The tourists were being beckoned to breakfast by Langmusi’s cafe owners as I pedalled out of town and up a steep hill, passing more cabins and glamping sites with great views over the two monasteries. The side of one prominent hill had been completely cut away to make way for the new high speed railway line, which would have a station at Langmusi, as well as Xiahe (夏河, Labrang) further along the line to the north.
I’d made an early start from Langmusi for the First Bend of the Yellow River (黄河九曲第一湾), which my map showed was 110 kilometres away across some high hills at Tangke. And I needed the power assist to get the bike up to a pass that brought me into a wide grassy valley that was surrounded by high limestone crags. The grey rocks reminded me of the Kham Tibetan landscape that I had explored far to the south.
There was more height to gain as I pedalled westward in the direction of Maqu. The road was empty at this time in the morning and the only other person I saw was a lone camper who had pitched his tent on the spur of a hill.
Across another pass and I was on a broad plateau of grassland, interspersed with farmstead and tests around which were grazing yak and sheep. I made the mistake of stopping to photograph one flock of sheep gathered around a Tibetan tent - from behind which leapt a mastiff to chase me a few hundred metres down the road.
I was now at an altitude of almost 4000 metres and feeling a bit of the lethargy and breathlessness that comes with exertion at such heights. Maybe the altitude was also responsible for the confusion that led me to miss the road turnoff to Tangke. When I spotted my mistake on the map app I backtracked along the highway and my heart sank when I saw the state of the side road: a ribbon of cracked and muddy concrete running across the grass towards an empty horizon. I double checked my app to confirm this really was the actual road and reluctantly turned off the smooth highway when I realised this was the only way to the river.
My apprehension increased a couple of kilometres down the track when I came upon a herd of yaks being mustered along the road by two Tibetans on horseback. They looked on with indifference as I edged my way through their slow moving herd of black animals, emerging the other side with a sigh of relief that they had no dogs with them
My next problem was a stiff headwind against which I had to fight after I rounded the side of a hill. It took all my altitude-drained breath to maintain a feeble 10 km/hour speed as I pushed on past a couple of small farm settlements and entered an area of ponds and creeks. This was presumably the kind of marshy grassland terrain across which the Red Army had struggled on the Long March.
My spirits picked up when I had a chance encounter with a touring motorcyclist. The young guy from Xi’an stopped for a chat, congratulated me on my perseverance and reassured me that this dirt track joined up with a larger highway a few kilometres up ahead. Sure enough, I was soon able to make out trucks moving across the horizon, and after a final bit of effort against the headwind I turned 90 degrees back onto a proper road that had occasional vehicle traffic.
The landscape was more grassland steppe, interspersed with small lakes and even the bends of a small tributary of the Yellow River - the Black River - which was actually a muddy dark brown colour. In this most remote of places there were also more solar panels, which today at least were getting the full benefit of sunny skies.
The route ahead ascended to another pass, and on one of the bends in the road I came across the surreal scene of a truck on its side, its warning lights flashing and its load of planks spilled out on the grass. I approached warily and peered into the cab through the shattered windscreen. It was empty, and I suddenly caught sight of the driver, standing a few metres behind the truck making a phone call. He looked unharmed but understandably unhappy.
By midday I’d covered about half the distance towards Tangke but could see no indication on the map of anywhere to stop for a rest and get something to eat. Apart from a few yak herders’ tents and a memorial to the Red Army’s passage through the wetlands, there was no sign of human presence in this part of the world.
Once again my morale was boosted by meeting a couple of passing touring cyclists heading in the opposite direction. I swapped stories and route tips with the two older guys who had come up from Chengdu. They told me there was a small restaurant a few kilometres down the road, the only place they had seen on the road from Tangke. When I found it, at a turnoff for a small township called Xiaman (辖曼), it was just a solitary hut occupied by a Muslim family from Langmusi who served up noodles and soup to local herders and passing truck drivers - and the occasional tourist like me.
Fortified by this, I plodded on through the wetlands along what I hoped would be the final straight to the finish line of the Yellow River. I was still riding at around 3800 metres and expecting a gradual descent down to the river, but it eventually became clear that this flat and wide terrain was the river plain.
There was one more pass to cross before I arrived at a bend in the road, where my map told me I should be alongside the Yellow River. Even in such close proximity to the river it was not visible until I was almost on top of it. Stopping on the empty road I had to park my bike and stroll across the grass for a minute to finally see the full width of the brown, slow running river across from me. It was down a small embankment and about a hundred metres wide at this point. There was a small stretch of muddy beach on the opposite shore and the river curled away to the left, making one of the ‘nine crooks’ that made up this first bend of the river. There was little to be seen on the flat landscape across the river: a few white tents at the foot of some low hills.
A yellowish stone plinth marker stated that this was the place where the river made its big turn to flow to the northwest. Apart from this there was nothing else at this small viewing platform by the side of the road. I was still a few kilometres away from the official site of the “First Bend of the Yellow River”, which I reached by traversing one final low pass between two hills.
After travelling across the solitary grassland wilderness all day it was a bit of a shock to suddenly find myself at the busy gateway to the “national 4A-level tourist scenic area”. The numerous coaches and private cars in the carpark must have come up from the south, presumably after also visiting tourist spots such as Jiuzhaigou.
There was a large visitor centre where I purchased my entrance ticket for 60 yuan, which enabled me to take my bike through the road barrier manned by security guards.
Inside the ‘scenic area’ the road ran alongside a river through a ‘holiday village’ of empty hotels and restaurants to a grassy ridge that overlooked the river. Up this hillside ran a 600 metre-long covered escalator up to a wooden walkway that ran along the top of the ridge.
I parked up my bike and joined a steady stream of visitors on the ride to the top. It was actually a series of 14 flights of moving stairways, each of which had its own viewing platform. I went straight to the top and from this vantage point I could see a confusing array of curves of the river wending through the grassland plain. As the previous sign on the stone marker had suggested, there was no single great ‘bend’ in the Yellow River river at this point, but a series of nine twists and turns, amid which the river changed direction from flowing south-east to the north-west.
I could also now see more clearly across to the opposite bank of the river, where there were a few farmsteads but otherwise little else except grassy plains and low hills. When I was initially planning my bike ride I had investigated a route on the other side of the river, where the map showed there was a minor road that I might follow further upriver. Now I was on the spot, it did not look quite so feasible - today’s ride had shown me just how empty this landscape was, and on the far bank there was even less - no towns, no hotels, no restaurants … the nearest shop was about 200 kilometres away to the west at a riverside township called Muxihe (木西合). It was another 500 kilometres from here to the source of the Yellow River at Maduo, and there was no road on this side of the river, and no bridge to get across the river at this point.
The only way to continue upriver from here would be to backtrack to Maqu country some 120 kilometres away, cross over the river there and follow the minor road along the river through the uninhabited grassland wilderness for a week or more, presumably camping along the way and bringing your own food and water supplies. It would be a difficult route with a vehicle, let alone a bike.
A sign at the viewing platform provided ‘tips for visitors’ that were also quite discouraging:
‘The grassland on both sides of the river is private property and permission is needed to enter,’ it advised. Visitors were told not to stray off the boardwalk along the riverside at the risk of being swallowed up by marsh and bog, especially during the wet season. Furthermore the sign warned: ‘there are many stray dogs in the area - be careful to avoid them’.
The day’s sunny weather had given way to low clouds and it now started to rain, adding to the gloomy aspect at this location. The weather forecast was predicting rain for the next few days and June was the start of the monsoon rainy season in southwest China.
I decided that this would be an appropriate place to end my ride along the Yellow River.
Looking out over the curves and lines of the brown water below me it was hard to believe that one of the world’s major rivers was running so wide and placid at almost four kilometres above sea level.
I thought back to the different parts of the Yellow River that I’d recently pedalled along: the clear green waters passing below the red sandstone cliffs of Kanbala, Gansu, the wide flat brown river watering the deserts of Ningxia and inner Mongolia, the narrow torrent rushing over the rocks of Hukou waterfall in Shanxi, and the reservoir waters behind the massive dams of Longyangxia, Liujiaxia and Sanmenxia.
With a few detours and diversions I had travelled 5000 kilometres from the mouth of the Yellow River at Dongying in Shandong. It had taken me three months, two e-bikes and a whole box of Yorkshire teabags to get here. I had passed through nine provinces and autonomous regions and met Han, Hui Muslims, Mongolians and Tibetan Muslims.
The rainy season had started, the river would swell and the reservoirs would fill. When I returned to my hotel there was a double rainbow over the grassland. I took this as a sign that my journey along the river was done.
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