Day 173, 20th November Dou Yu - Gaoyi - Neiqiu After sunrise the villagers appeared again, this time to see us de-camp. We were on the road for ten, a less busy and new road. Now for a little observation about the traffic - small motor vehicles, especially the motor rickshaws and the three-wheeler trucks kick out an amazing amount of fumes, most of the times very nauseating. Trucks give you plenty of room but they are beyond idiotic with their constant honking of their mega-loud horns! Bikes are everywhere and they carry the most amazingly large loads. But the pollution [View Full Entry]

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Day 171, 18th November Baoding - Ding Zhou It was a real battle of the arses last night between Toby and Scott. After eating something dodgy their guts were competing for the “Best Pebble-Dashing” award. Although Scott excelled in the amount of times he dashed to the bog, the award had to go to Toby who single-arsedly destroyed the toilet in a way I can’t really imagine. The was just a pile of bricks left! Despite this behaviour, we were invited for breakfast by our host before we left with dry tents. I believe reparations were made to the home-owner for [View Full Entry]

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Day 169, 16th November Beijing - Liulihezhen It was time to leave today. It’s been a great time here in Beijing, more wilder than I ever expected, and the hospitality of the people has been amazing. We haven’t been arrested on our bikes yet - but we had a brainstorming session in the group and come up with the following answer to our good fortune. 1. China has just been admitted into the WTO and needs respect from foreigners. 2. The Olympic Games will be held here in 2008, and China needs further respect. As a result of these two major [View Full Entry]

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Day 163, 10th November Beijing Today I did the tourist stuff with Scott. We walked to Tianammen Square and visited Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum, how bizarre that was! So grandiose and regimented, just to see what looked like a waxwork dummy with a light bulb inside it. Scott burst out laughing and got a hard stare from one of the guards. I bought some Mao tat from the souvenir sellers on the steps of the mausoleum. Then we went off to the fascinating “Forbidden City” where the emperors hung out. The palaces were the stuff of legends and the gardens, wonderful. We [View Full Entry]

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Day 160, 7th November Km 285 Xuanhua - Xianbaoan Awoke at sunrise in our paddy-field and drank a cup of yak-milk tea. It was damp outside. My tent was soaked and it wasn’t going to dry. We packed up and left, and after 15 miles we stopped at a café which resulted in another slap-up meal for Y50 for the four of us. I’m really getting used to this being “Treated like a King” lark. Our road to Beijing went past ever richer fields of rice crops, cabbage, and many sorts of assorted vegetables. One thing I didn’t like seeing were [View Full Entry]

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Day 157, 4th November Sonid Youqi - Tomortei The wind had changed and it was pretty much in our favour today. We left the hotel at nine and went in search on a bike shop for Scott to get a new derailieur. A guy on the street with a lathe cutting keys sorted him out for Y30. He not only got some guys to find a derailieur that would do, but also fitted it and got it working! This drew a huge crowd, and also the attention of the police. I suppose than never before have we looked like foreigners and [View Full Entry]

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Day 155, 2nd November Erlian - Km 55 marker Had a decent sleep and this morning a hot shower in the piss-stinking toilet block of our first Chinese hotel. We went out to change money and have breakfast, another delicious and massive meal. The people in the small restaurants seem happy to serve us and are keen to wait on us. And the delicious food is so cheap too. Around midday, a taxi driver drove us to an internet club where I spent an hour reading my emails, some lovely ones from Kathryn, but I could only manage to write short [View Full Entry]

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Day 153, 31st October 40 miles south of Ulaan Uul - 10 miles north of Zamynn Uud A storm from hell blew up last night and there was snow in with the rain. We woke up on our patch of desert to a freezing cold morning with the ice-cold wind howling mercilessly from the north. We need to get out of here quick, into China and off the Mongolian plateau before we end up like the very bleached-carcasses that we have already seen. To compound matters further, Scott had problems with his gears which took ages to fix in the howling [View Full Entry]

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Day 151, 29th October Senj - Ulaan Uul After packing our tents, we headed off into another headwind, but somewhat stronger than yesterdays. Whey Hey! We’re in bloody “Outer Mongolia”, not bad for a gang of bad-ass-dudes who set off out on their bikes from sunny Stoke-on-Trent in June. But, I must admit, I’m a bit disappointed by the lack of Fish’n’Chip shops out here! We arrived in the outpost of Senj around eleven and were directed to the only shop there by a group of funny guy in a four-wheel-drive Russian “ЧАЗ” veh [View Full Entry]

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We woke up from our slumber, opened our tents, looked around us at the featureless landscape, and said, "Where the f*** are we"? Day 149, 27th October Ulaan Chatsay - Saynshand After a kind of warm and rainy night we woke up to a fresher and a strangely humid sort of a day. The tents dried out fine in the morning sun and I noticed that my bike had another puncture. After repairing it, it was only a short ride into Sainshand City - more like a dusty town in the middle of nowhere. But to us it was a paradise [View Full Entry]

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