Kham then and now. How Southwest China looked in the 1920s and when revisited from 1991-2025 by Michael Woodhead of Sydney, Australia. Based on the explorations of botanist Joseph Rock.
Lanzhou marked the end of the second major stage of my Yellow River trip - the completion of the ‘几-shaped curve’ through Inner Mongolia. A major bend of the Yellow River, is located just east of town in an industrial zone where the river turns north at a place called Luoquan Bay to flow into the Ordos loop.
As with Xi’an, I decided to take a break and make a few changes to the bike and my kit. I would also have to renew my 90-day visa, which was nearing its expiry date. When I arrived on my bike at the bridge across the Yellow River in the centre of the city, I paused to take a few photos at what seemed like the glamorous skyline. Lanzhou was an unusually shaped city in that it was squeezed along the river, hemmed in by hills, making it a long, narrow city that stretched for 40 kilometres east to west, but was only a few kilometres north to south.
I’d visited Lanzhou ten years previously when I’d found it to be a rather drab and austere place, and I wondered how it might have changed in the meantime. The answer to that question came when I took to the streets the next day to trawl the bike shops of Lanzhou for some new gear.
Like many other cities in China, Lanzhou had undergone a makeover, and the centre was now a pedestrianised zone of high-end retail outlets and glass skyscrapers. It seemed a lot more bustling and affluent than I remembered. The city had a substantial Hui Muslim population, but I was also surprised to see young women sporting tattoos, and even a couple of flamboyant transgender individuals strolling the streets.
I didn’t find the bike accessories I was looking for, but I did find the perfect Lanzhou hand-pulled beef noodles at a Muslim-run restaurant called Mogouyuan (磨沟沿). This busy establishment provided a whole tray full of ingredients beyond the usual clear soup and some chilli oil with coriander. You had to stand in line and the servers provided plates of beef slices with options such as hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, spring onion, green beans and garlic.
Rather than attempt the bureaucracy of trying to extend my visa, a quick visit to Hong Kong would be the easiest way to get a new visa, and more time in China. But what to do with my e-bike? In the afternoon, I cleaned it up in the yard of the hotel and took it across town to leave with a local guy who had been recommended to me via my WeChat China hiking chat group. Yan worked as a consultant on programmes to reduce carbon emissions in industry, but his real passion was in botany and following in the footsteps of the early plant hunters in Gansu. After storing my bike in the shed beneath his apartment complex, we adjourned to a riverside park where we drank flowery tea and cracked melon seeds and chatted about trips we had done and would like to do.
Yan had written a book on Western plant hunters such as William Purdom, who had spent three years roaming north-west China in the early 20th century evading Tibetan horsemen and Chinese bandits while collecting new species of peonies, rhododendrons, and primulas. Yan had revisited the places described by Purdom and documented the places and plant life as they looked in modern times. As we chatted enthusiastically about our various adventures in the remote parts of China, he invited me to continue the conversation over dinner with some friends.
The venue was the Ma Laoliu (马老六) Halal Restaurant, which served up two other Lanzhou specialities: a large bowl of soup containing soft-boiled mutton, and large glass beakers of San Pao Tai (三泡台, Three Brew Tea), a fruit and nut combination that contained wolfberries, walnuts, longan, and dried fruits in addition to green tea sweetened with rock sugar.
Yan introduced two older colleagues as Simon and Old Wang, who were Party officials. Between them, they spoke in rapid and strongly-accented Gansu dialect, so I could not understand much of what was being said around the table. I heard enough to know that Yan was telling them about my current bike trip and the previous trips I had made to Sichuan and Yunnan, to which they nodded and asked me what I thought of the places I’d visited so far. I told them about how easy I’d found the cycling in China and my surprise that more people did not visit areas such as the canyons of the Yellow River.
“It’s good to see foreigners coming here to see the real China,” said Old Wang.
He wished me a successful trip and lamented that most Chinese were too busy to do such an extended tour.
“You are lucky to have so much time to spend visiting the Yellow River,” he told me.
“In China, we still have too much ‘neijuan’ (内卷, involution) pressure because we have too many people and not enough resources. Everyone must fight to survive, starting from kindergarten.”
His colleague Simon nodded in agreement and noted that the fiercely competitive ‘gaokao’ (高考) high school exams were being held that week. I’d seen some streets around schools being blocked off by police and security guards to prevent students being disturbed while taking the exams - and the gathering of anxious parents around the school gates.
Old Wang held up his phone and said: “The pressure doesn’t stop after school or finding a job and buying a house. Even a leader like me must work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I can’t switch the phone off after work. I always have to answer it,” he said.
I therefore felt a bit awkward when I told them that I would be taking a few days off from my bike trip to go to Hong Kong and renew my visa. But they wished me a pleasant trip and told me I had some great places to look forward to visiting in Gansu when I resumed my journey along the Yellow River from Lanzhou.
After dinner, they insisted on taking me on a walk along the river to see the first bridge built across the Yellow River. The Germans had built the 'iron bridge' in 1909. It initially comprised five box girder sections, and replaced the previous pontoon crossings that were swept away by floods. Renamed the Zhongshan Bridge in the 1920s, it was strengthened with arches in the 1950s and served as the city’s major traffic crossing point until supplemented by larger road bridges from the 1980s onwards. The bridge is now closed to road traffic and when I visited it was lit up by red lanterns and a changing array of coloured lights as crowds of sightseers strolled across.
This stretch of the riverside through downtown Lanzhou was a blaze of illuminated buildings, dominated by the dazzling spectacle of the white pagoda (白塔, Baita) on the hill opposite. Across the square on the southern side of the river, the high rises of Lanzhou’s commercial district had their own displays of constantly changing coloured lights and illuminated signs spelling out “I Love Lanzhou” in Chinese characters (我爱兰州).
The ten-hour high-speed train ride from Lanzhou to Guangzhou the next day allowed me some time for planning the next stage of the cycle trip up the Yellow River. I had already sketched out a basic outline of a route that would take me past the major reservoir of Liujiaxia (刘家峡) and through another uniquely Muslim area on the Gansu border, before entering Qinghai province and moving steadily up through the hills to the ethnic Tibetan plateau areas around another massive reservoir at Long Yang Gorge (Longyangxia, 龙羊峡).
From there I would explore ways to try to follow another great loop in the river through the grasslands and mountains of Qinghai. This was an area for which there were no records or reports from previous travellers to follow. The author of Yellow River Odyssey, Bill Porter, had skipped the river loop area beyond Long Yang Gorge and hired a jeep to go directly to Maduo, the town closest to the source of the river.
On this train journey, I entertained the notion that I might be the first foreigner to visit and report on some parts of the upper reaches of the Yellow River. The Chinese who had walked or cycled the entire length of the river had not published any detailed accounts of their routes or experiences. I had a ‘false alarm’ when I asked an AI app if any foreigners had travelled the entire length of the Yellow River.
The AI response told me that a British adventurer called Rob Lillwall had travelled the entire length of the Yellow River in 2004 as part of a multi-year global trek he had made from Mongolia to Hong Kong. The app gave me tantalising details of this trip, even mentioning sections of the river in Qinghai where Lillwall had encounters with wolves or had to flee from police.
To find out more, I went on Amazon to buy his book cited as the source of these tales. That’s when I discovered that the AI app had been ‘hallucinating’ and had simply invented a completely false story: the book told me that Lillwall had crossed the Yellow River on his journey but had not travelled along it for the entire length. Beware false AI information!
After a night in a cheap hotel in Guangzhou, I took the direct train to Hong Kong’s Kowloon West station. It was my first time travelling into Hong Kong by train, and a novelty in that the Chinese exit procedures were done after I disembarked the train in Hong Kong. The former colony was a series of culture shocks and peculiarities, starting with the heat and humidity on the busy streets as I was forced to walk to Jordan MTR station to connect to trains that run to Hong Kong Island.
Hong Kong had many such quirks and anachronisms: I had to re-learn how to use cash for payments because global WeChat did not work in Hong Kong, and also remember to speak English rather than Mandarin. I had forgotten that my electronic devices could not be charged up without an adapter to fit Hong Kong’s British-style plug sockets. Hong Kong was also still firmly in the era of the internal combustion engine, although at least upside to this was the absence of the annoying e-scooter food delivery drivers.
I dropped my bags off at a Causeway Bay hotel and spent the weekend indulging in a few British treats: a BLT sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, a pint of Old Speckled Hen Ale at the Globe pub, and stocking up on Yorkshire Tea Bags. I was glad to see that Hong Kong still had the ‘fast food’ Café de Coral branches that specialise in cheap local hybrid meals such as milk tea and chicken curry. For old times’ sake, I rode on a tram and took the ferry across to Tsim Sha Tsui. Most importantly, I also took a ride out on the MTR to bike shops in obscure corners of Kowloon, where they stocked items that were hard to find in China such as Schwalbe tyres.
Two days were enough of Hong Kong for me. It was exhausting on so many levels, not least the ‘time is money’ mentality and the focus on shopping being the city’s raison d’être.
Back in Lanzhou after another high speed train trip, I had a newfound appreciation of its mild, sunny weather and the ability to walk the streets without bumping into people. I reclaimed my bike and spent a morning making a few changes. I replaced the standard Giant gravel tyres with puncture-resistant Marathon Plus ones. I added a better wing mirror to help me see those trucks approaching from behind, and I replaced the uncomfortable foam saddle with a Brooks leather one. On Tuesday morning, I was ready for Stage 3 of my Yellow River ride.
The third and final stage of my Yellow River cycling trip began badly when I departed Lanzhou with a lot of swearing and a non-working phone.
My destination was the major reservoir of Liujia Gorge (Liujiaxia), some 80 kilometres away, on what should have been a gentle reintroduction to being on the road. But after just four days away from the bike, I seemed to have difficulty getting back into the groove of cycling. The reason for my swearing was the hazardous ‘near-miss’ driving I experienced on the streets on the way out of Lanzhou.
Being a long and narrow city, the traffic all seemed to be funnelled down the highway I was using to get out of town to the west. For the first hour I was shunted between one set of traffic lights and the next, with the passing scooters, cars and trucks all seeming to be within millimetres of side-swiping me. After the third or fourth ‘f—-!’ I decided it would be prudent to pause, calm down and try and take it one block at a time. Rather than follow this level but lethally busy beside the river, I had the option of taking a more direct but hillier route across some mountains to Liujiaxia.
To add to my frustrations, my navigation app was not working because the phone appeared to have no signal. It was only when I turned off the main highway and pedalled uphill onto quieter roads that I realised that I’d switched my phone’s mobile data off while in Hong Kong and had forgotten to turn it back on again.
[Update: With hindsight this detour was a wise move: the road between Lanzhou and Liujiaxia is the site of one of China's most sensitive nuclear fuel processing sites, and is strictly off limits to foreigners.]
By mid-morning I was pedalling steadily upwards into a pleasant landscape of sharp hills covered with green scrub: quite a change from the rounded brown loess of hills of further north. I was getting used to the different feel of the new narrower tyres and the saddle, and the increased weight I was carrying from the addition of a tent and sleeping bag to my panniers. The camping gear was a late addition that I’d added in case I was unable to find any accommodation in the more remote parts of the Yellow River on the Tibetan highlands.
Route map of Lanzhou to Liujiaxia (click on image to enlarge)
After passing through a long tunnel, the road angled downhill, eventually returning me to the Yellow River at a small town called Yongjing (永靖). It had a mundane urban feel to it, like an outer suburb of the big city despite being set at the head of the massive lake of Liujiaxia reservoir. Its proximity to Lanzhou meant that Yongjing was geared up for day visits and weekend sightseers, with dinosaur-themed funparks along the waterfront and ‘resorts’ offering barbecue sites and fish restaurants.
I made the mistake of booking a cheaper hotel option in the centre of town without seeing it in person. When I arrived, the bored manageress struggled out of a chair to reluctantly work through the complicated check-in registration webpage for foreigners, then showed me up to a windowless room in what seemed like a residential apartment block. No bikes were allowed in the hotel, she told me as she returned to watching videos on her phone. As I took the bike out on the street, I glanced enviously over at the nearby Fumen Hotel, which looked very pleasant and would have cost only an extra 40 yuan a night. Too late, my room was non-refundable.
Rather than sit around in the gloomy hotel room, I got back on the bike and rode around a couple of kilometres around a bend in the river to see the site of the Liujiaxia dam.
The dam was among the first to be built on the Yellow River, with construction started in the 1950s. However, work was paused when the problems of silting became obvious with the Sanmenxia dam downstream in Henan. The Liujiaxia dam was eventually finished in the late 1960s, after the problem of silting up was addressed by the addition of a ‘sand flushing hole’ to the bottom of the dam wall. The dam now serves to prevent the flooding of the Lanzhou area that often occurred downstream after the spring thaws.
For me, the dam was not the main attraction of Liujiaxia, and I was more interested in seeing if I could get to the Buddhist statue caves of Bingling Temple (炳灵寺), located at the remote far end of the reservoir. Similar in style to the Buddhist statues at the Longmen Grottoes at Luoyang, the hundreds of Bingling Buddhist statues and murals were hewn out of cliffs and in natural caves over a long period starting in the fifth century. The early statues were built under the guidance of an Indian Buddhist monk and show strong influence from India in their simple clothing and Indian features.
Most of the statues were built in the Tang dynasty era, and like the one at Longmen near Luoyang, were commissioned by wealthy local officials and merchants.
The Bingling grottoes have one of the biggest surviving carved statues of Buddha from this era, measuring about 27 metres high. It is said to be similar to giant statues built about 250 years earlier in Central Asia, highlighting Bingling’s cultural link with the Silk Road.
The later statues from the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty era reflect increasing Tibetan Buddhist influence at Bingling, and there are even inscriptions on the cave walls from the now lost Tanguts.
When the valley was flooded with the opening of the Liujiaxia dam, some of the Buddhist statue grottoes were submerged under the waters, the remaining caves and cliffs can only be accessed by boat, and only at certain times of year when the water level is high enough.
Unfortunately, when I inquired at the tourism centre, I was told that only a number of smaller boats were going to the caves and no tickets were available until later in the afternoon. Some touts outside the ticket office tried to sell me on the idea of driving to the Bingling site, but I told them I would be cycling past there anyway.
I returned to my hotel room to study the maps for the road ahead.
To follow the Yellow River upstream from Gansu towards the Tibetan plateau, I would need to pass through a series of deep valleys populated predominantly by Muslim minorities such as the Salar (撒拉族) and Bao’an (保安族) people. These small groups were distinct from the Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims I had already encountered around Yinchuan, and had unique and varied ancestry and language.
he Salars, for example, were a Turkic people whose Muslim ancestors were said to have migrated from the Samarkand region. When they settled in the Qinghai-Gansu border area, they intermingled and intermarried with Tibetans from whom they adopted many characteristics, including Tibetan loanwords in their Turkic language. In the Ming dynasty period, the Salar were granted a large amount of local autonomy and were often recruited as soldiers into government service.
The Bao’an Muslims also had a reputation for military service and were descended from Mongol soldiers who had been brought to Qinghai by Kublai Khan and his successors in the Yuan dynasty that ruled China in the 15th century. The Mongol-speaking ancestors of the Bao’an practised Tibetan Buddhism, and some remained Buddhist after the Bao’an were converted to Islam in the 18th century.
These Muslim groups now lived along the Yellow River in valleys that lay on the western side of the Liujia Gorge. There was no road through the gorge, so the only way to get there was for me to head over the hills.
Setting off early in the morning, the first 60 kilometres of my journey was up a steady incline along a road that skirted the northern side of Liujiaxia reservoir. It went through cultivated farm land and eventually reached a plateau where I had a sweeping view down across the reservoir.
It was here that I had my first close-up encounter with an agricultural drone. Measuring more than a metre in width, the machine was buzzing up and down rows of apple trees spraying them with pesticide from a 100-litre tank. The operator told me it could spray a field in a couple of hours, whereas it would take two or three workers a whole day to do the same job.
I stopped for lunch at a farming village close to the road entrance to Bingling Temple. I was thinking of doing a detour to see the statues, but the restaurant owner told me it was a long and steep switchback track that would add almost 40 kilometres onto my journey.
Having already used up half my battery reserves, I decided to press on towards the next valley. The restaurant owner warned me that the road down into the valley was in a poor state of repair, and that many of the highways in the valley had only just been reopened after a massive earthquake in December 2023 had blocked them. The 6.2-scale earthquake with its epicentre near Jishishan had caused widespread landslides and collapsed many buildings, killing more than 150 people.
In fact, the turnoff down into the valley could hardly be called a road: much of it was a dirt track and what remained of the original concrete surface was cracked and corrugated. My new tyres might have been puncture-proof, but they were narrower and more rigid than the gravel tyres they replaced, and were not suited for this kind of road. I bumped and rattled down the road, which in some parts was so bad I chose to dismount and walk it through the worst sections. I began to worry that I had taken the wrong road.
Far below me, I could just see the Yellow River running in a steep-sided valley, and as I turned around a corner, a monastery perched atop a narrow ridge came into view. This was the Jingjue Wofo Temple (静觉卧佛寺), one of the first signs of Tibetan Buddhism I would see on the road towards Qinghai.
As I descended down into the long ridges of eroded brown loess hills, the road condition improved slightly, and I was soon level with the temple buildings, now looking up at the dizzying ridge line rather than down upon it.
My bike survived the descent, and by late afternoon, I had emerged beyond the monastery onto something that resembled a normal road, running alongside the river. I was blessedly level, and I was able to use the last few bars of battery power to pedal westwards for about 20 kilometres towards a small town called Dahejia (大河家).
It was a distinctly Muslim town of little more than two streets where the road from the Jishishan valley emerges at the red cliffs of the Yellow River. Many of the men wore traditional libai mao (礼拜帽, white prayer cap), and the women donned the gaitou (盖头) head cover similar to a hijab. I managed to check into one of the few hotels in town and found that Dahejia had the usual basement supermarket in its shopping mall - but this one did not sell alcohol. I’d been meaning to cut back on the post-cycling beers anyway.
While it was not a tourist town, the main street did feature several shops selling a wide variety of traditional Bao’an knives, daggers, and even swords. The Bao’an were descended from the metalworker craftsmen who forged swords and daggers for the Mongol army.
When they settled in the Jishishan region they turned their iron smelting and tooling skills to producing household items such as knives, and working as blacksmiths and blade sharpeners. They still produce a special twisted-pattern waist blade that combines iron and steel for strength and flexibility. The waist-worn knife remains a symbol of their identity, and the shops featured photographs and testimonies of their wares being presented to visiting dignitaries.
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.
The ‘detour’ took me over a wide section of the Yellow River and along a narrow agricultural strip before the road turned north and headed steeply upward into a narrow, twisting, rocky gorge.
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.
Dahejia to Hualong route
Kanbula National Forest Park was thankfully all downhill from Hualong. The road ran through grassland and fertile farmland, passing an earthwork relic of a secondary section of Great Wall from the Ming Dynasty. The stump of brown earth would not have been recognisable as part of the wall had it not been for a signpost - and the protective fence surrounding it. On the other side of the road was the first Tibetan stupa that I had seen on this trip - this was the transition zone of eastern Qinghai from the Tibetan plateau to the Hui Muslim lowlands.
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.
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 push against a headwind for much of the way, and was subject to another torrent of rain from a passing storm. So it was with great relief that I finally emerged from this remote country and reached the first fertile green fields that marked the outskirts of Guide. Lying on the main highway south from Xining, it was a bigger transport hub than I had expected and had a good range of hotels to choose from. Guide was also very much an ethnic Tibetan town, and I felt a sense of reassuring familiarity when I saw Tibetan monks walking the streets in their crimson robes, returning my greeting of ‘tashi delay’.
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.
I foolishly assumed that the ride over the mountains of Kanbula would be my last long day of big ascents on the bike. I had not properly researched the next day’s trip from Guide to the Longyangxia reservoir: it didn’t look so bad on the map, but it would actually make the Kanbula section look like a walk in the park.
My destination was one of China’s largest and most important hydropower projects - the Longyang Gorge dam and solar farm. Built in 1987, the Longyang dam was not as large as the Three Gorges project, but its 178-metre dam wall held back 27 billion square metres of water, with the reservoir covering an area of more than 380 square kilometres in Qinghai. All this at an altitude of 2600m - higher than the highest point in Australia. The dam project had displaced thousands of local Tibetan herders and farmers but also created new industries in solar power and fish farming.
In recent times, Longyangxia has become a symbol of China’s move into renewable energy. The hills surrounding the reservoir were covered by four million solar panels, covering an area of more than 27 square kilometres, and visible from space. The solar farm generated 850 MW in electricity, said to be enough to power 200,000 households. And in a unique arrangement, the solar power supply was set up to feed into the national grid in coordination with the power from the dam, which eliminated the ‘peaks and troughs’ of the solar supply alone.
The combined solar and hydropower electricity supply from Longyangxia of six billion kilowatt-hours per year is estimated to be equivalent to saving around two million tons of coal per year. That’s the output of two or three coal mines.
The dam was situated at the end of the 40-kilometre-long Longyang gorge, which, as I had discovered with the other gorges along the Yellow River, was inaccessible by road. I would have to ride around it. My map app showed that the most direct route from Guide to Longyangxia ran up into the hills around the northern edge of the reservoir.
It was a pleasant, sunny morning when I rode down the main street of Guide and turned downhill to a bridge over the Yellow River. I was now on a plateau, with a wall of loess cliffs running parallel to the river on the opposite bank. The first stage of the journey took me 20 kilometres along a quiet riverside road through farming land in the lee of the loess cliffs.
I was soon feeling hungry despite having had breakfast, and stopped at the village of Laxiwa (拉西瓦) when I saw a woman selling ‘homemade noodles’ from a stall by the roadside. However, what she served up on the flimsy table was a bowl of ‘liangpi’ (凉皮), a Shaanxi specialty of cold wheat noodles with a dash of chilli oil and green vegetables. Not being able to stomach much of it, I diplomatically asked her to put it in a container for me to take away.
The road turned away from the river at the Laxiwa dam and headed up into the hills. It was a shallow gradient highway running through a wide valley flanked by brown hills. Despite the moderate incline, I really struggled to make headway even in the easiest gear - I could only assume it was the high altitude that made the pedalling so difficult. Higher up the valley, I passed through villages of Tibetan homestead farms and a couple of small Tibetan Buddhist temples. After a couple of hours, I was out into a wilderness of open grassland hills. At the head of the valley, I could see the road snaking away to the left and up to a pass at the top of the ridge.
Already tired, I upped the battery power assistance and pedalled upwards towards the prayer flags fluttering at the pass. Knowing that I had to cover 100 kilometres over the hills this day, I was again struggling with ‘range anxiety’ while trying to balance the need for pedal assistance against the need to conserve battery reserves for later in the day.
On reaching the prayer flags, I found they marked a false summit. What looked like the top of the ‘ridge’ from below was just the first of many stages in the uphill road journey that continued around corners to reveal yet another ‘summit’ ahead. The most disheartening was a final narrow passage between two hills that led me out into a more open grassland plateau.
There were a few cars passing me on this road, and my gaze followed their course as they continued to ascend along a series of long zig-zags high up into the hills in the distance until they were too small to be seen. I almost gave up at this point. I had an overwhelming feeling of fatigue and listlessness that I should have recognised as symptoms of altitude sickness: I was now at almost 4000 metres.
I was constantly thirsty and had used up much of my water supply, as well as draining most of the bike battery to get to this point. I ran the calculations through my head on the distance travelled to try to estimate where the ‘point of no return’ would be. I told myself there was still the possibility that I could return to Guide and try to take a longer but more level route to get around the massive circumference of the Longyangxia reservoir.
As an alternative, I eyed the occasional vans and pickup trucks that were coming up the road, and wondered if I could hitch a lift and get them to carry my bike on the back towards Longyangxia. In the end, I reluctantly got back on the bike and resumed my weak and slow progress up the road.
I was rewarded after about 40 minutes by an easing of the gradient, and a new view of the road turning westward and running across open grassland on which sheep and cows were grazing. About a kilometre away I could see a cluster of Tibetan-style marquee tents on the grass beside the road, with a couple of cars and motorbikes parked around them. When I reached them there was nobody around - but the white tent had a sign saying ‘restaurant’ on it. I peered inside the deserted interior to see a table and chairs arranged around a simple stove that was still warm.
As I returned to my bike parked on the road, a couple of young Tibetan guys drove up on a tractor and waved a greeting. “Do you want to eat?” they asked. I certainly did.
Back in the tent they handed me a food menu with photos offering noodles and roubing (肉饼) - meat pies. Yes please! They busied themselves putting some dried peat blocks on the stove and gave me a glass of tea to drink while preparing the dumplings. All of a sudden I felt renewed and confident I could get to Longyangxia after all. The two young guys even allowed me to plug my bike charger into their solar-powered electricity outlet.
When they arrived, the dumplings tasted like one of the best meals I had ever eaten. The Tibetan guys told me they were from a nearby village and were up here to manage the sheep and cows, and the restaurant was a side business catering to the increasing number of tourists on ‘self-drive’ tours going to Longyangxia. They reassured me that the road from here onwards was ‘mostly’ level or downhill.
I set off across the grassland in a much better frame of mind and with two bars added to the battery charge. I managed without pedal assistance for a while because the road was level and then began a long and gradual descent as the road headed back in the direction of the Yellow River.
I passed more Tibetan tents and further down cycled through a small settlement where I was waved at by three young Tibetan women who were dressed up in smart, fashionable clothes as if about to go out into town for a party in the evening. What a contrast to this wild landscape! It was another 40 kilometres of road to Longyangxia across the undulating grassland before the road plunged down into a huge, dried-out riverbed.
I thought it would be downhill all the way, but there was one final ascent under a line of crags until I reached a turning point high above the Longyangxia gorge. Another triangle of prayer flags fluttered in the wind at the point where I stopped to survey the majestic views over the gorge and beyond.
The road beyond took me down into the small settlement of Longyangxia. Constructed in the 1990s to service the dam and associated power projects, it was too small to call a town, but more than a village. It was now looking to tourism as a new economy, and there were several places advertising ‘salmon’ (三文鱼) from the reservoir. Diners sitting at tables along the outdoor terraces of these restaurants gave Longyangxia the atmosphere of a Mediterranean holiday village. Unfortunately for me, I was turned away from the ‘Holiday Hotel’ because they did not accept foreigners and had to search out a slightly more expensive place down the road.
After a simple dinner of wonton soup, I went out to see the dam. It had now become part of the tourist drawcard for Longyangxia, and there was even a café up the hill that had been put there specifically so visitors could get the perfect ‘da-ka’ location photo for their social media pages. The wide expanse of the reservoir was on a scale much larger than the one I had seen at Liujiaxia, but it looked plain and artificial. The surrounding hills were barren, and there were no roads or settlements along the shoreline, only distant outlines of solar panels.
There was a tourist motor cruiser that did trips on the reservoir, but the only other thing I could see on the water were some circular frames for salmon farms. The clear waters of the lake were said to be a perfect environment that produced a very unique and edible type of fish, but a diner in one of the town’s restaurants later told me that the fish bred in the lake were actually rainbow trout rather than salmon. Longyangxia had become one of the main sources of ‘salmon’ in China, he said, but the local product was actually freshwater trout and quite different from sea salmon.
Back at the hotel, I had to think about the big decision I would soon have to make on which route to take to follow the Yellow River beyond this point. Longyangxia was another major pivot in the course of the river: its Second Bend. The flooding of the surrounding area had created a 60-kilometre-long reservoir that concealed a southeasterly change in direction of the river, which turned back on itself in a long V-shaped loop over Qingdao’s Amdo Tibetan grasslands.
If I was to continue upriver, I would need to turn south and then east from here and go back in the direction of Sichuan, where the river had its ‘first bend’. But I was now entering the upper reaches of the Yellow River, where the river ran through sparsely populated grasslands. The few roads in the area ran across the river’s path, not alongside it, and there were sometimes only small towns separated by 100-200 kilometres of wilderness.
After Longyangxia, I had the option of taking a road around the north of the reservoir from a town called Gonghe (共和) in Hainan County (海南藏族自治州). A turnoff from this main highway went south towards the territory of the Golok Tibetans. The only town that was even close to the Yellow River was one called Xinghai (兴海). I decided to aim for there, and would ask for more information once I got to Gonghe the next day.
Travelling by e-bike conferred one advantage over motor vehicles: I could ride on ‘closed’ roads, like the one from Longyangxia to Gonghe. When I was checking out, the hotel manager advised me that I would need to take a 30-kilometre detour to get into the nearest town because construction work had closed the direct route. But I decided to take my chances on it, and the gamble paid off.
There were barrels blocking the road at the official entrance to the ‘Longyang Scenic Area’, but the security guard waved me through without a word when I told him I was heading towards Gonghe. The direct road followed the shoreline of Longyang reservoir and went through some of the most barren sandstone hills and ‘desert’ terrain that I had seen so far in China.
The newly-built scenic highway ran through narrow cuttings that had been excavated from the brown sandstone hills. In some places the flat sides were almost vertical and extended for tens of metres above me. In other areas the road took wide detours around hills and sandy riverbeds. The only constant was the almost complete lack of vegetation in the brown rocky terrain.
It was an eerie and lonely ride because of the lack of traffic, and I was glad when I eventually reached the greener surroundings of Gonghe. The outskirts were still part of the Longyangxia holiday zone, with signposts for homestays and ‘fishing areas’.
It was here that I also saw the first of many Tibetan-style ‘camping sites’. Unlike their western counterparts, these did not require you to bring your own tents and camping gear: they were grassy areas where a variety of tents and shelters had already been set up. There were Tibetan-style white marquees, bell tents, flysheets strung over hammocks, and even Mongolian yurt-style circular shelters. All the sites seemed to have beds, cookers and barbecue facilities already provided.
Gonghe seemed like a big city after the backwaters of Longyang and Kanbula. It was a major junction for the highways that radiated westward from Xining to Yushu (玉树), 600 kilometres away on the Tibetan border, and into the vast expanses of Qinghai and beyond to Xinjiang. A bit rough around its Tibetan edges, the town’s fancy shops and cafés seemed at odds with its remote location on the highland plateau near Qinghai Lake.
My ride along the closed road from Longyangxia had brought me into town by lunchtime, and because it was too early to check into a hotel, I unashamedly popped into a KFC when I saw one. Soon I was sipping a coffee and scoffing a Zinger burger while being watched inquisitively by the two Tibetan girls working for Colonel Sanders.
I studied the map for my next day’s route. This would take me along the main highway from Gonghe to the south across grasslands and a small mountain range. The only town was called Xinghai, which was 130 kilometres away down a turnoff from the main highway. I realised this was too far for me to reach by bike in one day. The only other place with possible accommodation en route was a small truckstop at 70 kilometres called Heka (河卡), which appeared to have a couple of restaurants and a guesthouse that looked dirty and run down on the review photos. But other than camping by the roadside, this was my only option.
Back on the streets of Gonghe, it had started to rain, and I noticed how cold it was, even in late June. I was now at 3200 metres in altitude, and the wind blowing in from across the Qinghai plateau seemed to cut through me. The other thing that I noticed when I checked into my hotel was that everything was bilingual in Chinese and Tibetan— even the lift buttons.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some maintenance on my bike and stocking up on supplies for the long road trip the next day— I had to assume there would be no shops after Gonghe.
The next morning I made an early start, just after daybreak. It was around the time of the longest day of the year and I was on the road heading out of Gonghe by 7.30 am, shivering from apprehension about what might lie ahead, and also from the cold.
Even though it was an overcast day, I was hoping to see something of the extensive solar energy project that was along today’s route. As well as claiming to have the largest solar power capacity in the world, there was also a novel “molten salt light tower”. Like something out of a sci-fi movie, this sat in a circle of thousands of mirrors that focused the sun’s rays on a glowing photothermal device at the top.
Beyond the outskirts of the town, I entered a moorland-like landscape of rough gravelly grassland with flocks of grazing sheep. The wind was gusting hard from the side and there were still a few drops of rain from passing showers. The first few kilometres were uphill to a point where the regular highway joined up with the new motorway, which ran alongside to a toll station and checkpoint. This is where I became unstuck.
As I stopped in the shelter of one of the buildings to check my map, I noticed two traffic cops flagging down passing cars and trucks to check their licences. When I remounted my bike, I tried to keep some distance from them when I pedalled past, but the younger one of them stepped towards me and held up his hand.
He asked me politely where I was going.
My heart sank. I wasn’t sure if this was official or whether he was being friendly like so many Chinese people, and just wanted to chat.
I told him I was cycling towards Xinghai and then added my back story about following the Yellow River. His older colleague came over and they both complimented me on my good health and how tough I was to do such a trip. They asked the same questions that everyone else asked me on this trip: where I was from, how old I was, how was I able to speak such good Chinese?
They seemed satisfied with my answers, but the older cop started giving me a lecture about the road ahead.
“The weather conditions are very bad today. It’s not safe to be cycling on the high-altitude highway. There is snow on the mountains ahead, and the wind is strong enough to blow you over!” he told me.
I told them about my plan to go to Heka and find somewhere to stay there. The older cop then informed me that the local guesthouses did not accept foreigners and it was too risky to be on my own in this area in case I got lost. He then told me again to “wait a moment” and stepped away to call someone on his phone.
After a couple of minutes, he returned and told me:
“The road to Xinghai is closed temporarily. You should go back to Gonghe and rest there. You can visit Qinghai Lake (靑海湖) and the Chaka Salt Lake (茶卡盐湖). These are very nice places.”
Their demeanour was friendly but firm. It was obvious, I wasn’t going to get past them.
“It’s safer for you,” the younger one kept repeating.
Reluctantly, I turned around and headed back towards Gonghe.
[I later learned a possible alternative reason for the road closure. Just a month earlier in April 2025 the Qinghai government announced that construction work was to begin on a new dam at Tsiha Gorge (茨哈峡, Cihaxia) which was located between Xinghai and Tongde. This had caused an outcry among Tibetan exiles who protested that it would involve the relocation of farmers from 20 villages in the area. It may have been sensitivity about this project that led the police to block my travel along a route that would take me on the road to the dam construction site on the road between Xinghai and Tongde.]
Part of my route travelled through these 'closed' areas of Qinghai
On the way back, I thought through my alternative travel options for staying near the Yellow River. Other than returning all the way back to Guide via Longyangxia on the mountain road, this highway provided the only access to Xinghai. I decided I would do as the cops suggested and go have a rest at Qinghai Lake. It was only 40 kilometres away— and since it was still early in the day, that is what I decided to do.
Back in Gonghe, I stopped for a late breakfast of baozi (包子, steamed meat buns) before setting out for the lake. My map showed there was a direct road over some hills to Qinghai Lake, which I chose over the longer 100 kilometres route on a major highway.
Heading north out of Gonghe, I passed through a whole ‘new town’ district of huge government buildings on long avenues. At one intersection the roads were blocked by police because there was a school where pupils were taking the gaokao exams. And then suddenly, after crossing the motorway, I was out in rural farmland. It was more sheltered from the wind here than out on the plain, and there were orchards and clusters of beehives.
The road was pretty basic, little more than a farm track, and while pedalling through some ploughed fields, I had one of those frustrating ‘missed photo opportunity’ moments. Coming towards me driving a tractor was an older Muslim woman in the usual black headcovering, and sat next to her was a Tibetan woman wearing the traditional chuba and headscarf wrapped round her face to keep out the cold. It was a perfect visual representation of the two communities living and working together, but I was cycling and didn’t have my phone camera handy to get the photo.
As the road approached more farm settlements, I heard barking ahead of me and began to worry about dog attacks. Experience from my previous trips to Tibetan areas had taught me to be very wary of the mastiffs that were widely kept and used as guard dogs by Tibetan farmers. They looked like longer-haired Rottweilers and they could be aggressively territorial. They were often kept on a chain to guard the entrance to a house or farm, from where they would launch themselves out in a sudden frenzy of barking as you passed by. The more scary ones would roam around the property, sometimes in packs, and chase down any intruders.
Sure enough, when I passed one farm, a snarling dog leapt out at me, straining against its chain. I pedalled away as quickly as I could, now vigilant for other possible dog ambush locations. About a kilometre further on, at a road junction at the edge of a small settlement, my heart sank when I saw three black and brown dogs sitting on the road ahead. I stopped to pick up some rocks and then slowly pushed the bike around them - they did not react, and I was able to enter the village.
At its centre was a large Tibetan Buddhist monastery, painted yellow and with a golden roof. There was nobody around as I propped up my bike and went through the gateway to have a look. From across the empty courtyard, I could hear the sound of chanting from the main hall. I crossed over to take a look and found a caretaker on the steps who gestured in sign language that I should remove my shoes before going any further. I did so and peered through the doorway into the dark interior.
The ornately decorated prayer hall was dominated by a golden Buddha statue, beneath which two rows of monks sat opposite each other on the wooden floor, chanting prayers under the supervision of two more senior lamas. They paid no attention to me as they swayed back and forth, ringing bells and repeating the mantras from the prayer books in their laps. On the altar beneath the Buddha was a photo of the 10th Panchen Lama— who had been born in the town of Xunhua that I had passed through just days earlier.
After observing this scene for a few minutes, I returned to my bike and resumed my ride, passing more groups of dogs sitting around on the road. Two of them jumped up and began to chase me, but backed off and ran away when I dismounted and held up a rock as if to throw it. Fearing further such dog encounters, I picked up a long stick from nearby bushes and tucked it into the pannier straps for quick access.
The road now led towards the grassy hills beyond the village, running across deep gullies with sections that were so steep I had to get off the bike and push. As the broken concrete trail continued over rough paddocks, I began to have doubts about ‘road’ and stopped to check my map. It showed an abrupt 90-degree turn ahead, which thankfully proved to be a normal paved highway with more regular traffic.
This road was not so steep, and a Tibetan sheep herder waved as I passed by further along the way. I stopped to confirm that this was the right road to Qinghai Lake, and he nodded, giving me a detailed description of the route. Speaking in clear Mandarin, he asked me my age and praised my good health when it turned out we were almost the same age.
I continued up to a pass that opened out into a grassy plateau of sheep-grazing country with a few scattered huts belonging to Tibetan herders. With the stiff breeze and rainy overcast low-cloud weather, it reminded me of the Yorkshire moors. I threw away my anti-dog stick and pedalled on past a small reservoir, across the plateau until I eventually reached the Luohe (洛合) pass that led down to the plain on the other side of the hills.
The sign told me it was 3740 metres, but I no longer felt any altitude sickness symptoms. Just below the pass, there was a cairn of stones bearing Tibetan inscriptions, intertwined with colourful scarves and some orange-like fruit offerings to the gods. Qinghai Lake now came into view, its grey waters stretching to the horizon like a sea.
Qinghai Lake was known as ‘Koko Nor’ in Monol language, meaning Blue Sea. This lake area had connections to the Mongols ever since the armies of Genghis Khan had defeated the Tanguts in Ningxia and moved south. The Mongol cavalry found the sparsely populated Qinghai Lake grasslands provided an ideal environment for raising horses, with an abundant grazing pasture, water and mild climate. The area was settled by some Mongols, who gradually adopted Tibetan Buddhism. The lake was an important strategic location and later became a base area for the Mongol forces invasion of Tibet during the Qing period, and many more settled in the area.
The lake is also an important strategic location for bird movement - at an altitude of about 3,200 m it lies on the Central Asian Flyway, making it a critical stopover site for millions of migratory birds. The islands on the lake support tens of thousands of nesting migratory birds, and are one of the most popular birdwatching sites in China.
The road from the pass to the lake descended steeply, with a couple of viewing points further down that were crowded with sightseers. When I stopped to take my own photos, I was almost mobbed as the car-based visitors asked me where I’d cycled from and requested group photos with me. One of them even filmed with his drone buzzing overhead as I resumed cycling down the road, amid flocks of sheep and goats.
From the lowest viewing point, I could see the road leading to a lakeside collection of concrete buildings that looked like hotels and shops, with a pier jutting out into the water. When I reached this ‘tourist centre,’ it was like a seaside resort, thronging with visitors arriving by coach and car. The ‘seafront’ was a parade of restaurants and gift shops, outside each of which stood someone waving a menu and urging passersby to come inside to try the local fish or Tibetan lamb hotpot.
The shops also offered local specialities such as yak milk yoghurt and dried yak beef jerky. At the rear was a motley collection of guesthouses, bars and travel agencies, again with touts outside chanting their own mantra of “something to eat, somewhere to stay” (吃饭, 住宿). The whole place had a tawdry carnival atmosphere, with fairground rides and pushy local Tibetans offering rides on horses, or the opportunity to dress up in Tibetan garb and pose for photos with yaks.
Some of the hotels were recently built Tibetan-style boutique homestays with prices that were way beyond my maximum budget of 250 yuan per night. When I inquired at the more regular places, they all brusquely told me they didn’t accept foreigners. After a few such rejections, I sought hotel advice from the ‘tourist police’ cops who were touring the village in small open electric carts. They told me there were international hotels in the next village about five kilometres down the road.
A new four-lane dual carriageway ran along the edge of the lake, and it had a cycle lane that I followed to the next turnoff, where I found a much more low-key street of hotels. The Pastoral Inn looked nice, and the manager greeted me enthusiastically when he saw my bike, telling me that he was a keen cyclist and had once cycled all the way to Lhasa and back from his hometown of Shandong.
The weather on the plain was much better than in the hills: by mid-afternoon, I was enjoying sunny skies with distant banks of clouds hanging over the low hills surrounding the lake. Its waters now reflected the clear skies, and in some directions, the vistas of deep blue water, green grass, white clouds, and blue skies had a perfect simplicity and could have been a computer screensaver.
The grassy shores of the lake looked inviting, but access was blocked by barbed wire fencing with ‘no parking’ signs telling visitors to use the official scenic viewing areas back at the tourist village, some five kilometres away. I found a track behind a farmhouse and parked my bike there to walk across marshy grass down a small area of beach along the lake shore. It was an idyllic setting, with birdlife in abundance. I wished I'd brought my binoculars to better identify the many types of ducks and terns that I could see at a distance. The water was pristine and clear, and I could imagine it being a great place for kayaking and fishing.
Back at the road, I noticed there were a few cyclists coming along the cycle lane. Some had touring bikes, but others were riding on the hire bikes that I had seen advertised for rent outside hotels and travel agencies— the 360-kilometre circuit of the lake was a popular five-day itinerary. I thought about doing the circuit myself until I saw on the map that its route passed through the ‘Atomic City’ (中国原子城) at Xihai (西海), where China’s first nuclear weapons development had been based. It was still off-limits to foreigners.
At the hotel, the manager suggested that I visit the famous Chaka Salt Lake, which was about halfway round the lake. He pointed out the route on a large map of the region that he had on the wall of the reception. But when I looked at the map closely, I was more drawn to another route that I saw: a series of roads highlighted in red that went south from Qinghai to the First Bend of the Yellow River in Gansu. This route could take me to the apex of the backward loop in the river where it changes direction on the border with Sichuan province.
Going direct to this ‘first bend’ would mean bypassing sections of the Yellow River loop in Qinghai - but I reasoned that most of them were inaccessible by bike anyway. Apart from a crossing of the Yellow River between Xinghai and Tongde, there was no way to follow the river through the 100 kilometres of canyon country in the Tsiha (Cihaxia) Gorge in Qinghai until reaching a place called Ragya (Lajia, 拉加). I had previously visited Ragya by bus in 2012 and seen the remote nature of the Yellow River there: a dirt road led further upriver through remote mountains but there were no towns and certainly no hotels until a place called Maqu (玛曲), which was near the ‘First Bend’.
When I mulled my options over a local Qinghai Lake craft beer, I decided to go the direct route to the First Bend, with my goal being a town called Tangke where there was a ‘First Bend Scenic Area.’
(Looking south): Plan A to get to First Bend via Ragya (red) vs Plan B (blue)
Dr Joseph Rock was an Austrian-American botanist who explored the Tibetan borderlands of Sichuan and Yunnan in the 1920s and 30s. This is about my travels to revisit the places he described in the National Geographic magazine. Any questions? contact me at beijingweek AT gmail
