You get what you need when you need it. Had another example today. Not a big deal this one, but they all count. One of the reasons I am here in Urumqi is to change dollars to RMB or Chinese yuan. Only certain banks do this. In fact only one in Urumqi, as far as I can tell. My guide book says to go to a certain office, which I did. In fact a teller at a branch office sent me to the same place. Turns out they don't do it there any more. Fortunately one of the tellers at this office was willing to look at the map from my guidebook and mark where the right office is. He has probably seen this map many times by now so in retrospect it is not a big deal any more.

 

Anyway, I headed off to the new location, but it turns out that his mark was about two blocks off. Just as I was stepping off the curb to cross the street and go straight on for another two blocks this young woman (Chinese) said to me, in English, "Excuse me." I said hello, or something like that, and then she asked where I was from. One of the rules of this kind of adventure is that if someone is willing to talk to you, then maybe they will have some useful information. So, I asked where the bank was. Sure enough, it was to the right, and within sight less than 100 yards away. I eventually would have found it, but having this little interchange made it a lot easier.

 

In the same vein, yesterday when I arrived I was trying to find where I was on the map. Finally I got it partly figured out relative to a large park in the center. As I was standing on a freeway overpass thinking about how to get to what looked like a major intersection as a reference point, this guy stepped up and gave me a questioning look. I handed him the guidebook map and sure enough he was willing to look at it. After a few seconds he showed me where we were, and it turned out that I was actually at the reference point that I was looking for. From there it was an easy matter to find the other places I wanted to go. I am here because, as already mentioned, you can get money changed
here, which is not the case everywhere in China, and to get my visa extended. Other than that I am just hanging out and resting. As I write this bit, it is getting on supper time, and I am going to quit for the day, but I hope to come back tomorrow and write some of the highlights of my trip from Bishkek to here.

Some highlights since Bishkek:

 

I left on the Monday as finally planned. That was May 20, and feels like years ago. Gulbara sent the company car with Zarema to my apartment in the morning. The car took my panniers and I rode the bike. Turns out that when the minibus captain saw the bicycle fully loaded he had second thoughts about taking me at the standard fare. With Zarema as translator they said that I should contract for a whole bus all to myself for what appears to be a standard fee of $50, same as the cars, but better because the minibus has a lot more room. Now that I had my own bus I began to negotiate for where I wanted to go. Being taken to the bus station in Almaty and then having to find my way out of town was not high on my list so I asked how far north they would take me. In the end that was to the main road just north of town. Exactly what I needed so that is what we did.

 

The last time I crossed the Kyrgyz/Kazak border there was no real border post, just a couple of small buildings (smaller than a small house in Saginaw) with guys stopping a car now and then when they felt like it. Now, five years later they have the whole thing all sewed up, with ways to look under vehicles, offices for immigration and customs workers, and everybody gets stopped. The Kyrgyz let me out in a couple of minutes. The Kazaks took a little longer, but no major delay. From that main road to Saryozek it is about 160km, if I remember right. I arrived there about lunch time on the third, pretty much without incident.

 

It was already time for a rest day, and Saryozek is a kind of county seat, so I thought they should have a hotel. The full story is longer, but the ending is that they do, but it was full. This I learned later from the Govt. worker who saw me wandering around and helped me find the hotel in the first place. More long story lead to the Govt. worker telling me that I should go with him to his home. I accepted. I thought he must be fairly high in the pecking order because his Lada jeep was right close to the building. Turns out that he is the agriculture administrator for that region. He started talking about the bicycle and three kilometers. I didn't fully understand, but figured whatever it was, I could ride three km. Turns out that the 3km was to the place where he grinds the wheat from his farm, and that was where we were going to store the bicycle overnight. We put it in the office of the administrative building of the wheat grinding place and off we went in the Lada to a village 35km away. Twenty five of those kms were over road that was badly in need of serious replacement. Instead it was getting patched at the rate of about 1km per week - or less. We stopped along the way to talk with the work crew doing the patching - all by hand.

 

Leaving out some detail, I spent the night there, and we went back to town the next day, picking up the bicycle on the way. I got invited into some high-up official's office for a welcome, and some scrutiny of my passport. I guess everything must have been in order because they gave it back after a while. Then the English teacher showed up and did a little translating and I was handed over to her for the rest of the morning. The Govt. worker went to work after that, but not before insisting that I should go to his house again for another night, this time by riding the bicycle there. He drew a little map showing that from his village it was only 8km back to the main road further along. Why not, I thought.

 

Without me asking, the English teacher took me directly to the main telephone office to make a phone call to Ruth. I thought that maybe the 'high-up official' was providing this as a goodwill gesture, but just before we parted later, the teacher said I should reimburse her for the money she paid for the phone call. It was about $6, if I remember right. And I am not sure she didn't get reimbursed by the 'high-up' official anyway. But I will never know.

 

From the telephone we went to the school and all the kids wanted my autograph. I signed a bunch of notebooks, took pictures with me and kids and school administrators, then we went back to the mail part of the Post Office to send a package of stuff that I didn't want to carry around with me any more.

 

Now I was on my own, had some lunch, bought some food, and filled my water bottles. Then I looked up to see a thunder storm on the way. Not a good time to be setting out for a 35km ride into the countryside. But there is a covered bus stop at the edge of town so that is where I headed, and got there just as it started to rain. Sat through rain and hail, and finally it cleared up. I set out, and made it the 15km to the turn off to the GW's house. Then it started to rain again. At that turn off is the facility the road repair crew works out of. There were some places to take shelter, so I did. It rained pretty hard for a
while. The work crew came back at the end of their work day and invited me into the building they used. Used means where they eat and sleep and pass the time when they are not working. Basically their space - for about ten of them, was a kind of entry way, a cloak room, a small room where they prepared meals, and a little larger room that is where they slept - on the floor, in two rows of five, side-by-side. They gave me some food, and a place to take a nap after I ate, and I was thinking about spending the night there, but with still enough time to get to the GW's village before dark, it stopped raining so I continued on.

 

The next two nights we had serious thunderstorms, and the GW said that the road was not paved, and I should not leave on either of the two following days. It turns out that the return to the main road was not the 'piece-of-cake' that I had been lead to believe. Too many mini-adventures during those two days to mention, but finally on Sunday it was a nice day, and no rain the night before so I was ready to set out. The GW said he would come with me (part way?) by tractor. While folks were getting the tractor ready, I set out. At the edge of the village the pavement runs out, and there you are, not with a dirt road, but a bunch of tracks leading in all directions. I asked a guy standing
there which way to Zharkent, and he pointed to a track that lead up a little hill and disappeared behind the hill.

 

Off I went, then came the tractor to verify my intentions. I think they might have been going to turn back to the farm, but finally went on ahead of me, stopping every now and then for me to catchup. Because of wind and rough road, I was walking so progress was slow. Finally the tractor didn't go on ahead, but waited for me to catch up. The GW got out and said some stuff about the wind, and showed me the word in his Russian/English dictionary about truck, indicating that he was going back to get one. I could keep going if I wanted to, and should take the right fork when I had to make a choice. Well, I never got to make that choice because before I went very far the whole road was a sea of mud, with no way around. Muddy fields on both sides. I waited there for the truck. A big diesel farm truck.

 

We loaded the bicycle and panniers in the back, and four of us (me, driver, GW, and GW's 8-year-old daughter who came along for the ride) climbed into the cab and off we went. First was a running start to get through the mud, but that was not the only obstacle. When I started out, I thought if it was just a dirt road, I could walk 8km if I had to, but it was not even a road, just a track across the fields, and more like 20km, and which track to take when there were choices, and there were several fords, a couple of which we almost didn't make. Truck was essential, and reminded me that if a truck shows up, and that is really what you need, better get in.

 

Finally we made it to the main road, and not nearly as far along as originally reported by the GW. There is a mildly serious pass about 10km on from where we came out, and they took me to the top of that pass and then I was on my own. No wind on the other side, he said, but he was wrong again. There was still a lot of wind, but I was going down hill and it didn't matter.

 

From there, mostly uneventful to Zharkent, the last town before the border. Not much there of interest either except that it was short ride from where I spent the night, and I didn't want to go further until I was ready to cross the border, so I took another room in a hotel and wandered around the town a little, and did some laundry. On the way to the border there are a couple of check points, one about 10km from the border that is clearly left over from the Soviet Union days, but still manned. It is two 12ft high fences of barbed wire, with raked sand on the other side. I guess to keep Soviet citizens from escaping to China. The concept of escaping to China says a lot. I arrived at the actual border crossing center at the beginning of the long lunch/siesta break, so had to wait two hours for them to open,then another two hours while they did whatever they had to do to process my passport - or maybe they were waiting for me to give them a bribe. I am not sure, but eventually I was outside again, but not allowed to ride across no man's land. I had to wait more, for a minibus that shuttles who didn't already come on a public bus.

 

But finally I got to the Chinese side. Much easier here. In fact, while I was standing in line waiting for my turn at passport control, they were doing some kind of filming of some guy going through the process. Then they decided they should have the foreigner in the film and the line melted away, and it was my turn.

 

In the same building is a Bank of China office that will change money to RMB - Chinese yuan. I was expecting to use a traveler check there, but they never heard of them, so I had to use some of my currency. I converted $50, thinking that would last me until I could get to a town with a bank. Turns out not to be the case. Eight days later I was in Jing He, a kind of county seat. Lots of stuff going on there, a real city. I went to the first bank I found and asked about changing money. They said no, so I asked where. They tried to explain, but I couldn't understand and asked them to draw a map, thinking the right bank would be down the street, or around the corner, or some such. Didn't happen.
Instead of drawing me a map, the manager took me to the bookstore across the street to find a map of China and showed me a town 100km away, in the wrong direction where I could go to change money. The whole story is a lot longer, but in the end I exchanged enough on the black market - at a very bad rate - to get me to here, where they have the right kind of banks and will take traveler checks. In fact they will even cash traveler checks and give you dollar currency with less than one percent commission.

 

Anyway from the border the road goes flat for a while, but then starts up hill, first not too steep, then lowest gear steep, from 4000ft altitude up to 9000ft. The whole climb took about one and a half days. It was on this new road that I had heard in 1997 that they were building from Urumqi to the border. Well, they are still building it, and after the top of the mountain it is still the old bumpy and sometimes potholed road as always. So I didn't get much advantage out
of all that climbing, as I had to go slow on the downhill side.

 

Finally, at about Usu, the tollway starts. Bicycles are not allowed on the TW, but I rode 200km on it anyway. How so? Well, now that they have a tollway, they have torn up the original old road for miles and miles and miles. I think one reason is so that traffic will use the TW. But in typical Chinese fashion, everybody just started driving in the desert, and on the frontages of buildings until finally they put a layer of crushed rock down. Totally impossible and impassible for a bicycle. I did 10km of this, then found a chance to get on the TW so that is what I did. Slept in hotels in rest areas three nights.

 

The rest area system is worth remarking on. On each side of the road there is a gas station with snacks and motor oil and stuff, patterned after what is common now in most gas stations everywhere in America. There is one essential difference though. At the back of each of these are about three dormitory rooms. This is where the workers live. Every two weeks, they get to go visit family - or visit a local town, if family is far away.

 

As originally planned there is a hotel and restaurant building on only one side of the TW. If you happen to be going in the wrong direction, you use a tunnel under the traffic lanes to get to that building. The food situation is eased by the springing up of informal eateries on both sides, but there is still only one hotel. In the first rest area I stopped at, the hotel was not operating and it was late when I arrived, so one of the gas station workers let me use his bunk in the dormitory. The other two, I spent in the hotels. One I had to get all my stuff
through the tunnel, and the other was on my side of the road.

 

That about covers it, at least for highlights. Yesterday I went to the bank and got traveler checks cashed and to the Public Security Bureau for a visa extension. Visa extension is easy, but you have to wait until the next day for all the processing. I am going back there later this afternoon.

 

Since it is clear that I am not going to make it all the way across China on bicycle alone in three months, I am going to use public transport to cover about half the distance from here to Lanzhou. That half is about 600 mi., and covers the worst of the desert part of the trip, which from stories by two other bikers who covered it going west, giving it a miss is a good idea. A kind of travel agent was supposed to get me a train ticket for this part, and meet me at my hotel this morning, but he never showed up. Maybe that means I am not supposed to take the train, maybe he will show up later, who knows but at this
writing, I am back to my original plan, which is to go to the bus station in the morning and see what develops. Train is probably more comfortable, and leaves on a schedule, but doing it with a bicycle is a little iffy. With a bus, you know where your bicycle is, and can make sure it gets off when you do.

 

So, I am about out of steam, and am going to quit for now. Maybe I'll
have another chance to write something in Lanzhou in a few weeks.

Dale