region of eastern Tibet (now considered Yunnan province) still inaccessible by road, we had a compelling reason to take to the trail. In the end we decided on a 15-day pilgrim's kora around the sacred Kara Karpo mountain range, which forms the eastern tip of the Himalayas and acts as a natural barrier between the Tibetan Autonomous Region (political Tibet) and Yunnan. On one side of the range the muddy slug of the Mekong river roars south into Burma, and on the other side the Salween river carves itself into a coffin gorge before churning into southeast Asia. In this range the alpine, temperate and tropical crash together, with glaciers from 6500m+ peaks sliding down into lush forests, and lower still forests transitioning to cactus-pricked desert. Great slashes of rock and ice pierce the sky, and green nooks of populated land nestle beneath the staggering peaks. This, more than any place I've ever seen, is Shangri-la incarnate.

So we swapped saddle sores for blisters, and over the course of two weeks wandered from remote village to remote village as Buddhist pilgrims do every year, although the trail itself was nearly deserted since it wasn't the pilgrimage season. After some glorious glimpses of the mountains in the first few days of hiking with Laura Boggess, clouds smothered the range every time we climbed a pass, so we had to take their existence on simple faith alone. But stunning as the rest of the wilderness was out there, the most beautiful aspect of the experience was the people we met. There were the endless bowls of tsampa and cups of yak butter tea (for you eager epicures, the recipe for the latter is quite simple: take about a liter of tea-seeped water, add two generous handfuls of pure yak butter, and churn violently until the consistency of melted fat is achieved). We met one family that upon our arrival pulled out all their children's finest clothing and had them dress up and dance for us (see photo). Later in the kora we joined up with a group of horse and mule packers whom we dubbed the Kawa Karpo Kowboys, who shared their food and accomodation with us and best of all, gave us major street cred with the locals.

This kora took us through both a wilderness and a cultural landscape, and through it all I couldn't help but marvel at how disconnected we were, they were. Not for long though, with the framework for roads being established everywhere - at least a few kilometers of the kora have been widened and paved with gravel in anticipation of building a road. While I must admit that I'm an incurable romantic, and that side of me deplores the dissolution of traditional ways of living in close communion with the land, the realist in me recognizes I'm among the minority in thinking that having to hike for six days to reach the nearest excuse for a road is pretty damn cool. It's fine to lead a simple, defined life so long as you are content within those definitions - when such a life is sought, not imposed. The kids we met in these villages hunger for Britney and Backstreet and blue jeans, for neatly paved roads leading directly to cities, where all their dreams can surely come true. And even if I don't share their longings, I am in no position to blame them.

After we completed the kora, we hiked, then hitched, then bussed, then flew back to a village, a town, a small city, and Beijing. We've spent the past few days here in full-on "bright lights, big city" mode, with our wonderful host and pal Thompson Paine doing his best to tolerate our shocked and giddy reactions to seeing cheese in a supermarket, for example (cheese, chocolate, wine, and good coffee were the subjects of countless hours of salivatory conversation while biking and hiking). We made it out to the Great Wall for some hiking and hawker-dodging, but otherwise we've mostly spent hours walking the city, easing ourselves through the transition back to civilization. Normally I'm not a big fan of cities, but Beijing has won me over - and it's not just the cheese, chocolate, wine and good coffee. Instead, it's the dancing. At any given park on any given morning, people crowd the parks and greet the dawn with dancing and tai chi. One night Thompson, Mel and I had dinner and then wandered over to Exhibition Square (I think that's what it's called) in downtown Beijing, which was packed with bodies in motion. From traditional to modern beats to ballroom dancing, the people of Beijing were getting their groove on.

My favorite was, curiously, the ballroom section, which was strangely and movingly beautiful to watch. It was the same sort of feeling you get if you accidently catch your parents dancing together. It's not that the dancers are particularly graceful or skilled (sorry mum and dad), or that the music is great. It's that the dancers move together with a deep, spontaneous, and unconscious connection and joy. At the square, stout little old ladies with curler-coiled hair danced together next to middle-aged couples gliding around with practised ease. Occasionally couples would spin and change directions with a dramatic, flourished kick, a move that would normally strike me as hilarious, but it was performed with such innocence and gravity by such understated people that I didn't have the heart to laugh, funny and incongruous as it was. No one was dressed up, and the crowd gathered around never clapped once. This wasn't a show, a performance - this was just what Chinese people do on any given night in Beijing.

I was happy to just watch, but being a blatant foreigner in a crowd of Chinese meant that I was an obvious victim and soon enough a Chinese man set his wife aside and swept me out into the action. Fortunately, the song was basically over and the music stopped. Unfortunately, a new song came on before I could escape, so I was resigned to stomping on toes and flailing as my partner spun me around in front of a massive, silent, watching crowd. While I never quite got the hang of the dance, my partner kept giving me encouraging 'thumbs up' signs so I took heart in that. When the song was over, I thanked him and dashed over to where Thompson and Mel had been standing, determined that my dear friend should have the same rewarding cultural experience. But Mel, who knows me far too well, had all-too-conveniently disappeared in the crowd.

What honestly blows my mind is that the elderly in particular have witnessed such anarchy and chaos and drastic change within their lifetimes, from the Cultural Revolution to the capitalist-esque fever that now rages in China, and yet they still dance. And really, why not? What else can and could they do? China is a pulsing, beautiful mess of contradictions - but so is everything, and everyone. One reason I love traveling is because it forces you to acknowledge this, both about the world and about yourself. Boxes burst, categories combust, your carefully constructed pigeon holes collapse under the gravity of their own presumptions. And in the dust and debris that remains when your world sighs and settles down again, you might, peering closely, discern some truths. "In the end it is not what I saw or did that is important; it is what truths I came to." (Saul Bellow)

So although the dust has not nearly settled yet, the truths I have come to - which are by no means universal - are these: Life for me is best lived - best felt - in the shadows of mountains, in the distilled air of altitude, and beneath the inscrutable stare of the stars. And because someone else (Robyn Davidson, who crossed Australia on a camel) said it first and best, "As I look back on the trip now, try to remember how I felt at the particular time, or during that particular incident, try to relive those memories that have been buried so deep, and distorted so ruthlessly, there is one clear fact that emerges from the quagmire. The trip was easy. It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts. The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision..."

So on that dangerously (and rather disgustingly) preachy note, I'll declare Cycling Silk officially over. Many, many thanks to everyone who supported this expedition, whether through donations to Kham Aid, or simply through cheering us on as we biked and bounced along these backroads. It's been an amazing ride, but back we go to the familiar latitudes of home.

Shangri-la?

Dancing kids.

Yak on pass.

Mountain sunrise.

Horse packers.

Ignored beggar.

hundred in the handlebar

2006-08-23T19:30:00.000-04:00

Song composed by Kate and Mel, based on a true story. Sing to the accompaniment of a harmonica, spoons, and Tibetan chanting, preferably after you haven't showered for 20 days, washed your clothes for 30, and are beginning to look and smell like a yak. For all you musical folks out there, we'd appreciate suggestions for a tune since all we've come up with thus far is Avril Lavigne's Grammy-award nominated hit "Sk8er Boi".

Oh the road is long and the road is tough,
Been ridin' fo days and I'm feelin' so rough.
I ain't got no food, I ain't got no money,
20 yuan a day just ain't enough, honey.

Four months in the saddle, a million miles from home,
The backroads of China are the trails I roam.
From the mountains to the desert and all the spaces in between,
These lands are purty, but these lands are mean.

And though I'm feelin' down on luck,
It would all be better if I could get unstuck
that hundred dollar bill in my handlebar.

It all began when I decided to stash
my photocopied documents and a hundred dollars cash.
I thought I knew a secret spot that would suffice:
the hollow metal tubing of my bike's steering device!

So I wrapped the bill up and I stuffed the bill in,
Never dreamin' that my finances would become so grim.
Some wild nights in Lhasa ate up all my dough,
Now my tummy's a screamin' and I've no place to go.

And though I'm feelin' down on luck,
It would all be better if I could get unstuck
that hundred dollar bill in my handlebar.

I've tried to get it out usin' every damn tool,
But the money's still stuck and I'm still the fool.
So it's noodles for dinner and hard dirt for a bed,
As I ride this piggy bank down the long road ahead.

And though I'm feelin' down on luck,
It would all be better if I could get unstuck
that bloody hundred bucks from my handlebar.

Portrait of the artists.

The song was a huge hit with the locals in the wilds of eastern Tibet.

the dazzle and the dirt

2006-08-03T01:23:00.000-04:00

The dazzle and the dirt. This - in the end as in the beginning - is China. We have been exploring a tiny corner of this bafflingly big country by bike for three months now, and with less than a month to go before heading home, it's amazing how many of my earliest, shallowest impressions of the place have endured. For one, China is mighty big. For another, China is mighty baffling. And finally, in China you always find Beauty and the Beast cozied up side by side.

First, the dazzle: Mount Kailas, the 'holiest mountain in Asia', a mountain that inspires the divine in people, that supposedly nudges the soul from its usual seclusion and summons questions of eternity, meaning, and purpose to mind. For some people, at least. For Buddhists, and Hindus, followers of the Jain and Bon faiths, and maybe the occasional itinerant traveler from a far-off land. In devotion to a deity, or many deities, or to an ideal of sorts, they come by the hundreds and make a shuffling pilgrimage around the mountain in order to compensate for the sins of their lifetime, and in the case of Buddhists, previous lifetimes.

Mel and I ditched our bikes for a couple days in order to trek the Kailas "kora" (which means to circumabulate a place or object of devotion), and best of all we were joined by the inimitable Laura Boggess, meaning the Orchard House trio was reunited (complete with an ode to MEGAbed in the Warmlite - see photo). The kora involves thirty-three miles of hiking around the unclimbed 22,000 ft mountain on a trail that reaches elevations over 18,000 feet at the highest pass. According to lore, one kora of Kailas washes you squeaky clean of sins; thirteen koras translates to insta-enlightenment. If only it were that simple. But even if circling this hallowed hunk of rock and ice can't transform your past, maybe your future is improved by the self-reflection such ambling inevitably inspires. "What is a mountain?" asks Salman Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, "An obstacle; a transcendence; above all, an effect."

I must admit, I went to Kailas strictly as a curious hiker hoping for nothing more than a pleasant ramble through spectacular scenery. And while I left Kailas deliciously tired from just that, I was also deeply inspired and somehow refreshed by the beautiful madness I witnessed on that mountain. Normally the last thing I want when I seek out the solitude and splendour of the mountains is the presence of lots of other people, and normally nothing would be more unappealing to me than hiking nose-to-toes with hordes of loud strangers. But around Kailas, it only seemed appropriate - in fact, it was magic. A mass of bodies in motion - from the wrinkled to the diapered - snaking along the trail behind and ahead; 'hello!', 'tashi deleh!', 'ok!' ringing out cheerfully as strangers passed on the trail; the otherworldly, haunting wailing that is Tibetan singing ricocheting off the granite walls; the colorful confusion at the top of the pass, with prayer papers floating confetti-style on air currents while prayer flags spider-webbing the rocks; Hindus chanting in a circle there, Buddhists muttering 'om mani padme hum' here, the most devout pilgrims prostrating around the entire kora in a triathlon of faith (prostrate, pray, pant); and finally there were the equine and yak beasts of burden clomping about, barely dodging the ecstatic people everywhere... And then you remind yourself that you're at 18,000 ft, and it's likely that nowhere else on Earth is there such chaos at such heights. It was absolutely nuts. I have never seen anything like it.

But in China, the dazzle is never the full story. There is always and unfailingly the dirt that accompanies it. Now I have nothing against dirt, and judging from the typical state of my fingernails and clothes here, dirt positively adores me, but I'm speaking of a different sort of dirt: all around Kailas is strewn the detritus of human existence, the muck of modern civilization. Noddle packaging, plastic bottles, candy wrappers, cans - and this on a pilgrimage route! On sacred ground! Maybe it's just my Westernized sensibilities, but the lackadaisical littering seemed obviously blasphemous. But so it goes here, the gory and the glory, intimate friends, side by side.

After Kailas, the rhythm and spirit of this trip changed completely. Because our permit and visa were both about to expire, Mel and I had to rush to Shigatse, a largish city near Lhasa, to renew them. This meant that our bikes suffered the indignity of being disassembled and stuffed into the back of a jeep for the two-day drive along horrid roads. This also meant we had to finally split from Matthias and Florian, our German cycling pals who are racing to Kathmandu right now. In Shigatse they refused to extend our permit and they only gave us a 7-day extension on our visa, which was just enough time for us to explore Lhasa (perhaps the most un-Tibetan place we visited in Tibet, but worth a trip for the awesome vision of the Potala Palace and for the bounty of awesome food: salad, cheese, chocolate, coffee..). Then we had to boot it out of Tibet in order to renew our visa elsewhere (in other provinces, visa extensions are supposedly granted with far less reluctance), so yesterday we flew to Zhongdian, or "Shangri-La" as the Chinese have optimistically and opportunistically renamed it - a beautiful if touristy small city in the province of Yunnan, which comprises part of the Kham region of independent Tibet (Kham Aid, the organization we're raising money for, works here.)

Through we have nearly a month left to go, and so much can happen in a month, to me at least it feels like we've transitioned from the experience itself to the epilogue. With our remaining time sapped and structured by and around visa extension deadlines and transportation constraints, with our days mapped out and our budgets dwindling, with the territory we're planning to cover being back on the trampled tourist track, we're slowly making the transition back to the realities of life as we usually know it. I already miss the stirring wildness, the terrible and beautiful isolation, the paradox and paradise that is northwestern Tibet; I miss the crazy company of the Germans, the dynamic we had as a team; I miss the challenge of those roads, those passes, those heights. But if I take anything away from Tibet, let it be an acceptance of the impermanent nature of everything, and let this understanding help me recognize the marvelous in even the mundane, wherever I go and whatever I do.

Check out the gobs of photos from Kailas and more.

"Polar explorers - one gathers from their accounts - sought at the Poles something of the sublime. Simplicity and purity attracted them; they set out to perform clear tasks in uncontaminated lands. The land's austerity held them. They praised the land's spare beauty as if it were a moral or spiritual quality: "icy halls of cold sublimity", "lofty peaks perfectly covered with eternal snow". Fridtjof Nansen referred to "the great adventure of the ice, deep and pure as infinity...the eternal round of the universe and its eternal death." Everywhere polar prose evokes these absolutes, these ideas of "eternity" and "perfection" as if they were some perfectly visible part of the landscape. They went, I say, in search of the sublime, and they found it the only way it can be found, here or there - around the edges, tucked into the corners of the days. For they were people - all of them, even the British - and despite the purity of the conceptions, they manhauled their humanity to the Poles."
-Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Chuiu Monastery

Orchard House girls.

Mount Kailas

Chaos on the pass

the tortuous road to tibet

2006-07-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

Tibet: where to begin. Well, the short of it is that we made it. We somehow managed to bike the highest, roughest, and toughest highway in the world from Kargilik in Xinjiang to Ali in Tibet. This was a bumpy pilgrimage to the Land of Snows that took twenty days, covered 1054 km and nine passes including the highest at over 5400m (17,700 ft), and involved nearly a week of riding and gasping at elevations higher than 5000m (16,400 ft). The road to Tibet is truly paved in pain: pain in the butt, in the legs, in the brain that can't conceive an intelligent thought because all it knows is the jolting of body and bike to which it is connected. As I bounced along the abominable roads on my jackhammer of a bike, I regularly had to remind myself that, like vagabond Everett Ruess, I really do "prefer the saddle to the streetcar, the star-sprinkled sky to a roof, and the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway." I spent hours obsessing over the idea, the concept, the glorious dream and heavenly vision that is asphalt, a dream and vision whose realization we will continue to be denied for the duration of our Tibetan travels. In truth, though, this was the most sublime, surreal, and soaring adventure of my life thus far, the exhausting yet epic experience I came to China seeking.

If the road to Tibet was rough, though, the start to our journey was even rougher. Just two days into the bike trip, the newly assembled Cycling Silk team - with Alisha joining Mel, Ben and I - dissolved. At this early point in the trip, it became painfully obvious that we had wildly different visions for the trip. The conflict and confusion stemmed from the fact that Mel, Ben and I were fighting fit, and none of us wanted to forfeit Tibet, our mutual dream destination for this cycling expedition. And Alisha didn't know what she wanted, except that she'd joined the trip too late to travel the Silk Road regions of Xinjiang with us, and Tibet was not a feasible option for a novice, untried cyclist breaking in her body and bike for the first time. After an honest, open, agonizing and wrenching discussion about options that lasted hours, Alisha opted to turn back with the Dutch cyclist in order to cycle the Silk Road in Xinjiang and join a Kham Aid fundraising ride, and Mel, Ben, and I opted to try for Tibet with our German friends, Matthias and Florian. This seemed like the only outcome that could make all four of us even remotely happy, given all the time, energy, money, planning, and training we'd individually poured into getting here. It was not an easy decision for any of us, and I think we're all still reeling from the unpredicted evolution of the team.

So, it was Tibet or bust for the five of us - Mel, Ben, Matthias, Florian, and I - and from the low vantage point of Kargilik, never has a road seemed so daunting for so many reasons: the lung-gasping altitude, the dubious legality of the route, the scarcity of reliable food and water sources, and the atrocious condition of the road itself. The fact that Tibet is closed to independent travelers lacking permits was the most frustrating of challenges because our fate was entirely out of our hands - if we got caught, we were finished.

With this in mind, we knew the first checkpoint in the Xinjiang town of Kudi could make or break our bumpy Tibetan pilgrimage, so we decided to go all out (at this point Mel and I had leap-frogged ahead of Ben and the Germans, so we had to face the checkpoint as a lonely duo.) After covering all our bike's reflectors with duct tape and dressing in our darkest, most criminal clothing, the two of us set off at 2:30 am to sneak through the checkpoint. As we approached Kudi we used our headlamps to light the road, but near town we turned them off and silently - bike wheels purring in the hushed night, beneath the starlight - rode through a raised checkpoint barrier. My heart soared - could it be this easy?!

Definitely not, because the next thing we knew, dogs were barking and a flashlight beam was purposefully and ruthlessly scanning the road all around us. Cursing, we awkwardly dove for cover on the side of the road, Mel sprawled in a ditch and me squashed against a building door, willing myself into two dimensions. A man walked by swinging a flashlight beam back and forth across the road - I think it shone right on my fear-frozen face but I can't be sure as I was squeezing my eyes shut because, quite logically, if I couldn't see him, he couldn't see me. Even if he did spot me, he chose to ignore the shady character doing her darndest to disappear and he kept on walking. A few minutes later - eons in heartbeats - we heard a truck start down the road, and it drove away in the direction we'd come. Whew.

We got back on our bikes and rode stealth-style to the edge of town where suddenly the *real* checkpoint loomed out of the darkness, a daunting gate and guardhouse with absolutely no way around. We limboed under the gate, tilting our bikes to the side to make it under, but I banged it loudly as I passed and the noise set more dogs barking, and another person with a flashlight started heading toward us. GO! I urgently whispered to Mel but she was already gone, racing blindly ahead into the pitch blackness while the beam of light probed the road behind us. We couldn't see a thing, and a speedbump nearly proved lethal as did a violent collision with a road pylon, but I managed to stay upright and rode on like Lance. Five kilometers later we stopped for a sanity check (failed miserably) and then we kept riding as the sun gradually illuminated the landscape. To say it was intense is an understatement; I am clearly not cut out for a life of crime, I lack both the nerves and the night vision.

The ironic epilogue to this escapade was that Ben, Matthias and Florian caught up with Mel and I later that same day, and from them we learned that our dramatic night crossing was completely unnecessary: they rode through in broad daylight, showed their passports, and were waved by with zero questions asked. Despite being teased mercilessly by them, and despite losing at least five years off our lives from stress, at least we've got them beat with a helluva story to tell the grandkids someday.

But this land - this land is worth it all. From the dizzying heights of the Tibetan plateau, the sky is intensely indigo with puff-perfect clouds, and the whole world seems stretched out below and around, rumpled and crinkled with mountains and dotted with turquoise lakes. Tibet is a smeared shining blue and tan world, a world of impossible dimensions with the lowest basin in sight hovering a deceptive 4900m in elevation, and the sloped, sleepy mountains all around reaching heights over 6000m. 'The roof of the world', so they call it, but I think it might be more accurate to say that from up here you can just begin to perceive the real roof of our world, that faint and shimmering swaddle of air that holds us back from the heavens, or the heavens back from us. At night I swear that if I could only suck enough oxygen into my lungs - impossible at these heights - I could launch myself into the spilled stars that have never looked so close, so alluring. I am mad for this place, for this life.

One of my favorite adventure books is Alexandra David-Neel's 'My Journey to Lhasa', where she writes of Tibet, "I have a homesickness for a country that isn't mine...the steppes, the solitude, the eternal snows and big skies up there haunt me. One remains permanently engulfed in the silence where only the wind sings, in the solitudes almost naked of greenery, the chaos of fantastic rocks, dizzying peaks and horizons of blinding light." I know exactly what she means.

But Tibet isn't all blinding beauty and adventure. Everywhere are reminders that this is not - was not, should not be - China. That this is an occupied country, an oppressed culture. Monasteries lie in ruins, and trinkets of Mao Zedong's face can be purchased in Tibetan shops while the Dalai Lama's portrait is forbidden. Matthias brought a signed copy of 'Seven Years in Tibet' to read, and the book had a photo of the Dalai Lama that he gave to some Tibetans with whom we shared a meal. They worshiped the scrap of paper like it was the man himself, touching it to their heads with solemn faces, devoted eyes. Buddhism burns low and slow here, but with a flame that endures despite all the efforts (past and present) of the Chinese government. And though it can be hard to discern sincere faith from dogmatic belief - flashy trinkets and symbols, people just going through the motions - I get the feeling that if any people on Earth could bounce back unperturbed from misfortune and tragedy, it is the Tibetans.

With just over a month and a half left to go, the trip continues to evolve. In a few days, Ben flies home to Canada, and Mel and I will be on our own, although we're going to ride for as long as possible with the Kathmandu-bound Germans - a few weeks ago, strangers; now great friends and partners-in-misadventures. The current goal and plan is to ride to Lhasa with some breaks along the way for some trekking, but we'll see where the open road leads us. We turned ourselves in to the police upon our arrival in Ali, paid a $50 fine, and obtained an Alien Travel Permit for Tibet, so we're delightfully legal here now. On a sadder note, our video camera just sputtered and died a sad and lonely death, so we're trying to salvage the documentary situation somehow - if anyone has any suggestions, or a spare digital video camera you're willing to ship across the world, let us know!

"The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is."
-Giacometti

Typical section of the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway.

The ever-evolving Cycling Silk team: Matthias, Florian, Ben, Mel, and Kate.

Kate and Mel at the top of their 6th pass, marking their entry into Tibet.

Mel recording her deepest thoughts and dreams in her Dear Diary inside the Warmlite, our humble home for the summer.

Climbing a 16,000 foot pass.

Amazing lake near the Tibetan town of Rutok.

Tibetan monastery devastated during the Cultural Revolution.

Typical scene on the road to Tibet.

Fearing starvation and oatmeal deprival, Mel and I packed all this food to eat along the desolate Xinjiang-Tibet Highway.

Amazing sunset high on the plateau.

song of the open road

2006-06-17T14:44:00.000-04:00

When I wrote last we were getting ready to set off down a backroad that our rather indecipherable Chinese road atlas depicted as just a twisty, squiggly line. For once the map actually reflected the reality, with the road itself a mere scrawl in the dirt, or at best a scratch in the mountainside. Pavement was a distant dream, and the sand traps, landslides, washboard ruts, and wobbly cobblestones that comprised this road had me crashing with the bike at least once a day (damn those clipless pedals). After screaming across the desert flats with 120 km tailwind-propelled days, we struggled to ride even 50 km daily, and as the bird flies we probably covered less than 20 km on average.

But despite the jarring and the bruises, the slow going and the rugged terrain, this was truly the riding we came to China for: a "crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous [backroad] leading to the most amazing view", to quote my beloved Ed Abbey. For nearly two weeks we rode from Yecheng (or Kargilik) in the direction of Tashkurgan through the Pamir mountains, tracing a raging glacial river to its icy source along a road frequented only by the local Tajiks on muleback and motorbike. The kindness, hospitality, and generosity of the people we met along the way were superlative - so many families invited us in for chai and food, and we spent a few nights in Tajik homes, which are essentially constructed like everykid's dream fort - a mud-walled building with a huge platform strewn with colorful rugs and pillows for sleeping (shout out to the MEGAbed of Orchard House!) The whole experience was challenging, stunning, amazingly beautiful - and completely illegal.

We honestly had no clue that we were riding through an area restricted to foreigners until we came to a tiny village just 75km from our ultimate destination. When we tried to buy supplies at the village shop, we were accosted by the local police. Since Pakistan and Afghanistan are just a few hundred kilometers away, we were riding in what is considered a 'sensitive border region', and passage is not permitted unless your travels are approved by the Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB). This first group of police were kind enough, but they called the Tashkurgan PSB office which promptly sent out three officers to drive three hours in order to reach us, pack us in the back of their truck with our bikes strapped precariously in the trunk, and escort us the last 75 km to Tashkurgan. Riding bikes on such a tortuous, twisting road was rough enough, but rattling and pounding along the same road in a rickety pick-up truck in the dark took the experience to new harrowing lows. I definitely regretted the fact that I had stuffed my camera's memory cards and a couple of digital video tapes down my pants earlier (just in case they tried to confiscate them) since they certainly didn't make the ride any smoother.

Once we reached Tashkurgan they dropped us off at a hotel but kept our passports, promising to collect us in the morning. The next day we wasted away for six hours at the PSB office, with the police interrogating Ben the entire time, leaving Mel and I ignored if bored in the next room - sometimes being female has its advantages in China because it's assumed women only play a passive role in any matter of importance or concern. Eventually we paid a fine (less than $10) and we were free to ride away on the Karakoram highway. After rattling our bones on the backroad for so long, we had looked forward to this segment of the trip as a vacation of sorts - paved and downhill all the way to Kashgar, or so we naively believed. The glorious pavement lasted exactly 1 km out of Tashkurgan, then it was back to not only gravel, but climbing. Fortunately the rough conditions only lasted for a couple of days and a few thousand feet of elevation gain, and we soon hit the road of our dreams, racing downhill without pushing a pedal for kilometers while flying past some of the most spectacular mountainous scenery on the planet. Amazing. The only downside to this stretch was that we were back on the beaten path, and hospitality and kindness suddenly had pricetags attached.

We arrived in Kashgar just in time to meet Alisha at the airport, where we found her dazed and confused after getting her butt kicked by China in less than 10 seconds (by bad flight connections, ridiculous luggage surcharges, lost luggage, near-heart attack due to possibly stolen passport and ticket, and a serious lack of sleep - luckily an inflatable reindeer saved her upon arrival). We've spent the past few days exploring Kashgar and getting ready for the next stage. Kashgar is definitely the pulsing hub of long-distance cycling in China, and since arriving here we've befriended Mattias and Florian, two German cyclists riding from Germany to Nepal ( http://www.fblock.com ), and Eelco, a Dutch cyclist in the middle of a two year round-the-world adventure ( http://www.backtobali.net ). Nothing like hearing about the wild travels of other far more hardcore cyclists to put our own relatively meagre challenges in perspective; after hearing stories about the insane dictatorship of Turkmenistan, the rutted roads in Tadjikistan, and the oil-slick and unfriendly streets of Dubai, China almost - not quite, but almost! - seems like child's play. So while these guys do admittedly make me feel like a big wuss, thanks to them I'm an inspired wuss with an expanded perception of what is possible in this world, both on and off a bike. My brain is absolutely bursting with mad schemes for future adventures...

But our next adventure is hopefully just down the road to the south: Tibet, the 'land of the snows'. Having now explored most of the Silk Road regions in Xinjiang, we've opted to join forces temporarily with Mattias, Florian, and Eelco in order to tackle one of the highest, roughest roads in the world, the Xinjiang-Tibet highway. There are so many uncertainties involved in this route: the altitude, the wicked road conditions, the fact that it is illegal for foreigners to ride the road without a permit (might as well roll with this trend, hardened criminals that we already are). To boot, Alisha has yet to break in both her bike and her cycling legs, and Mel's knees have been giving her crippling pain, so there's serious doubt as to whether all of our bodies and bikes are up to the challenge. But we're so close, and heck, what's the point of setting out to do something you're certain to achieve? So we're determined give it a shot. Should our first attempt fail, I'm plotting a back-up strategy in the style of Alexandra David-Neel, who disguised herself as a male pilgrim in order to penetrate forbidden Tibet in the last century (read about this absolutely amazing explorer here: http://www.alexandra-david-neel.org/).

"He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail: knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life."
-Evelyn Underhill

"To see the universe itself as a road - as many roads - as roads for traveling souls."
-Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Last stretch of desert before the mountains.

Heading into the backcountry.

Mountain village.

Amazing ride.

Mel made midget by the cliffs.

clics to pics

2006-05-28T08:58:00.000-04:00

Bored? Got bandwidth? We've finally figured out how to upload all our photos, so check them out here:

www.flickr.com/photos/kateonmars/

wind, sand and stars

2006-05-27T03:40:00.000-04:00

On a bike trip, you are exposed to the world around you in a way and to a degree that few other modes of transportation afford. That kind of raw vulnerability has its drawbacks - like choking on the fumes of transport trucks that roar past, or feeling every little bump in the road translate itself into a saddle sore. But in the end the perks take the prize: the freedom to explore a landscape at your own pace, under your own power, and the exhilaration that comes with traveling with all you need strapped to your wheels. This is nomadism at its best, with every day bringing some new adventure, be it grim or glorious, soul-stirring or soul-shaking. Whatever happens, on a bike you are rarely bored.

When you get off the bike in the middle of the desert in the middle of day, though, it's a different story. After finally escaping the civilized decadence of Korla, the three of us opted not to skirt the Taklamakan Desert, but rather to ride straight on in. We had time, we had sunscreen, we had water, and the challenge of crossing this fabled wasteland was too alluring to pass up. The only road slicing through the desert spans about 600 km, and while the distance wasn't all that daunting, the extreme conditions definitely were. Our plan was to wake up to the stars and ride through dawn until the heat became unbearable, then park ourselves in the artificial shade of our tarp for the long, hot hours of the day, then mount the bikes at dusk and ride until dark. Great, fine, no problem - only I never imagined hours could approach infinity when you've got absolutely nothing to do but bake. It was too hot to read, to write, to move, to sleep, to think. Melting was honestly the only option; that and fantasizing about the -14 Celsius temperatures we were battling in the Tian Shan mountains only days before.

Fortunately the desert wasn't always like that. In the deceptive calm and cool of the early morning, the Taklamakan was a beautiful and benevolent place. As the stars slowly faded into sunlight, the corrugated dunes became sculpted with shadows, and there was no hint of the blasting heat to come, no premonition of the desert's imminent transformation into a stinging maelstrom of wind and sand; just sublime, oceanic, awesome, vast and silent space.

So much space - at 270,000 square kilometers the Taklamakan is one of the largest shifting sand deserts in the world, dwarfed only by the Sahara and the Gobi. The name Taklamakan ominously translates to "he who goes in never comes out", and nearly a thousand years ago Marco Polo warned travelers of the "spirit voices" that echo through this haunted desert, voices that "lure [you] away from the path so you never find it again". I strained my ears for those voices, but I think they've been silenced since the Silk Road days. To tweak Dillard slightly, "the [desert] pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried."

By midday, beauty and benevolence dissolved into fierce heat or wind. We dealt with the heat by resigning ourselves to baking in boredom for a few hours, but the winds were fantastic because they stirred up enough sand to block the beating sunlight, and even better, they were blowing in a favorable direction 90% of the time. So we sailed along on these fortuitous tailwinds at alarming speeds, the price of the free ride being sand loosed and flung absolutely everywhere. Heat and dust defined our days, coated our bikes and bodies, caused our gears to groan and minds to grind. Occasionally a sand tornado would whip up and whirl past, strangely mute; we would watch it fly by and beyond with complete calm and only mild interest - such things are the norm here. Ragged, rapt, and exalted, we pedaled our way across the sea of sand. It was mind-numbing; it was magnificent.

Finding water in the desert was less of a concern than we feared. We usually made it to a resupply point before we ran out, and when we didn't we hailed down transport trucks and the drivers generously gave us water from their storage tanks. Then about halfway through the desert, we unexpectedly encountered a miniature forest in the making - or so the Chinese hope. With the intention of preventing dunes from drifting onto the road, an oil company sponsored a far-fetched and seemingly futile initiative to create an oasis in the desert. They drilled wells every half-dozen kilometers in order to irrigate grids of human-planted vegetation lining the road side, and at every well a couple of people are stationed to baby the plants along. This project was a total gift for us; in addition to completely eradicating our water worries, the folks at the well stations were incredibly kind, stuffing us with food and letting us sleep sheltered from the elements.

When we finally rode into Minfeng, the first real town after the desert crossing, our scalps were full of sand, our ears and nose and eyes were veritable beaches, our teeth were gritty and our clothes crusty, and we drew even more 'foreign devil' stares than usual, along with some emphatic thumbs-ups and impressed if incredulous looks. After a massive meal, a cold shower, and a sleep, we hit the road again destined for Hotan, a city renowned for its jade located along the southern route of the Silk Road. Riding into the chaos of the city a few days later was a completely surreal experience. The poplar-tunneled street leading into town was jammed with motorbikes buzzing and darting about like flies; recalcitrant donkeys pulled rickety wooden carts on which perched a precarious assortment of people, sheep, and stacked goods; skinny, dignified-looking Uighur men pedaled rusty bikes on the verge of disintegration; the pungent smells of kebabs roasting, nan bread baking, diesel engines coughing, coal burning, and the perfume of trees all blended into a cacophany of sensations. And there we were, trying to soak it all in while at the same time seeking a safe cycling path through the thronging madness.

From empty spaces to peopled places, from silence to the shrieks of civilization, we constantly drift between disparate worlds on this trip. I love this dodging and dancing between realities, with the one contrasting and complementing - completing - the other. And though I personally prefer the desert wilds over oasis towns, on the Silk Road, variety is the oft-traded and cliched spice of life.

"Le vent se leve. Il faut tenter de vivre."
-Paul Valery

Lonely tree swamped by sand.

Mel biking it.

Shadow-sculpted dunes.

Stinging sandstorm.

Sand-blasted Kate.

Helmet-headed Mel.

Girls in Hotan.

Uighur man.

over the hills and far away

2006-05-11T10:17:00.000-04:00

I'm a huge fan of traveling light, but it's a stretch to say we're doing that on this long-distance bike trip. Lugging over 80 pounds of gear each from Canada to China is an adventure in itself, and after three different flights, countless luggage surcharges, and three separate midnight taxi rides with the bike boxes falling out of the trunks and with us totally confused as to whether our individual drivers understood our intended destination, it was a miracle when Ben, Mel, myself and the bikes finally arrived in Urumqi, Xinjiang in one piece, if slightly bruised and battered. Through it all I never quite believed the bike trip was really happening. It was only when our bikes were assembled and loaded, and we were out on the street with our route memorized, and we finally took that long-dreamed of first pedal stroke forward that it hit me: this was very real, and man, this was going to hurt.

Prior this trip, Mel and I had adopted a strict training regimen that consisted of "interval tapering" and "bulking up", as explicitly advised by a long-distance cycling trip guidebook - who were we to argue with the experts? The best way to get fit for biking for 6-8 hours a day over mountainous terrain while hauling a load of gear is to...actually bike for 6-8 hours a day over mountainous terrain hauling a heck of a lot of gear! Or so we figured. We rode just 50 km out of Urumqi that first day, and despite biking all last summer, I had totally forgotten how heavy and cumbersome a loaded bike is, how impossibly far a kilometer can be, and how grueling a gentle grade can feel on feeble legs.

But despite the initial shock to the system, it felt amazing to fall back into that rhythm of life - riding, wandering, wondering. Just a day's ride southwest from Urumqi along "highway" 216 and we had escaped to a different world where donkeys and sheep jockeyed for room on the road and mud-brick houses and yurts dotted the landscape. Eventually smudged mounds appeared to rise out of the horizon beyond the arid flatlands, and soon we were weaving our way through the rumpled foothills of the Tian Shan mountains. The next day the sculpted, grass-felted slopes of the foothills gradually morphed into a hauntingly beautiful cathedral of craggy peaks on all sides, scowling and snow-capped, and, in the words of Alexandra David-Neels, "a gust of wind welcomed us - the violent, icy kiss of the austere country whose severe charm has held me so long bewitched..."

The three of us wisely decided that we'd break ourselves in slowly by tackling a 14,000 ft pass in the first few days of the trip. This ended up being both a humbling and empowering experience - humbling because the altitude, below zero temperatures, and Antarctic wind chill factor had us huffing and shivering pathetically for a couple of days, and empowering because somehow we made it up, over, and down alive! It took us three days of solid climbing to reach the base of the pass at 11,000 ft, and from there all you could see is an intimidating series of Zorro slashes up the side of a sheer, snowy mountain. One of the perks of biking up mountains rather than hiking up is that riding uphill is basically like charging a battery (albeit an inefficient one) - you are rewarded for all the energy you invest in climbing a mountain by the free cruise down. In China, alas, this was not the case. When the road up the pass wasn't honeycombed with potholes, it was either ribbed like a starving man's chest or paved with dagger stones. The road down the pass was just as relentless, and the whole ride down I felt dangerously out of control, like I was skidding down the debris field of a landslide. For the climb and descent we wore all our mountineering clothing, balaclava included, but swaddled as we were our faces still froze beneath a slurry of snot and sweat, and our fingers and toes were icy nuggets by the time we hit horizontal ground. But to be honest, I loved every intoxicating minute of it. Once in a while it's nice to remind yourself that you have a pulse, and thanks to the altitude, a very quick one.

So far we have camped in some delightfully absurd settings, from mud-walled ancient ruins to a cold slab of concrete beneath a bridge, where the peace was punctuated hourly by the screeching of trains passing overhead. On day 2 of the trip, we were climbing higher and higher in the Tian Shans and camping possibilities were looking more and more bleak, with sheer vertical rock on one side of the narrow road and a sheer drop-off into a river gorge on the other. We finally spotted a flat chunk of grassy ground, only it was down in the gorge and on the opposite bank of the river. Since we were each hauling those meddlesome 80 pounds of gear, this posed a bit of a problem. With no alternative presenting itself, we ended up stashing our bikes on the mountainside, and then spent about two hours ferrying all our gear down the cliff and fording the glacial river to reach our camping sanctuary, where we fell on food like ravenous wolves and collapsed into our tents, only to wake up the next morning and reverse the entire exhausting process.

After descending from the high mountains, we've stopped for the day in Korla, an oil-money city located at the toe of the Tian Shans. Although having a shower and eating ice cream were experiences bordering on divine, I'm already eager to flee the clamor and confusion of this place: bring on the dust and desolation of the Taklamakan desert. For me at least, the charm of China lies in the forgotten places, the empty spaces between the fume-choked, horn-honking cities. In small villages and remote communities, you can begin to get a sense for how people really live here; while the Chinese dominate the cities, other ethnic groups populate the countryside, and that's where the real legacy of the Silk Road endures. So I'm ready to take to the backroads again. After I eat one more ice cream cone.

"But I will walk the road however hard it is, because only on the road can you see that yesterday lies behind you and tomorrow waits on the path ahead. The road measures life in distance. The further you travel the longer you live."
-Ma Jian, 'Red Dust: A Journey Through China'

Putting together the bikes in the chaos of our hotel room.

Dinner at a local Uighur restaurant in Urumqi.

Our first campsite in the Tian Shan foothills.

The winding road toward Tiger Pass.

Sweating, shivering, and struggling up the pass.

Profile view of Tiger Pass = brutal.

Cozy camping with the trolls under the bridge.

Good gawd.

No comment.

Scary.

countdown to china

2006-04-29T19:09:00.000-04:00

The bike is packed, I've got my ticket and passport, and the Silk Road is just a continent and a dream away. After nearly two years of daydreaming, planning, training, and fundraising, I am now less than a day away from China and this is more than slightly surreal. Right now I am both ridiculously excited and healthily terrified, which I think is the ideal mental state to find myself in before launching on an expedition like this - as travel writer Pico Iyer put it, "All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder." I tend to gauge the worth and promise of an adventure by the sheer frenzy factor of the butterflies in my stomach, and the fluttering I'm feeling now bodes well for this one.

For the next four months, my life will be anchored to two wheels and four friends. I'll be exploring a part of the world familiar to me only through the colorful accounts of explorers like Marco Polo, Sven Hedin, and Alexandra David-Neels. I'll be burning muscles to the bone as I pedal up, down, and across one of the most geologically tumultuous regions of Asia. I'll be eating - well, who knows what, but it's likely to contain copious chunks of fatty meat in true epicurean Central Asian style. The truth is, I have no real clue what lies down the road, and that's fine by me.

As for the basic game plan: we arrive in Beijing on May 1st, where Mel and I will rendezvous with cycling pal Ben, and the three of us will crash with Beijing-based friends (Bill and Dana Isherwood) for the night. On the 2nd we'll journey west by plane to Urumqi, where we'll spend a few days unpacking, assembling the bikes, buying supplies, and acclimatizing before hitting the open road. From there we'll slowly (and painfully, at first) meander over to fabled Kashgar, crossing the Tian Shan mountain range and skirting the Taklamakan desert along the way. In Kashgar we'll meet Alisha, and then the four of us will ride the Karakoram highway to southwestern Xinjiang. After that, who knows. Time and fancy will dictate our itinerary for the next few months; our only real agenda is to probe the mysteries of this curious part of the world, and to document what we discover in Polo's wake.

Before I sign off to sleep in my room one last time, I want to thank everyone who has supported the Cycling Silk expedition over the past few months. With your incredible support we've raised over $7,000 USD for Kham Aid's educational initiatives in rural China, and we hope to raise a total of $10,000 USD before the trip is over. I'll update this online journal as often as internet access permits, so stay tuned, take care, and happy trails!

Pre-departure packing chaos at Mel's house.

My bike, aka The Beast, protectively swaddled in clothing and gear before being boxed.