Chapter 22. Seeking a Plan B in Xining 青海湖 - 刘家峡

 It had taken me eight difficult days pedalling uphill from Lanzhou to get to Qinghai Lake, but it took only two days to return to near Lanzhou,  freewheeling much of the way back downhill again along the main highway. 

I would lose almost 2000 metres in altitude when I descended from the lake towards Xining, aiming for the Lijiaxia reservoir outside Lanzhou, where I had passed through on the way up. This would be my gateway into Gansu towards the first bend of the Yellow River. 

My journey back down started on the dual carriageway alongside Qinghai Lake. It was a long, flat ride along the shoreline until I left behind the amusement rides and entered an ethnic Tibetan truckstop town of Daotanghe (倒淌河). From here it was a short but nerve-wracking ride to Sun Moon Mountain (日月山, Riyueshan) along a modern highway that had no shoulder on which I could avoid the passing cars and trucks. 

Sun Moon Mountain was a significant landmark in Chinese folklore, marking the ‘end of the world’ or at least the western edge of the Chinese world. In the flat-earth beliefs of ancient China, it was believed that travelling beyond this point would take you to an otherworld place where the sun and moon went after they set. The ‘mountain’ was actually a couple of relatively low, grassy mounds on top of which were pavilions dedicated to the sun and moon, respectively. 

It was said that in the year 641 during the Tang dynasty, the minor royal Princess Wencheng (文成公主) paused here to summon up courage before leaving China to go into Tibet. She had been sent by the Tang Emperor from her home in Chang’an (Xi’an) to Lhasa to be married to the Tibetan ruler, King Songsten Gampo, in a diplomatic alliance-building gesture.

According to legend, the Princess Wencheng possessed a magic mirror given to her by the Emperor which he told her would show her family and homeland if she looked into it. Feeling homesick as she prepared to depart from China for the last time at this spot, the princess looked into the mirror and felt desperately sad when she saw in the reflection an image of Chang'an. Torn between duty to country and yearning for home and family, the princess is said to have thrown the mirror away in heartbreak and despair, vowing to ‘never look back’. 

The fallen mirror broke into two fragments, one reflecting the sun and one reflecting the moon, and these were said to have become the twin Sun-Moon hills that we see at the pass today and give it its name. The story around these two hills is said to embody values such as personal sacrifice, duty over personal desire and the great leap of crossing a border from one world to another.

In the late spring of 2025, Sun-Moon Mountain was a beautiful spot set amid green grass-covered mountains, but it was swarming with tourists whose cars and coaches clogged the access road from the motorway. Since I had made such fast progress, I abandoned my plans to stay here for the night and pushed on towards Xining. 

he road from here onwards turned downhill, and remained that way for much of the way back to the big city, making me realise how much altitude I had gained in the last few days. With little pedalling to do and only light traffic on the road back from the plateau, I could relax a little on my two wheels and listen to music on my earbuds. 

This pleasant downhill journey was interrupted by a thunderstorm on the road approaching Xining, with a sudden onslaught of heavy rain that forced me to stop and shelter under a railway bridge for 20 minutes. The outskirts of the city were a jarring reintroduction to the modern Chinese world: there were Disneyland-like entertainment complexes whose garish hotels were adorned with dolphin marine-themed sculptures. 

Around another bend in the road, I came upon a real estate development that had been modelled on European architecture: one apartment block was built in the style of an English church with a spire, another was like a terrace of Amsterdam canal-side houses and even had its own windmill. Moving through to the parkland of the Xining suburbs, I enjoyed the luxury of a separated lane for cyclists, although I had to share it with picnicking motorists who set up barbecue stoves on the path and sat around under tent canopies they had strung from tree branches.

Once across the sprawling city centre, I made for the youth hostel where I’d stayed on a previous visit to Xining more than a decade ago. At that time, the hostel had been a lively and sociable place run by a woman who had returned from studying in Europe. She had understood the tastes of Western backpackers and ‘eco-tourists’ interested in Tibetan culture. Sadly, with the decline of the western backpacker market in China, the hostel had become just an empty shell, with little of the vibrancy of its former existence. I was the only guest and spent the evening sat alone in the deserted lounge that felt neglected and cold.

The one place I wanted to revisit in Xining was its grand Donguan Mosque (东关清真寺). In 2012, I had photographed its porticoed facade flanked by a couple of four-tiered minarets and topped with a bulbous green dome. I barely recognised the same mosque in light of its sinicisation. In 2025, I discovered that like its smaller counterpart in Yinchuan it had undergone major building work to decapitate the minarets, which were now clock towers. The Arabic-style dome had been replaced by a sloping roof that might have been taken from the Forbidden City

I recalled the fake church that I had just seen in the suburbs of Xining: it seemed acceptable in China to have architecture that emulated foreign places of worship so long as it was for real estate development rather than religious purposes.

The next day the road back towards Lanzhou provided another epic day of downhill cycling. I barely needed the e-bike’s battery assistance as I pedalled through a series of ‘new town’ developments in places like Ping’an (平安) and Haidong (海东). The high-tech factories, shopping malls, and neatly manicured gardens of gated communities were all in line with China’s vision of ‘high-quality development’ for the 21st century. But to the casual visitor like me, they were a bit dull.

I had the high-speed rail line alongside me for much of the way to Minhe (民和), and had to start pedalling again and using up the battery power. I knew there would be some uphill sections beyond the town, so I stopped to charge the battery at a friendly Muslim restaurant.

There was more open country and spectacular scenery when I crossed into Gansu from Qinghai beyond Minhe, with the road passing through the mountains via several tunnels. A tributary of the Yellow River flowed on my left, and I seemed to slow down as I looked for signs of the major turnoff towards Liujiaxia. There was now a lot of traffic on the road coming out of Lanzhou, and I had to contend with heavy trucks bearing down on me as they used the oncoming lane to overtake slower counterparts.

It was 5pm when I reached the turnoff for Liujiaxia, and I was tired and saddle sore after a long day on the bike. The side road to Liujiaxia looked like a lonely and badly maintained route and I was tempted to keep cycling on the main highway to reach the big city  ‘civilisation’ of Lanzhou just a few kilometres away.  I wanted to stop and put my feet up and have a beer, but reluctantly, like Princess Wencheng at Sun-Moon Mountain, I decided to press on and ‘never look back’. I thought it would be a relatively easy 30 kilometres and towards Liujiaxia. 

It actually took me another two hours of difficult pedalling to get there. I’d misunderstood the map and only realised at the last minute that the ‘direct’ road actually went over some high mountains and involved a lot of up and down. I opted instead to follow a longer route that ran alongside the Yellow River, which added another 15 kilometres to my pedalling. I assumed it would be level, but it wasn’t.  

I was a very exhausted and unhappy rider when I eventually rounded the final curve of the river for a 12-kilometre final stretch past riverside glamping sites and picnic tables to arrive in the town of Yongjing, just in time to be soaked by another heavy thunderstorm. 

 This time I headed straight for the posher Fumen hotel that I had envied from a distance on my first visit. It was indeed an excellent choice, especially for a bedraggled, road-weary and thoroughly wet cyclist who had covered a staggering 350 kilometres in two days.

Route: Qinghai Lake to Liujiaxia via Xining (click on image to enlarge)

Chapter 23. Craft beer in Little Mecca 合作 - 碌曲 - 郎木寺

 I felt I deserved a day off after the huge distance I covered coming down from Qinghai. I didn’t grant myself that, but the next best thing was an ‘easy’ 60-kilometre day cycling around the Liujiaxia reservoir to Linxia (临夏), the Hui Muslim town described as ‘Little Mecca’ because of its numerous mosques. 

It was a wonderful sunny day as I crossed the Qijia (祈家) bridge that took me over a gorge of the Yellow River to the south shore of the reservoir. I didn’t need to wait until Linxia to see mosques as there was a very ornate one in Qijia as soon as I crossed the bridge. The road followed the shoreline for a few kilometres and I noted that the water level was quite low - presumably still awaiting the late spring releases of water from the numerous dams I had seen upriver.

Further on I approached something I had long dreaded: a long road tunnel. I bypassed a line of cars and trucks waiting at the entrance for the oncoming traffic to get through. A construction worker with a red flag allowed me to pass, and I was able to ride on the cordoned-off side of the road where maintenance crews were working in dark and noisy conditions to resurface the highway. I had always feared being overcome by carbon monoxide in a long road tunnel, but these guys were working in the middle of a one-kilometre tunnel without so much as a mask, let alone fans or breathing apparatus. Nevertheless, I was still glad to escape the fug and the thunderous roar of trucks to emerge back into the sunshine.

Beyond the exit of the tunnel, a suspension bridge spanned an inlet of the reservoir and offered a panoramic view over the two-kilometre-wide expanse of water and the dramatic red sandstone rock formations along the shore.

urning south into a wide bay, the road passed a ferry jetty where tourist boats made a stop on their way between the dam and the Bingling statues. I continued on south, passing a few Muslim restaurants and wondering whether China’s ‘Little Mecca’ might be a sensitive region that was out of bounds for foreigners. Or might it be a strictly Muslim enclave that followed sharia law? 

When researching the route, I’d learned that in 2010, the imams in neighbouring Guanghe (广河) prefecture had organised local residents to lobby local restaurants and shops not to sell alcohol and to avoid any pork-based foodstuffs. Feelings ran high, and there were even photos of men confiscating crates of beer and making a show of smashing them in the street.

Conversely, another branch of local Muslims known as the Dongxiang (东乡) once had a reputation for being heavily involved in the illicit drug trade in heroin. In the early 2000s the Gansu authorities launched  a “strike hard” campaign in Dongxiang Autonomous County to crack down on gangs who were trafficking opium from Yunnan and Burma and also growing poppies locally in the areas west of Linxia centred around Sanjiaji. 

So when my bike rolled into Linxia, it was reassuring to find it was a pleasant and progressive city of modern high-rise apartments and landscaped lakes: some people were wearing Islamic headdresses, but most of the younger male and female population had adopted the secular smart-casual attire of office workers everywhere. Linxia was more Shenzhen than Saudi Arabia. 

Since it was Friday and it was my custom to welcome the weekend with a beer, I was also pleasantly surprised to find that Linxia had a few craft beer bars. On the northern fringe of the city centre was a series of pedestrianised shopping streets, part of which had presumably been designed as a food district. There were bars and restaurants, and I found myself at a craft brewery trying to decide whether to splash out on a bottle of Oak Barrel matured ale or a Milk Stout.

Linxia would be the final stop in the Muslim areas of the Yellow River and also in the region of loess landscape. The south of Gansu was very different from the rest of the province, and its name in Chinese, Gannan, was synonymous with Tibetan culture and the grasslands around famous monasteries such as Labrang.

My final evening in Linxia was therefore spent enjoying a bowl of the spicy chicken dapanji, which was a Hui specialty. It was so popular in the region that there was even a franchise restaurant chain which sold only dapanji and variations of it.

Liujiaxia to Linxia (click on image to enlarge)

In the Gannan region, my next main goal was to get to the monastery town of Langmusi (郎木寺), about 260 kilometres south, from where I would be able to take a side road to the Yellow River. With my daily cycling range of around 100 kilometres, the route would take me through two Tibetan towns, Hezuo (合作) and Luqu (碌曲).

There was a major highway running around the mountains to Hezuo, but for some reason, my navigation app was telling me to take a minor road that went up into the hills. I found out why when I entered the river valley south of Linxia: tunnels. The road snaked around green wooded hills, following the course of a turbulent river.  

The terrain was quite different from the arid sandstone I had become used to in northern Gansu, but it was a welcome return to the Tibetan landscape that I had visited so many times in the last few decades. I saw signposts for the road to Labrang (Xiahe, 夏河) monastery and then encountered my first tunnel: but the sign said no bikes or tractors allowed.  I paused to consider my options - there was no alternative route over the hills, and since it was only a 200-metre tunnel, I waited for a lull in the traffic and pedalled through quickly. It was to be the first of four such tunnels, all prohibiting bikes. I made it through each one when the traffic was light.

The road made a gradual ascent into beautiful hills, but the scenery was marred by construction work underway along the left side. Concrete pylons were being erected, and tunnels were being bored into the mountain side. It looked like a new rail line— and a sign I saw later in the day described it as the ‘Xi-Cheng High Speed Rail Link’ that would connect Xining and Chengdu directly and reduce travel times from ten hours to just four by avoiding the need to travel via Xi’an.

Building a railway line across the Aba Tibetan steppe into southern Gansu was a remarkably ambitious engineering challenge. Most of the line would be at an altitude of over 3000 metres and would require 158 bridges and 66 tunnels to negotiate the mountains and marshlands of this part of the Tibet-Qinghai highlands. Perhaps the project was motivated by a sense of destiny among the leaders of China’s Communist Party, for this was the place where the Party’s future had been forged during the Long March.

In 1937, the ‘great snowy mountains’ and grasslands of northern Sichuan and southern Gansu had proved to be the most arduous part of the Red Army’s push north towards Shaanxi.

In Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow wrote about it:

“In the grasslands there was no human habitation for ten days. Almost perpetual rain falls over this swampland, and it is possible to cross its centre only by a maze of narrow footholds known to the native mountaineers who led the Reds. More animals were lost, and more men. Many foundered in the weird sea of wet grass and dropped from sight into the depth of the swamp, beyond reach of their comrades.

“There was no firewood; they were obliged to eat their green wheat and vegetables raw. There were even no trees for shelter, and the lightly equipped Reds carried no tents. At night they huddled under bushes tied together, which gave but scant protection against the rain.”

When completed, the new Sichuan-Gansu railway would enable ordinary Chinese citizens to travel in comfort at 250 kilometres/hour across a landscape where once the Party founders had struggled for weeks in arduous and sometimes fatal conditions.

Perhaps the rail project will be used by the Party as a symbol of a new technological Long March, just as the original trek through the region had been used in propaganda to show the Party setting an example for the rest of the nation.

As the writer Sun Shuyun said in her book The Long March:

“The message has been drilled into us so that we can accomplish any goal set before us by the party because nothing compares in difficulty with what they did. Decades after the historical one, we have been spurred on to ever more Long Marches – to industrialise China, to feed the largest population in the world, to catch up with the West, to reform the socialist economy, to send men into space, to engage with the 21st century.”

Beyond the tunnels and the turnoff to the Dangzhou grasslands (当周草原), I had to contend with one more high pass before the descent into Hezuo. It was just before the pass that I saw my first foreign cyclist of the whole trip. A young Western woman sped past me in the opposite direction as I struggled up the hill. It happened so quickly that I had no chance to react, let alone stop and chat with her. I can only guess that she was on her way to nearby Labrang.

 Hezuo was a small town most famous for being the location of the unique Milarepa pavilion (安多合作米拉日巴佛阁).  This broad nine-storey edifice held a special place in Tibetan Buddhist culture, with each floor having a richly decorated temple dedicated to one of the Tibetan deities. I stopped off on the way into Hezuo to take a look and it was indeed unique and magnificent - but after climbing up the stairs to each of the temples I discovered that photography was strictly forbidden. 

Milarepa is one of the most revered saints in Tibetan Buddhism. As a young man he was said to have killed many people using sorcery to avenge injustices against his family. Overcome with remorse, he sought to train with the Buddhist master Marpa, who had studied in India and brought scripture texts back to Tibet But first Milarepa had to undergo years of ascetic hardship and humiliation to teach him  humility, perseverance, and to  purify the negative karma he had accumulated from his killings.

After Milarepa passed these trials and tests, Marpa eventually passed on the wisdom and learning to enable him to become one of Tibetan Buddhism's greatest yogis and poets. This story of transformation—from vengeance to enlightenment— is central to the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Milarepa tower looked newly renovated and was contained within a walled square of prayer wheels next to Hezuo’s main monastery, Tso Gompa, which also looked like it had undergone a recent makeover.

The town of Hezuo itself was an anonymous grid of modern buildings. After parking up my bike at the hotel, I went for a walk in search of something to eat. Two young Tibetan women saw me looking a bit lost and asked me what I was looking for. 

“You won’t find any good restaurants around here,” they laughed. “Come with us, we’ll show you where to get something.”

Their down-to-earth and irreverent attitude reminded me of the way people in Yorkshire spoke— not afraid to offer a bit of unsolicited advice to strangers. They led me to a street and recommended a fancy Tibetan restaurant.

“This is where all the Beijing and Shanghai people come to ‘check in’ (打卡) for social media photos and live streaming (直播) for Douyin, ” they said.

When I said I wasn’t interested in TikTok and preferred a Sichuan restaurant, the girls shrugged and wished me a good trip. “Welcome to Hezuo,” they called out as they departed.

The next day’s cycling brought me a taste of Long March-like arduous struggle as I pedalled to a small town on the steppe called Luqu. My ride started off well enough as I crossed a pass into a pleasant grassy valley of farms and small temples. The local Tibetans were hawking strawberries and honey at stalls by a road junction. I stopped to take a photo of an old Tibetan monk as he meandered up an embankment from the river. When he saw me, he waved and greeted me with ‘tashi delay’.

In response to the usual questions about my travels, I told him about where I had come from and where I was going. After giving me the thumbs up, he pulled out a 20 yuan banknote from his bag and asked for a donation.  When I said I carried no cash, he pulled out a laminated WeChat Pay QR Code. I had to laugh and swiped his code to donate 20 yuan. If I thought I might acquire some merit from this act of benevolence, it certainly wasn't with the weather gods. 

As I started pedalling up towards another pass, the heavens opened and I quickly got soaked, despite my rain cape. I was now up at around 4000 metres and was also feeling the lethargy of altitude sickness and with cold and wet fingers and toes too. It was a thoroughly miserable ride to Luqu and a dangerous one too as I sometimes had to steer the bike into the centre of the road to avoid the puddles and rivers of water along the side of the road.

The rain did not let up all the way to Luqu, by which time I was desperate to find shelter and change out of my sodden clothes. On arrival in the one-street town, my wet hands fumbled to make any impression on the phone touchscreen while I sheltered in a doorway and I booked the nearest hotel. I should have read the description because to my disappointment, this turned out to be a shabby internet café that had some basic rooms above it. I could not face going back out into the rain and just accepted my fate. I wheeled my bike through the computer hall where Tibetan youths smoked and lounged around gaming screens and pool tables.

With nothing to do, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the room trying to dry my shoes with a hair dryer. I felt a bit better after a cup of tea, using one of the last of my Yorkshire Tea bags - I would need to get to my goal before they ran out!  Perusing my map, I was glad to see that I was now only a day’s journey away from Langmusi, from where there were side roads to the Yellow River at Maqu and Tangke (唐克). The latter was further away, but was the site of the river’s ‘First Bend’. There was no road along the river for the 80 kilometres or so between the two places, so I decided to go directly to Tangke.

Linxia to Luqu via Hezuo (click on image to enlarge)

If my rainswept road to Luqu was a reminder of the difficulties of the Long March, the next day’s ride to Langmusi was literally moving forward into the sunlit uplands of Sichuan. Starting out at an altitude of 3200 metres, I cycled up into the grassy hills above Luqu, where a flock of sheep moved in unison up the misty slopes. 

By mid-morning, the fog had lifted and I was on a busy highway running across the top of a grassland plateau, once again following the messy construction of the high-speed rail line. I passed a junction with a road heading towards the Yellow River at Maqu County, but I didn’t take it: there was no way to get from Maqu to the first bend of the river.

Staying on the main highway, the truck traffic kept me on my toes, and it was augmented by increasing numbers of coaches and cars with plates from distant provinces. I played a game of trying to match the Chinese characters on the plate to the home province. As well as the expected Gansu 甘 and Sichuan 川, I was seeing plates from Yunnan 云, Guangdong 粤, and even distant provinces such as Zhejiang 浙.

I was entering the tourist zone. At the Highland Lake of Gahai (尕海) I saw my first Tibetan holiday campsite: at a junction there were a couple of new buildings and some Tibetan marquee-style tents with strings of prayer flags and a row of A-frame pitch-roofed cabins behind them. It offered horse riding and ‘quad bike’ all-terrain vehicles (沙滩车 - literally ‘beach buggy’) for hire, and a bored Tibetan youth stood by the roadside waving a sign advertising Tibetan barbecue and hotpot. They didn’t have many customers but the owners didn’t seem to be short of money either: the owners had a BYD electric car and another Tibetan youth drove out from the reception in a Lexus.

This local tourism-related ‘fun park’ was the first of many similar farm-based leisure businesses that I would see over the next few days around Langmusi and the headwaters of the Yellow River, all offering horse rides, glamping and local cuisine.

The next remote settlement on the plateau was Gongba (贡巴), which boasted a large new visitor centre topped with a sign proclaiming it was a “National AAAA-Level Tourist Attraction”. Were there such things as 1, 2 or 3A tourist attractions? I never saw them advertised.

For about a kilometre the highway was lined with restaurants offering local cuisine and Sichuan dishes. The carpark was busy with coaches, cars and even a couple of campervans. It had food and gift stalls and a coffee van with a sign that said “Latte brings Long Life and Wealth".

Gongba was also an example of the policy of settling Tibetan grassland nomads into permanent housing. At the far end of ‘town’ was a long line of about 20 identical new houses built in a vaguely Tibetan style with red tiled roofs. The area around it had been landscaped with walkways, ‘sitting out area’ with pavilions and a playground.

Pedalling on into the grassland, I noted that it was now extensively fenced, with herds of yaks and sheep grazing around small homesteads and tents. The Tibetan herders here rode small horses, and at one point I was riding alongside one of them as he herded his flock of about 100 goats across the highway. What a contrast to see Chinese tourists in their electric vehicles having to stop and wait for a herder sitting in the saddle wearing a traditional chuba and cowboy hat, with his face protected from the sun by a scarf.

For the rest of the day as I pedalled over the plateau I enjoyed sunny weather, giving me a real-world experience of the Windows XP ‘Bliss’ wallpaper image of bucolic green hills, blue skies and white clouds. In my real-life wallpaper there was also a trio of hawks circling overhead.

Reaching the Gansu-Sichuan border, the highway continued on towards Ruo’ergai (若尔盖,Zoige), but I took a turnoff that descended into the monastery town of Langmusi.

Set in a wooded valley surrounded by rocky peaks, it was easy to see why Langmusi had become such a popular tourist destination. The town has two major Tibetan Buddhist monasteries that straddle the border: the gold-roof Sertri Gompa on the northern side of the river is in Gansu while the silver-roof Kirti monastery is in Sichuan. They are both centres for Gelugpa ‘Yellow Hat’ Buddhism, so why two separate monasteries of the same tradition in the same location? 

Located in separate jurisdictions, they had each grown independently with their own populations of monks and lands to serve different ’dioceses’ with unique communities and traditions. The Gansu side monastery was focused on the Buddhist communities to the north and east in Amdo, which had Mongol and Qing influences. The Sichuan-side monastery served Buddhist communities to the south and west and had its own separate schools of monks, estates and local traditions.

When I arrived, there were a lot of monks visible in Langmusi but also a lot of tourists. The main street could have been transplanted from Dali or Yangshuo. It had been rebuilt in a generic ‘rustic Tibetan’ style with wooden shopfronts, a cobbled road and lots of signposts. The street was lined with restaurants, bars, coffee shops, convenience stores, guesthouses and gift shops.

Langmusi was the first ‘tourist town’ that I’d stayed in for a while, and this showed in the impersonal attitude of the hotel staff and the poor value of the rooms.  I had to visit four hotels before I found one with a friendly, helpful atmosphere and where the staff cared about anything other than getting money off me — and even this guesthouse room lacked basic amenities such as towels.

After parking my bike, I went next door to a Muslim-run restaurant where they had menus in English, and I ordered the ‘yak burger’. It was actually just a large ‘rou jia mou’ (肉夹馍) meat bun, and I vowed to stick to Chinese dishes in the future.

I had a wander around the streets of Langmusi and saw the monasteries from a distance but did not go inside the temple buildings. I felt uneasy about being part of the mass tourism phenomenon in Langmusi and did not want to join the crowds of tourists posing for photos in front of statues or talking into their phones on selfie sticks as they livestreamed their experience. I knew I was being hypocritical and snobbish, but I’d seen many other Tibetan Buddhist temples during my travels that I felt I could miss these two.

Tibetan writers such as Woeser have described how the tourism industry is undermining their traditional cultural and religious practices. Sacred places undergo ‘Disneyfied’ development and are marketed as ‘magical kingdoms’ to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors. While these tourists may be respectful and have a genuine interest in Tibetan Buddhism, the sheer numbers and the facilities needed to cater for them can overwhelm communities and sideline genuine pilgrims.

Most of the shops in Langmusi were aimed at tourists, but the supermarket still catered for the everyday needs of the Tibetan community: it had a special section for household items such as yak butter tea mixers and golden bowls to hold candles that burned butter oil. The clothing section was given over to chubas, pangden striped aprons, and the cheap straw sun bonnets favoured by many older Tibetan women. On my way back to the hotel, I heard the sound of a sports whistle blowing and peeped through a gateway into a yard where young monks in their maroon robes were playing a serious game of basketball.

I decided not to stay in Langmusi for the hiking or to see a Sky Burial, which were popular activities for western visitors. Like the Fourth Route Army that passed nearby going in the opposite direction on their Long March in 1936, I would bypass Langmusi to continue on to my goal. The First Bend of the Yellow River was now only a day away. 

Luqu to Langmusi (click on image to enlarge)

Chapter 24. Reaching the First Bend in the rainy season 黄河九曲第一湾

The tourists were being beckoned to breakfast by Langmusi’s café 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 Chengdu to Xining 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 e-bike power to get up to a pass at 3500 metres 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 and lose 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 farmsteads 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 3600 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 kilometres/hour speed as I pushed on past a couple of small farms 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. Even in the early summer month of June it was an inhospitable environment: no trees for shelter, no villages for food just a harsh wind, strong sun and waterlogged ground underfoot. 

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 rough road 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 curling loops 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. On one of the bends in the road I came across a bizarre and alarming scene: 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 glass of the 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 obviously unhappy. I did not disturb him.

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. We swapped stories and route tips, and these two older guys who had come up from Chengdu 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 stone hut occupied by a Muslim family from Langmusi who served up noodles and soup to local herders and passing truck drivers - and the occasional grateful cycle tourist like me.

Fortified by this meal, I plodded on through the wetlands along what I hoped would be the final stretch of my ride to the finish line of the Yellow River. I was still riding at around 3500 metres and expected there was going to be a gradual descent down to the river. But it eventually became clear that this flat and wide terrain was the actual 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 180 degree 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 at this point, but a series of nine twists and turns, amid which the river changed direction 180 degrees 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. 

From this spot it was another 500 kilometres to the source of the Yellow River at Maduo, but I could go no further. There was no more road and this was as far as I could travel legally. Beyond Tangke I would be entering the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture which is closed to foreigners. Entry is only allowed with a Foreign Travel Permit obtained in advance from the Public Security Bureau for groups travelling on a licensed tour. And even with a permit, my route would take me through the Sanjiangyuan (Three River Source) ‘core ecological zone’ around Maduo from which foreigners are completely banned and in which independent hiking is not permitted.

Besides, there was no road on this (south) side of the river to get from Tangke to Maduo 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 to the north, cross over the river there and follow a minor road along the river through the uninhabited grassland wilderness for a week or more. This would mean camping along the way and bringing your own food and water supplies. There were no towns, no hotels, no restaurants. According to my map, the nearest shop was about 200 kilometres away to the west at a riverside township called Muxihe (木西合). 

In 2024 Chinese media reported the deaths from exposure of two cyclists who had made solo attempts to cross this wilderness. I also read of the reports of solo campers being attacked by wolves on the grasslands. 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’. 

Another factor was the weather: 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.

This all helped me decide 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 5,000 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, Salar and Bao’an Muslims, Mongols and Tibetans. And no foreigners.

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 good luck sign, and a blessing that my journey along the river was done.

Langmusi to Tangke  - 'First Bend of Yellow River' (click on image to enlarge)

Chapter 25. To Chengdu across the Long March grasslands 红原 - 查真梁子 - 黑水 - 茂县

It’s one thing to take an e-bike to the headwaters of the Yellow River, but quite another to get it back again. One of the reasons I chose to make the First Bend the ultimate goal and endpoint of my trip was because I could take my bike from there into Sichuan, where I had friends who could store the bike for me. 

So from the First Bend I embarked on a four-day journey through the grasslands and mountains of northern Sichuan to get to the provincial capital.  My last view of the Yellow River was when passing through Tangke (唐克), a scruffy riverside town that had little to recommend it. I made a detour across a bridge over the White River (白河, Baihe) for a few kilometres to the west of town to see what the road looked like going upstream. 

After passing a large field of yellow rapeseed, the road petered out into a dirt track that ran through farmland flood plains. The river here changed its course frequently. On the map, I could see ‘ghost’ loop images indicating where the river had previously run. The route upriver looked desolate, especially in the rain. 

 My journey to Hongyuan (红原) took me across Tibetan grassland plains beside the Bai river. The rainy season had set in, and I became accustomed to pedalling in the wet. Along the roadside, there were many more Tibetan tourist businesses, all offering the same range of horse rides, ATVs, honey for sale, yak meat barbecues, and rows of cabins and tents. There were Long March memorials, Tibetan Buddhist chortens, and car wrecks displayed as public warnings against traffic accidents (‘9 out of 10 crashes are caused by speeding!’). 

 Hongyuan was a mess because the entire main street was closed off for reconstruction. I squelched my bike through a muddy diversion and found a room in a tatty Tibetan-run hotel with a friendly receptionist.  

On the second day of cycling through the rainy plateau south of Hongyuan, I pedalled up a long incline to a 4350-metre pass called Chazi Liangzi (查真梁子). The signs proclaimed it to be the place where the watershed of the Yellow River met with that of the Yangtze.  

“Standing on the ridge and looking down, you can enjoy the two very different landforms of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River at the same time, and enjoy the two different landforms of mountains and grasslands,” it said. Or as my Chinese friend put it: Have a piss in one direction and it goes into the Yangtze, in the other to the Yellow River.

Sure enough, there were mountains ahead, albeit covered in rainclouds. 

 

As I descended, I left the grasslands— and the Yellow River— behind me. After one more climb to a tunnel through the Qionglai mountain range, it was downhill all the way from there to Chengdu. I took the road down to Heishui (黑水), following the course of the Black River, which was in flood. The Aba Tibetan houses here were built of stone and looked like chalets from the Alps. To the south were the famous peaks of the Sigunian Range, and I bypassed turnoffs to see glaciers and more Long March monuments. 

 Here was tourist infrastructure: the road had cycle paths in some sections, and Heishui town had boutique hotels— but I was not yet home and dry. The rain continued the next day, and the river was in even greater flood. The road south was blocked by landslides due to the rain, and I had to wait an hour in a line with a lot of impatient Chinese car drivers for a bulldozer to clear a way through. 


When I joined the busy highway that linked Jiuzhaigou to Chengdu, the real traffic nightmare began. It was a narrow, twisting road with no shoulder and many blind corners. I spent so long pausing to let passing traffic go past that it took me two hours to cover the last 30 kilometres into Maoxian. 

With the rainy season now providing a steady daily downpour, the Min River en route to Chengdu was in full flood. The highway made numerous crossings of the river, whose waters piled up in alarming surging waves against the bridge supports, and I worried this would lead to the road ahead being closed. What I should have worried about were the tunnels. uld lead to the road ahead being closed. What I should have worried about were the tunnels. 

From Maoxian (茂县), the road south passed through Wenchuan (汶川), the epicentre of a 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 69,000 people. When rebuilding the roads devastated by landslides, China’s civil engineers had bored a series of tunnels through the mountains to bypass the landslide areas. Four of these tunnels were more than two kilometres in length, and one was a whopping 4.7 kilometres. There was only a narrow shoulder, and some sections were unlit, which meant pedalling in complete darkness with just a weak bike light to illuminate the way ahead. I was terrified.

The road was wet, and there were ruts and potholes in the surface that were hard to see and threatened to unseat me. Not to mention my worries about carbon monoxide from exhaust fumes, it was terrifying to have three or four trucks approach from behind you. When I saw the headlights, I would pull over and huddle in as close to the tunnel wall as possible until the monsters had roared past. I dropped my precious hat somewhere in the tunnel and was too scared to go back for it.

It could have been worse, though - I later learned that the nearby Shiziping tunnel on the highway from Wenchuan to Maerkam is more than 13 kilometres in length.

After my tunnel ordeal, I arrived in Dujiangyan a nervous wreck, spending the last few kilometres yelling at cars for being too close when passing me. Perhaps it was the anticlimax of no longer having a goal after three months of following the river - I needed a break.

First Bend of Yellow River to Chengdu, via Dujiangyan (click on image to enlarge)

Postscript: final thoughts on my Yellow River cycling trip

There were three things that stood out for me during this extended bike ride along the Yellow River: how ‘green’ China was, the scale of the infrastructure changes, and the rise of ‘middle class’ China.

As I have mentioned many times in my account of this trip, I saw a huge amount of ‘green’ development in China: solar panels everywhere, wind turbines on so many hills, and a general sense of improvement in the state of the environment compared to the trips I made ten years ago. That’s not to say that China has become the new Switzerland - there were still plenty of instances of pollution and garbage. But I was pleasantly surprised by how things like river water quality seem to have improved in recent years. 

I expected to be plagued by air pollution and industrial smog during my trip across the North China Plain, but was fortunate to enjoy weeks of clear blue skies and never felt the need to wear a mask. Perhaps the widespread adoption of electric vehicles and scooters has eliminated much of the exhaust pollution.

In terms of infrastructure, I was already well aware of the amazing network of high-speed trains, which I made full use of on this trip. As well as witnessing the frequent services running on the high-speed rail lines that I rode past on this journey, I also, of course, saw the construction of new lines in remote areas along the course of the Long March. 

I also saw other massive infrastructure projects such as highways, hydro dams, and tunnels. As a tourist, I saw the huge investment being put into tourism infrastructure such as the ‘holiday villages’ and visitor centres in the most remote areas. New infrastructure was also noticeable at a local level, with small towns and even remote Tibetan grassland villages having undergone upgrades in landscaping, parks, and amenities such as playgrounds and picnic areas.

This brings me on to the third point, which I have already discussed in some detail: the development of a ‘middle class’ China. What I mean by this is the rise of an affluent class of individuals who have disposable income and also time to pursue leisure and lifestyle interests. Until about ten years ago, most people in China seemed to be just getting by, with just a small minority of ‘nouveau riche’ in the big cities showing off their wealth with Western designer brands. 

Now the affluence has trickled down to people in provincial backwaters such as Xixian in Shanxi, where locals enjoy eating at outdoor ‘street restaurants’ with a selection of craft beers. And of course, the levels of the Chinese domestic tourism market have boomed, meaning that China no longer seems interested in pandering to foreign tourists. I saw few on my trip except in the world-famous sites such as the terracotta warriors in Xi’an.

One thing that did puzzle me about China was the sheer level of ‘overcapacity’  - for want of a better word - across many aspects of the tourism sector. 

There seemed to  be a widespread build-it-and-they’ll-come policy, like the empty hotel complex at Hanggu Guan in Henan or the 700-kilometre ‘Yellow River Number One Tourism Highway’ on which I seemed to be the only user. On the Qinghai grasslands, I cycled past scores of local tourist fun park enterprises that all offered the same things: cabin and tent accommodation, horse riding, ATV rides, and local cuisine. Hardly any of them had any customers. How do they stay in business, let alone make any return on the investment? I thought the same thing when I saw local people selling fruit and vegetables by the roadside. How do people survive when they are selling commodities such as cherries, honey or watermelons when they seem to have no customers? I’m not an economist or social scientist, and I have no answers.

This trip to China challenged some of my expectations about the country. Before setting out, I had a few worries, such as whether I would be able to find hotels to accept me in off-the-beaten-track areas. That did not prove to be much of a problem. I was turned away by a couple of hotels but was easily able to find alternative options. 

Similarly, I was worried about encounters with police— being banned or expelled from certain areas or, worse, being arrested as a spy. The official advice from the Australian government travel website was that I should exercise a high degree of caution because I could be detained on the grounds of 'endangering national security'. It said: “Australians may be at risk of arbitrary detention or harsh enforcement of local laws, including broadly defined National Security Laws.”

In reality, I had no problems with police or any other form of authority during my stay in China, except for the obvious one of being turned back by traffic cops on the highway to the new dam construction site. I had no interactions with police: no knocks on the door of my hotel room to check my details, no police checkpoints on the road, and no instances of being stopped and questioned. 

Of course, China is a surveillance state— security cameras were everywhere, but this was something I learned to take for granted. The other side of this was that I had no security worries about personal safety or crime during the trip. People were generally friendly, helpful, and honest— I never felt threatened or experienced harassment. I took common sense precautions against theft: locking my bike up and keeping my valuables safe in a money belt. The only scare was when I lost my phone, and it was returned to me by the road construction gang who found it. 

What of the river itself? Seeing it in reverse, so to speak, made me appreciate what a major river it is, from the sea outlet right up to the headwaters at almost 4000 metres in altitude. I was puzzled by how the river is not consistently ‘yellow’ or silty, with some sections of its middle reaches in Gansu (Kanbula) and Shanxi (Hukou Falls) being unusually clear or green water. I was also surprised by how few boats there were on the river. Unlike the Yangtze - or even the Mekong - the Yellow River has been too shallow to be navigable for all but the most shallow draught of vessels.

The Yellow River was a source of food for many locals. I don’t know how much pollution there is in the river, but whatever the level, this did not seem to stop people catching and eating the famous carp and sometimes the fake salmon. Its waters provide irrigation for large sections of Inner Mongolia, where, like the Nile in Egypt, the river is a ribbon of green through the desert.

As an amateur ornithologist, I was impressed by the large number of birds - and wide variety of species - that I saw along the river. I’m no naturalist, so I can’t speak for the animal and plant life along the way, but I never expected to see marmots and camels on my journey.

For me, the most notable thing about my river trip was the variety of people I met along the way. The friendly and noble Shandong natives, the larger-than-life characters of Inner Mongolia, the Hui and Salar Muslims of Ningxia and Gansu, and of course, the Tibetans of Qinghai. 

Almost everyone I met was friendly and helpful— and all too willing to chat. With few foreign tourists visiting the Yellow River, the locals were pleased to see me and eager to tell me about the local places of interest.  And of course, with a wide variety of people and cultures comes a wide variety of food. Travelling the Yellow River would be a foodie’s delight— from the seafood of Shandong to the Hui dapanji. And a big change from usual south China dishes I was so accustomed to.

Travelling the Yellow River challenged a lot of my perceptions about China.  Like many Westerners, my impressions of the country had been formed based on experiences of regions of southern China such as Guangdong, Yunnan and Sichuan. Most of our news about China seems to relate to areas south of the Yangtze, whether it be Shanghai, Fujian, Guangzhou or Chongqing. For me, China was a country of rice-growing Han Chinese living in subtropical areas: traders who had links (and migration) to south-east Asia and the rest of the world via ports such as Hong Kong and Xiamen. 

Travelling the Yellow River made me realise there is another China that is almost a mirror image of the south: fields of wheat instead of rice,  sheep and horses instead of pigs and oxen. While south China saw an outward flow of Chinese moving to other parts of Southeast Asia and beyond, the Yellow River had the opposite. With its connections to Central Asia and the Middle East via the Silk Road, the Yellow River regions experienced an inflow of migrants who formed diverse communities along the river, such as the Hui Muslims of Ningxia, and the Christian and Jewish communities of Xi’an and Kaifeng. The Yellow River’s Mongolian links also brought in ‘Bannermen’ and even Bonan Muslims descended from Mongol settlers who later converted to Sunni Islam.

The Silk Road was the route by which Buddhism entered China, to be established at monasteries along the Yellow River in places such as Luoyang and Shaolin.

With its source in the Amdo Tibetan region of Qinghai, the Yellow River also has strong links to Tibetan Buddhism. 

This mixing of different ethnicities along the Yellow River was still notable in Qinghai, where I saw Hui Muslim and Tibetan women sitting side by side on tractors as they went to work out on the fields. 

With hindsight, I wish I’d done more research into the history of the Yellow River before embarking on the ride. I wish I’d known in advance about the lost civilisations of the Tanguts before visiting Yinchuan, and about the more recent history of the Long Marchers along parts of the Yellow River. Visiting the museums in places such as Kaifeng and Luoyang made me realise that the river gave birth to major cities and infrastructure projects in ancient times - the Great Wall, of course, and the complex irrigation and flood defence systems. The river was also the place where powerful armies fought - the charioteers and archers of Qin Shihuang, the cavalry of the Tanguts, and the merciless Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. 

The scenery along the Yellow River was impressive, but I must say I found the desert and loess landscapes rather intimidating. Of course, my main regret was not being able to complete the last few hundred kilometres across the grassland plateau beyond the ’First Bend’ of the river to get to the source near Maduo in Qinghai. Maybe in a few years, there will be roads and hotels in that area so I can return to complete the journey. Similarly, the inaccessible gorge of the Yellow River above Lajjia remains to be explored.

In the meantime, I seem to be one of a lucky few outsiders who have travelled along much of the Yellow River. I’m surprised more people haven’t done the journey - it is, after all, one of the world’s greatest rivers. And unlike some of the others, such as the Amazon or the Nile, it is mostly accessible, affordable, and safe for travel. I look forward to reading the reports of others who go the same way.

Cycling the Yellow River from sea to headwaters 骑行黄河，从入海口到源头

 

I've just arrived back in Sydney after completing my 5800km cycling trip up the Yellow River.  On 1 July 2025 I arrived at the 'First Bend of the Yellow River' (黄河九曲第一湾) near Ruoergai (Zoige) on the Qinghai-Sichuan border. I had originally intended to continue cycling a further 200km or so up to the town of Maduo, close to the source of the Yellow River. However, this is located in Golok country, which is closed to foreigners at the present time - I tried to reach it from the town of Gonghe in Hainan county, but was turned back by police at a road checkpoint just out of town on the way to Heke. Anyway, the headwaters at Jiuqu (Tangke) gave me enough of an impression of how the river is at 3500m altitude in the Tibetan grasslands.

My ride along the Yellow River took me three  months, starting in early April 2025, and travelling through the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. The first section of the ride was done on a folding e-bike (Dahon Unio E20). This was OK for the shorter flatter sections in the Chinese plains, but I swapped it for a conventional size e-bike (a Giant Tour E+ 200) when I arrived in Xian after the first month. The new bike was much better sorted to to more hilly and rugged terrain heading in to Inner Mongolia, and I would never have completed the trip without its excellent 120km range powered by two batteries.

I experienced a wide variety of terrain, from the wheat fields and oilfields of the coastal plain to the epic canyons of the Yellow River along the Shaanxi/ Shanxi border, then the absolutely flat environment of the Mongolian grasslands and desert leading into the Muslim communities of Ningxia. After a break in Xian I continued up into the loess pinnacles of Gansu and ascended via the beautiful forests and rock formations of Kanbala to the large reservoir of Longyangxia and another canyon of the Yellow River. Along the way i saw a wide variety of birds (eg hoopoe), animals (eg marmots) and plants/flowers/trees.

The final stage of the trip was through more familiar ethnic Tibetan territory  in Qinghai, which I have visited before and described in the articles about Ragya monastery. Travelling from Linxia to Hezuo and the first bend of the yellow River was a challnge because of the high altitude and the threat of being attacked by the ever-present Tibetan dogs.

From the Zoige area I continued to Chengdu in Sichuan via Langmusi and the beautiful valley of the Heishui river to get to Maoxian and Wenchuan.

I had a great trip, staying in hotels along the way, all found and booked at very reasonable prices (15-200 yuan/night) via WeChat. Navigation was with AMAP (Gaode) app. I met lost of great people on the road and had no problems with authorities or security en route. I was surprised how easy and convenient it is to travel in supposedly 'off the beaten track' parts of China, because there is now a booming local tourism industry, with facilities and roads, hotels, restaurants etc to match. I was also surprised by the transformation of previously 'backward' places such as Linxia into modern and very livable cities.

I'll be writing up a fuller account of my trip over the next few weeks.

Yan Kunlong: Journey of Discovery

 I’m currently half way through my cycling trip along the Yellow River, just arrived in Lanzhou. Will do a summary post soon. 

While in Lanzhou I was privileged to meet Yan Kunlong (闫昆龙), author of Journey of Discovery (发现之旅) a great book describing the travels and works of western botanists in southern Gansu (Gannan) in the early 20th century. 

If you are interested in Frank Kingdon-Ward, Reginald Farrer and William Purdom, this is a wonderful read. It also has many great photos that make me want to travel to Gannan to visit these places. Meanwhile, I will continue my journey into Qinghai …

Yellow River cycling update: completed stage one

 

I've just finished the first section of my Yellow River cycling trip, starting at the river mouth near Dongying in Shandong province, and cycling through Henan to end up in Xi'an. 

It took me almost three weeks and I was riding a Dahon Unio E20 e-bike. I was able to average about 80km on the road each day, though some days stretched to 120km. It was mostly flat, so I didn't need to use the electric motor pedal assist much, except to take some of the strain off at the end of the day. 

I found the battery only had capacity for about 40-50km of range per charge, not the '100km' as claimed by Dahon. Nevertheless it is a good bike, proving a smooth ride, and of course I was able to fold it and take it on trains etc, to get to my starting point [although I have been advised that lithium batteries are not supposed to be taken on train].

I am travelling light and staying in simple hotels and guesthouses that I find [and book] en route by using the Gaode navigation app (in Chinese). Hotels are costing me about 140-240 yuan a night, and I've been using hostels where available in the bigger cities, for about 60 a night.

The highlights have been the historical and cultural sites in places such as Kaifeng, Luoyang, Qufu and the sacred mountains such as Taishan and Songshan. I will write up a full report at a later date but have been posting daily trip updates and photos on Insta and Facebook, which I'm sure you can find via search.

The next stage will take me another 100km up north to Inner Mongolia from the loess landscape of Shanxi into the desert around Ordos. This section intrigues me as few people travel this way and the river flows through the narrow and twisting Longmen gorge for hundreds of km.

So far I haven't been following the river closely because there simply aren't any roads or much to see along the lower reaches of the Huanghe. I expected it to be industrial and polluted, but it has been a mix or arable land (wheat and fruit) and a mix of oil derricks, power stations and wind trubines rather than heavy industry. And I've had blue skies almost every day, no smog.

I'll now be retiring the Dahon 20 inch wheel bike because I've found it's not suitable for longer distance heavy duty touring.  While it's a good bike, the addition of a heavy motor and battery to a conventional Dahon 'pedal' frame puts too much stress on the rear wheel spokes - I've had multiple breakages and loose spokes, that I've been able to fix thanks to the proximity of Dahon dealers in most cities. But from here on I'll be in more remote territory and don't want to hear the dreaded twanging sound when I'm hundreds of kms from a bike mechanic.

I'm looking at getting a larger bike in Xian this week - likely a Giant Tour E+

Watch this space!