The route upriver from Dahejia would involve passing through two narrow gorges of the Yellow River through which it emerges from the Tibetan plateau: only one of these gorges had a road along which I could travel by bike.
The Jishishan (积石山) Gorge was immediately upriver beyond a dam and led to the county town of Xunhua (循化). Beyond that lay the Gongbo (公伯) gorge whose sides were so steep they precluded the building of a road.
In true Chinese style, road engineers had built an extensive series of tunnels and bridges through the mountains on the south side of the river to create a new motorway that linked up to the town of Jainca (尖扎), where the river flowed down from the weird geological rock formation of Kanbula National Forest Park, my next destination.
The problem for me was that bicycles were strictly prohibited on motorways, so I would have to find an alternative route beyond Xunhua. It looked like I would have to use the old highway that went north into the high country towards a small town called Hualong (化隆).
But first I had to get to Xunhua. Beyond the dam at Dahejia, the road ran between cliff walls of red soil. When I set out, the hills were darkened by rainclouds, and for the first time on this trip I had to don my rain cape. The rain increased in intensity but I stayed mostly dry except for my legs and feet.
At the Jishi Gorge dam the road crossed to the south side of the river and started a long ascent up through mountainous terrain that formed the Jishishan range, the first major barrier of the Tibetan highlands. This was where I would really start to gain altitude to reach the Qinghai plateau. The road passed through the hills via several long tunnels and emerged into a whole new landscape. The soil was red and the loess mountains on either side of the road were riven by deep gullies through which the once dry beds had been turned by the rain into something resembling a mudflow.
The road ahead made long curving arcs up into bleaker and barren hills with barely any vegetation. There were a scattering of small settlements in the valley, and each village had a small mosque. They looked recently built and followed the Chinese architectural style of a pagoda-style minaret with four open levels each covered by a sloping roof with upturned eaves. On top was a golden spire comprising the Islamic symbols of three spheres and a crescent moon.
There was little traffic on this road except for a few tractors. At one point, I was passed by two coaches: the first carrying men wearing prayer caps, the one behind carrying women in hijabs.
As I neared Xunhua, the landscape opened out into a wider plain of brown, bare mountain ridges alongside the equally brown and still waters of the Yellow River.
Xunhua was the home of the Salar Muslim people, and also had a sizable number of Tibetan residents, most noticeably older females wearing the traditional ankle-length off-the-shoulder chuba dress.
In the 1950s the Tibetans of Xunhua County had been joined by the Salar people in a short-lived rebellion against the heavy-handed policies of the new Communist regime. Dubbed the ‘Xunhua Incident’, the revolt occurred when Mao launched his disastrous and unpopular Great Leap Forward policies in the region, which included the creation of agricultural cooperatives which were unpopular with local farmers. Riots were triggered when a prominent Tibetan lama was taken away by the Chinese for ‘re-education’ - Jnana Pal Rinpoche was a revered local monk who had been a tutor to the 10th Panchen Lama (who had been born in Xunhua in 1938).
The Xunhua Tibetans were joined by the Salar Muslims in surrounding the local government buildings in Jainca town and demanding an end to collectivisation and the release of the Rinpoche. The protests escalated over the next few days, with buildings being ransacked and a local Communist Party leader being killed. The Communist authorities called in the People’s Liberation Army, who sent in two regiments to suppress the rebellion by force - killing more than 400 Tibetans and Salar people and sending more than 2000 protestors to prison. The uprising was noted by the Tibetan leaders in Lhasa and was said to be a precursor to the uprising there the following year - which led to the escape of the Dalai Lama to India.
There was little in modern day Xunhua to suggest its turbulent past. It was a sleepy town with just a few modern high-rise buildings next to the river. A large mosque dominated the city centre, and an outdoor market at a road junction on the outskirts of town had crowds of Muslim traders selling produce such as watermelons.
A Long March monument in Xunhua noted that it had been the final destination of hundreds of captured Long Marchers taken prisoner by Ma Bufang. They were sent to work in forced labour brigades in the ‘wasteland’ around Xunhua, digging the fields, logging, and land reclamation.
Hundreds of captured marchers remained in the area until Liberation in 1949, and the official monument said they had ‘planted the red gene’ of revolution in the area by spreading propaganda messages and building up links with local Salar peasant farmers.
Passing through Xunhua, I stopped at a simple Muslim restaurant to have some steamed mutton baozi buns to fortify me for the road ahead.
As I pushed on the pedals, the landscape slowly changed from red loess clay to solid rock. It was a long and tiring ascent, and for the first time, I had to move up a gear in pedal assistance to get up the switchback slopes. After passing through a narrow rocky defile, the road eventually topped out at a small reservoir and led into a plateau of rolling grassland hills.
A final steep slope took me up to a shabby small town that was the centre of Hualong Hui Muslim County. It was only mid-afternoon and I would have preferred to keep going on towards my goal of Kanbula National Forest Park, but it was still 90 kilometres away and I had used up all my battery getting up through the gorge. Hualong had only one decent hotel, which fortunately allowed me to check in. After setting up my batteries to recharge, I went for a stroll around Hualong.
It was the most ‘Muslim’ town I had been in so far, with many of the local Hui men having beards as well as the prayer caps. Almost all the local women covered their heads with a black hijab. A store next to the large mosque specialised in Islamic home decorations which included paintings of mosques and plinths holding stone discs bearing Arabic inscriptions. My presence drew a lot of stares from the locals, so much so that I felt uneasy at the attention and retired to my hotel room to get a bit of privacy.
Walking the streets I had felt an unusual sense of fatigue and lethargy. Then I realised that I was now at high altitude. Hualong was almost 3000 metres above sea level.
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| Dahejia to Hualong route |
Continuing downhill towards the Yellow River I ran into some touring cyclists going the opposite way. Two Hui Muslim men with prayer caps under their bike helmets told me they were on their way to Xunhua ‘just for fun’. They were from a nearby small town called Kanyang (康扬) and invited me to visit the beef noodle restaurant that they ran there.
About 30 minutes later, I ran into another cyclist— this time a young guy who had just graduated from Lanzhou University. He had just come from Kanbula and was able to give me a lot of useful tips. The road through the park was closed due to landslips, he told me, but it was possible for bikes to get through if you pushed over a few rough sections of gravel.
The Yellow River at Kangyang was a beautiful green colour and placid: quite a contrast to the muddy brown, soupy mess that I had last seen at Xunhua. Here I faced a choice: a minor road ran uphill along the north bank of the river up to the large Xiaqiong (夏琼寺, Jakhyung) Tibetan Buddhist Monastery perched on the edge of a precipice high above Kanbula.
Founded in 1350, Jakhyung was one of the oldest monasteries in the Tibetan world and the birthplace of the Gelugpa branch of Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama was born just a few kilometres to the north of the monastery, in a village called Takster, in 1935. This was the same year in which the Long Marchers were passing through the region, being attacked by the forces of Muslim warlord Ma Bufang, who controlled this part of Qinghai.
The future Tibetan Buddhist had something in common with the atheist Long Marchers in being a victim of Ma Bufang.
When the infant Lhamo Thondup was identified by a search team of Tibetan Buddhist lamas as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in 1936, the boy was held to ransom by the Muslim warlord. The lamas were only allowed to take the prospective Dalai Lama away to Lhasa after the Tibetan government paid a huge ‘release fee’ of 330,000 silver dollars. These ‘ransom’ monies were delivered to Ma Bufang in a deal with Muslim traders, who transported the young Lhamo Thondup back to Lhasa with them as part of their trade caravan, before they continued on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Jakhyung monastery didn’t look that far away from Kanbula as the crow flies, but my navigation app told me it would be a 40 kilometre round trip from the river, as there were many switchbacks in the steep road. I decided to press on to Kanbula.
It didn’t seem that far away, but my navigation app told me it would be a 40-kilometre round trip from the river, as there were many switchbacks in the steep road. I decided to press on to Kanbula.
The Kanbula National Forest Park covered an area of strange ‘danxia’ rock formations on steep hills along the south bank of the Yellow River which had recently been designated a ‘global geopark’ by UNESCO. The Qinghai government had obviously decided that it would be a major tourist attraction and was in the process of building a holiday resort around the entrance to the park.
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| Hualong to Kanbula route map |
The small town of Kanbula had a few modest hotels and homestays along the main street, but I initially decided to try the new Kanbula International Hotel further down the road, as this was the only one showing that it was open to foreigners. It was a new and flashy, almost Las Vegas-style hotel, but I decided against staying because it appeared deserted. The hotel complex sat isolated in a gloomy ghost town of unfinished buildings far from the main street, to which I returned on the bike.
In contrast to the Jakhyung monastery overlooking the town, Kanbula was still a predominantly Hui Muslim community. There were a few tourists in town, but most of the new streets and the landscaped tree-lined walkways along the waterside were empty. I rode my bike down to see the spectacular river scenery of red rock cliffs and pristine, clear green water.
I discovered the reason for the lack of tourists in Kanbula the next morning: the park was closed. At the edge of town the road was blocked off by a makeshift metal screen on which a sign stated that landslides had taken away parts of the tourist road through the park.
Remembering the advice of my Chinese cyclist, I found a way to push my bike around the side of the screen, through some bushes. With some trepidation, I set off along the empty road, which ascended alongside the river until it reached a viewpoint above the huge dam.
I was admiring the views back towards Kanbula town when I was suddenly startled by a stern mechanical voice barking out orders at me in Chinese: “Attention! This is a prohibited area! Leave immediately!” The electronic voice emanated from a surveillance camera array mounted on a post overlooking the viewing area. The message kept repeating itself, making me realise it was a recording triggered by movement sensors rather than a real-time warning from someone spying on me via the cameras.
So I moved on, into a tunnel that took me through the hillside and on the other side up a series of zig-zag loops of road to an empty car park with an even better view of the Kanbula dam. Here there was a real-life security guard with an electric cart, but he ignored my presence.
From here I began the main ascent into the hills of Kanbula. The switchback road was steep and a few sections had been lost where the slope had collapsed due to erosion. I had to get off the bike and push it through the steep and rough ‘bypass’ tracks that went around the landslips. It was hard work and I was rapidly using up my battery, as well as my drinking water.
It took me until late morning to reach the 2800-metre altitude where the uphill slope of the road eased and I was able to get panoramic views of the lake, now far below me. The forest lay higher up the hillside of open terraces of grass and crops, amid which marmots scurried away to hide in their burrows as I approached on my bike. At a collection of buildings labelled Jiancang (尖藏) village, I paused to get a battery recharge at a large but unused ‘visitor service centre’ that had a power cord trailing from an open window.
While I waited, one of the park maintenance staff offered me hot water from a huge urn to make tea. He was one of the ethnic Tibetan villagers and sat with his daughter, spending an hour patiently working through the homework exercises in Mandarin from her school textbook.
I asked the staff about restaurants on the road ahead, but they just shrugged and said there was nothing open at the moment. When I had added a few more bars of added battery charge, I resumed my journey on the hilly road that now rose and fell for several hundred metres between more small villages. The forested slopes around the road were now interspersed with red sandstone towers and cliffs that were twisted into strange shapes.
These were the ‘danxia landforms’ that had been sculpted by wind and rain erosion over millions of years. Often described as a "masterpiece" created by the collision of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Yellow River, they are the park's most iconic feature.
I reached the high point of the Kanbula park road at a village called Dehong (得红). From here, the road began a long and twisting descent through the most fantastic and extensive danxia rock formations. Some were rounded mounds, others formed sheer blocks of cliffs, while further down was a whole series of twisted pinnacles in the shapes of horns, wedges, and pinnacles that resembled the skeleton of a massive dinosaur.
I had the empty road all to myself and made slow progress because I kept stopping in the middle of the highway to take more photos. At an almost deserted visitor car park, I found a Tibetan mother and son with a stall selling cartons of instant noodles and roast potatoes. These made a most welcome lunch to fuel me on the next leg of my journey towards the distant town of Guide (贵德, pronounced gway-duh).
The map showed it was possible to take a side road steeply downhill to the shore of the Kanbula reservoir and from there ride on a boat back to Kanbula town via a dock near the dam. My plan was to continue through the park and take the road out to the northwest onto the Tibetan plateau. Ominously, however, I heard rumbles of thunder and felt the first sports of rain as I freewheeled down past the last of the rock spires. I donned my rain cape, removed the phone from its handlebar holder, and ensured all the panniers were sealed.
The empty road descended sharply, and I began to feel lonely and vulnerable as heavier rain started to spatter down around me. A dark grey mist rolled in from the peaks, and thunder and lightning began to clap into this lower valley. I reached another junction where a small road branched off with a sign pointing in the direction of Guide— its rough appearance did not inspire confidence in the way ahead.
Lightning bolts now cracked nearby and when I saw one bright crooked line of lightning zapping into a nearby hillside, I decided to seek shelter immediately. There was nothing nearby except trees, so in desperation, I cranked up the power setting on the bike and pedalled around the side of the hill, and up towards where I could see a few buildings by the road. Riding anxiously through the heavy rain it took a lot of effort to get up the hill and reach a village where the houses appeared deserted, their gates and doors firmly locked up.
Finally, the last building in the village had an open gate into a yard where a plastic canopy offered some shelter from the wet. I dragged my bike inside and propped it up next to the wall to escape the wind-blown sheets of rain. To my surprise, the door of the wooden house suddenly flew open and a peasant face gaped out at me with a momentary expression of incomprehension. The man’s rough voice urged me to come inside and shelter from the rain. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
Striding into the warm interior, I found myself in a large airy room looking into the faces of a group of men laying on the floor, tucked up in sleeping bags.
“Sit down! Join us! Take off your wet clothes!” they urged me in heavily-accented Mandarin.
After I slumped in exhaustion against the wall and declined their offers of cigarettes, they explained that they were a road repair crew who were ‘resting’ because of the storm. They plied me with hot water and told me they weren’t locals but Hui Muslim men from Ningxia, near Zhongwei. We bonded rapidly when I told them I had just cycled through their hometown, and they were full of praise for my Yellow River journey.
They told me it would likely rain for the rest of the day and urged me to stay with them in their cabin until the morning.
Over the next 40 minutes, we swapped stories: I heard about how they travelled around north-west China doing itinerant labouring on the roads. They thought it was good work because it was stable and simple labour that paid a regular wage. And they were a group of friends working together without having to rely on a ‘middleman’ labour hire agency who would take a percentage of their earnings. They were inquisitive about my job, how much I earned, and about my family.
They asked me what religion I was, and for the sake of simplicity, I said I was Catholic. When they asked about whether there were Muslims in Australia, I told them yes, but they were generally people whose families came from places like Lebanon, Malaysia, and Pakistan.
One of them responded: “So Islam is not a native religion in Australia like it is in China?” I’d never thought of it in those terms before. The conversation continued to range across a random range of topics, including the British monarchy, whether Michael Jackson was really ‘black’, and the benefits of the Western diet compared to Chinese food.
Against their protestations that I should stay and eat dinner with them, I eventually decided that the storm had passed and the rain had eased up enough to continue my journey.
Donning my rain cape again, I endured a long climb back up to a second ‘pass’ that led me out of the Kanbula park and into a wide valley overlooking the Yellow River. It was drier on this side of the mountains, and as I rode down the long, twisting road back to the river, I passed Tibetan families who had stopped their cars to have picnics on the grass and enjoy the view.
The final 40 kilometres of road that led me to Guide took me along a wild and dramatic stretch of the Yellow River with an unusual variety of terrain. Beyond the green waters there was a beach-like strip of fertile land along the far riverbank, covered with bushes and trees. Behind this ran a low line of dark-coloured hills, resembling slag heaps from coal fields. And in the distance was a continuous backbone of sharp, spiky rock ridges whose layers changed colour from brown to beige to red.
I had to wash the worst of mud from my bike and my clothes, before entering the hotel I chose to stay at. Once checked in, I found myself in an art deco hotel corridor, and was once again struck by the incongruity of the sudden transition from wilderness to stylish comfort. I was too tired to do anything more than grab a simple dinner at a nearby Sichuan restaurant and return to my room to dry my clothes and put my feet up.
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| Kanbula to Guide route |
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