West Mongolia, Xinjiang and Kazakhstan

Bactrian camel, Gurbantunggut desert

Location: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Day 804
Miles on the clock: 19,910


I clambered onto my nearly-nine-months vacant saddle and began a mad race westwards across Mongolia with my visa close to expiry. Old Geoff (my rusty, long-suffering bicycle) had been neglected while I worked in Beijing, walked to Mongolia and then horse-trekked. The muscles required to drive him had suffered neglect too. 

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The road west was a bumpy series of dusty, sandy, rocky tracks; often painfully corrugated. It was hot and my too-heavy bike wouldn’t react obediently to my untrained legs; formerly iron but now smelted to weakness through disuse. I struggled to top 6mph and tried to ignore the pain where my formerly leathern buttocks needed to redevelop their thick skin. Long hours on the road enabled me to torture myself with 60 miles each day before collapsing, exhausted, into my ragged, but pleasantly-familiar, old tent; similarly neglected for many months.

The scenery continued to showcase Mongolia’s priceless oracular wealth but I kept my eyes largely focused on the rutted road to spare my increasingly-tender trouser twins. There were many forks and it was sometimes hard to navigate the correct route over the low hills and across the dry plains. Occasional rainfall spat from the sky as I toiled on towards a border post with China that I was not even certain was crossable but was rumoured to be recently opened to foreigners. My once-huge appetite soon returned and I found myself eating twice as much as when hiking or horse trekking. Unavoidably, I closed my mind and adopted tunnel vision with the hopefully-open border at the tunnel’s end and the fast-approaching date of visa expiry mockingly plastering its walls. 

Kite in flight, West Mongolia

A formidable river swept across my path and I made four return journeys across it after my initial trial run without baggage. Chest-deep in the centre and with a frightening strength, I had to carry each bag across on my head, half-swimming and half-skipping across its uneven bed of small boulders. Each crossing swept me about 80 yards downstream. Shortly after this I saw a ger and warmed my shivering self by the stove of a married couple who I first mistook for siblings as they were aged only 16 and 17.

After a few days a shimmering turquoise band of deceptively-tropical appearance rose on the northern horizon. Uvs Nuur is a vast salt lake that freezes over for 7 months a year but I didn’t have time to appoach.  Keeping it to my north and watching the Altai mountains sprout out of the southern horizon and grow to snow-dusted peaks, I pedalled determinately towards the dowdy city of Ulaangom. When I arrived my parched chain was grinding and groaning for oil while my parched throat was pleading for beer. I met Tim and Cyrille who were nearing the end of their cycle from France and the three of us shared a room for two and a bottle for four.

Minivan travellers, West Mongolia

In the morning we each ate a miserly breakfast of a single egg with a German doctor of modern Mongolian history. She had been visiting the country for 20 years and was working on her third book. I asked her about the state of Mongolia today. Her diagnosis was only slightly less depressing than her prognosis. “Alcoholism is crippling this country and the current free-for-all land grab is seeing people greedily build fences all over the country which had none only a few years ago. Yes, the economy is booming due to foreign investment in mining. But, the culture is in a downward spiral and Mongolia is in social crisis.” While she delivered her final summary, the waitress delivered a second bottle of vodka to the four men at the next table. It was almost 9am.

Some calculations that morning persuaded me of the need to catch a lift for some distance to get to the border in time. I rode south out of the city on a gravel road which plunged through ten or twelve knee-deep rivers, each of which I staggered across carrying my loaded bike. The afternoon brought the approach of a truck (the only vehicle on the road in 6 hours) which I waved down and was soon bourne away in. The 120 mile road to Khovd climbed into the mountains and I was deposited early the next morning with more hard roads to contend with. On the second last day of my visa I reached a new, Chinese-built tarmac road that I didn’t know existed. I rode until long after sunset and then slumped into my sleeping bag for 4 hours. 

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The pre-dawn chill forced me to ride fast and the road helped my flight. It wound down out of the mountains onto the fringe of the Gurbantunggut desert in which lies the remotest point of land from any sea (over 1,600 miles). A steady tail wind played its part and I covered 140 miles by late afternoon. I found the border open and rushed through to nomans land with only minutes to spare before the Mongolian immigration officials ceased business for the day. The Chinese thoroughly searched my bags twice and claimed my cleancut passport photo was not me but I got through eventually and pitched my tent nearby in the dying light. I was too tired to eat. Too tired to think. A shattered shell of a man.

Late in the morning I woke in a stifling tent with a strong sun playing upon it. A cock was crowing nearby. During three months of travel in Mongolia I hadn’t heard or seen a single chicken. I looked out and saw everywhere the signs of Chinese industriousness. The slim trickle of a river I had followed on the dry, uninhabited Mongolian side had been turned into an extensive series of irrigation channels. A fecund mandarin grove nearby evidenced the triumph of the Chinese over the aridity of the desert. I was happy to be back in China and resume my fickle love-hate relationship with the country. The rush was over and I could now pick my pace, allowing myself a little enjoyment. Greedily-squelching juicy mandarin segments in my mouth for breakfast, I heaved a soul-easing sigh. The previously-unrealised tension drained from me and I told myself that my real journey began again here. Mongolia had been a paradise with its problems but it was behind me and a country with its “communists” spread before me.

Road through the Gurbantunggut desert, Southwest Mongolia

Apart from several bike problems, I spent a pleasant week in northern Xinjiang. If this province is China’s northwestern nipple then I contoured its areola. It seems few foreigners visit this area as my passport was checked at least once each day by the paranoid Public Security Bureau and people were exceptionally surprised to see a westerner. After the relatively plain food in Mongolia with almost no fresh produce, I revelled in the excellent Chinese cuisine. The days were warm and the dry desert rendered my tent unnecessary so I happily slept under the stars.

After a couple of days the hub on my rear wheel gave out. It had served me well for over two years but had come to the end of its natural life. I found myself stranded on the roadside in the desert with an unridable bike and a 30-mile backtrack to the nearest town. The road was busy enough with a vehicle every minute or. I stood, unsheltered, in 30°C heat with my broken wheel detached and prominently displayed to exhibit my helplessness for two hours without a single person stopping to see what was wrong. Many waved and smiled or even slowed down to get a better look as they passed but none had the heart to help. Eventually a policeman pulled over to check my passport. This done, he got into his car to leave before I managed to persuade him that he must give me a lift. He made a call and I was finally conveyed to Fuyun police station in a convoy of five police vehicles.

Road to the Chinese border, Southwest Mongolia

Fuyun is another homogenous habitation plopped out of the government’s template for a modern Chinese town; a Han Chinese replica tactlessly dumped on top of the indigenous Kazakh culture. I found the only bike mechanic who fiddled for some time and tried to help but had little practical knowledge. I caught him at one point about to weld a rusty old bolt nut to my wheel. After two hours he declared the bike fixed. I rode a clunky lap of the block and deduced that I might make it to the next town using only one gear and pedalling very slowly with consistent pressure. The man cheerfully accepted his 50p fee and wished me luck. 

I left the town with my rear wheel wobbling wildly and my chain slipping frequently. It held for 50 of the 60 miles to Beitun but had to push for the last 10 as the fatally worn hub was grinding and clacking loudly and the wheel turning only grudgingly. I walked jaded Geoff to the city centre and found a man who said he could build me a new wheel. While I waited for him to patch an old man’s puncture I watched an attractive young woman a few yards away casually roasting a pig’s head with a blowtorch. 

Desert beetle, Xinjiang Province, China

The mechanic showed me the parts and named a price. Both were cheap and might hopefully get me to the next city where I’d heard there was a decent bike shop. I left him to it for the afternoon and went to an internet cafe where I saw my blog had received over 1,000 visitors in a single day for the first time (many thanks to everyone who has passed on the address). When I returned I found the mechanic with a triumphant grin and my bike with an absurdly egg-shaped wheel. The diameter varied by up to an inch but the man refused to see this as a problem and was evidently proud of his work. 

The next 60 miles were a miserable ride. I had three working gears and an inch-high bump for every wheel revolution. With sore nethers I entered Burqin and quickly sought refuge in a fancy mountain bike shop with charming staff. They welcomed me and we communicated via google translate. I explained that “my egg-shaped wheel hurt my eggs” which made them laugh and seemed to win them over. They offered to replace my wheel and cassette (rear gear cogs) with good quality parts at factory cost and service my bike for free. After the last couple of days tough riding I was slightly overcome with gratitude.  

I spent the day eating and working with them in the shop. A diminutive Kazakh man took me for a quick meal in the afternoon and then timidly used his phone to translate a question which came out: “would you like to be gay with me?” I politely declined and returned to my friends at the bike shop who invited me to stay at their flat that night. We went for dinner at a night market and ate the local speciality of barbecued river fish. After our meal the waitress produced a plate with three vast, green chillies. It was the spiciest thing I ever recall eating and I was streaming from the eyes and the nose until a yoghurt appeared and extinguished my tongue.

Old mudbrick watchtower, Xinjiang Province, China

Policeman, Xinjiang Province, China

In the morning I rode away on a rejuvenated Geoff and made seemingly effortless progress, camping just short of the border of Kazakhstan. The crossing was chaotic. Bus loads of Mongolians lugging bus loads of cheap Chinese products jostled with coach loads of white Kazakhstani tourists of Russian ethnicity. I was stopped and held in a room for two hours while the immigration officials studied my passport and the customs officials thoroughly searched my bags repeatedly and tried to read the scribbled handwriting in my journal. They accused me of being an active journalist; a grave accusation to a foreigner travelling on a tourist visa . I denied this while they suspiciously scrolled through hundreds of photos on my camera (asking what each was of) and read both the received and sent text messages on my phone. A subordinate soldier of about 19 absent-mindedly started fiddling with the gears on my bike. I told him to stop but he nonchalantly continued with a grin. I gave him a gentle and jocular slap across the face which came out a little harder than expected and made a surprisingly loud clap. This probably didn’t speed my exit from China which took three hours in total.

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As I cycled across no man’s land I was waved over by the first Kazakh official in his huge hat. He pretended to check my passport before shaking me warmly by the hand and saying in English “Welcome to Kazakhstan my friend”. I was helped through customs by a local businessman who forced some money into my pocket before I left and refused to accept it back. I rode across the last of the desert to Zaysan and arrived just as a violent thunderstorm broke. Taking refuge in a half-built house I met Lojnia who was welding the bannister onto a staircase. It was his house and he took no time in inviting me to stay with him and his family in their nearby flat. I followed his car through a heavy downpour and soon found myself in a hot shower with a hearty dinner waiting for me. Lojnia’s five young sons were amazed by the stranger they found in their midst and crawled all over me with riotous giggles. I had only been in the country a day but had already been showered with hospitality and undue respect.

I began to absorb Kazakhstan while I rode. The mixture of European, Central Asian and East Asian faces; the posters of the apparently-popular 21-year president Nursultan Nazarbayev inspecting crops or visiting schools; the dowdy, Eastern European style villages; the ugly, haphazardly organised towns bursting with character and life (a refreshing change from China’s identakit towns).

A road through the hills, Kazakhstan

Cars regularly pulled over to see what I was doing. Grinning, gold-toothed men climbed out of their clapped out cars from a crumbled communist empire. I have always thought the profile shape of the Soviet Lada cars looks like a child’s crayon drawing of a generic car. Everyone shook my hand warmly and asked my name before anything else. Many gave me food or drink and several forced money upon me which I awkwardly accepted after seeing my refusal cause offence.

A couple of days fighting a fierce headwind were followed by a gravel road short cut over a low mountain ridge. During this excursion my chain (cheap and Chinese) began to break repeatedly with the strain during the steeper inclines. Each time it broke I removed the damaged link until it was so short that I was riding a single gear bike. I struggled through the final section of short cut, reached a town, replaced the chain and started crossing some of the featureless Kazakh steppe that covers most of the country. It is part of the largest steppe on earth and covers over 300,000 square miles. 

Camping on the steppe, Kazakhstan

I put my head down and made good mileage. The grassland was so dry that fires often broke out after careless drivers threw cigarette butts out of their windows. As I was camping one night I saw an orange glow spreading in the distance. It was downwind and I was exhausted so I irresponsibly ignored it and went to sleep. The next morning I was shocked by the extent of scorched earth that I rode through. The fire had devoured all the eyes could see from a 10-mile stretch of road.

Outside the city of Taldykurgan I met Nurli who invited me to stay at his home. I stayed for three nights and made several good friends. Nurli was humblingly hospitable and fussed over me paternally. In the evenings we drank beer and ate shashlik (barbecued shish kebab meat) while I practised my Russian. He introduced me to his friend’s son-in-law Igor who runs an English language school. I went for lunch with Igor who told me the fascinating story of how his family (ethnic Koreans), along with their whole Korean community of almost 200,000, were moved by the Soviets in the 1930s from Russia’s far east seaboard to uninhabited areas of eastern Kazakhstan. The Russians used fear of Japanese espionage and the claim that Koreans and Japanese were ethnically indistinct as their justification. The transportation conditions were cramped and many died en route. Igor’s grandfather (with many others whimsically suspected of disloyalty) was sent to a gulag. Incredibly he survived 8 years of forced labour before making his own way west where he found his family.

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Nurli, his son and his friend, Taldykurgan

One evening Nurli sat me down to talk about circumcision, a topic we had been joking about earlier as Muslims on the hole are snipped and Christians, as a rule, are not. He had just showered and wore only a small, pink towel. The conversation (carried out in a mixture of Russian and comically emphatic sign language) went as follows:

Nurli: “How long can you f**k for?”

Me: (evasively) “With or without beer?”
 
“No beer!”

(more evasively) “I don’t  know. I don’t own a watch.”

“Me. One time – one hour. Bang bang bang” (pounding his open palm on the top of his closed fist with a mischievous grin)

“Ok!”

“You” pointing first at my crotch and then at the baby pink colour of his towel, “ooooooh” wincing with a mock melodrama of over-sensitivity. “Me” standing up and pulling out his penis and flicking its brown end hard several times, “nothing. Ha ha ha!”

(embarrassed) “Good for you.”

(optimistically) “I can circumcise you now?”

(defensively) “No thank you Nurli.”

(whispering) “Our secret. No problem. Five minutes.”

“No thanks. But if I change my mind I promise to call you.”

Mountains behind Almaty, Kazakhstan

I left Taldykurgan still warmed by a big bear hug from Nurli. It was two days ride to Almaty and little of note occurred apart from meeting an unfortunate old German-born man called Adolf and being passed twice by a police car which first cheered me on through the loudspeaker on the roof, and the second time by playing Bony M’s “Ra Ra Rasputin”. As I approached the city, a white wall of mountains soared behind it. The ridge contains a 5,000m peak and marks the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I met up with Sancho (the Spaniard who had accompanied me for some of my horse trek) and we explored the town together.

Juergan and Me on the road to Bishkek

Almaty is an expensive, modern slice of western Europe transported onto the fringe of the Central Asian steppe. Expensive cars politely wait for pedestrians to cross attractive, tree-lined streets and beautiful people sip small, strong coffees with pretentious foreign names in swanky cafes. It’s a stunning city but not one for a skinflint cyclist to linger in. We spent a night in the cheapest hotel in town and another camped on the bed of a dried up lake near the city centre. A soldier woke us and moved us on early the next morning so Sancho boarded a bus to Bishkek across the Kyrgyz border and I rode in lethargic pursuit. At lunchtime I pulled into a roadside cafe to find a loaded bicycle and a very loaded semi-recumbent) tandem. Three smiling faces waved through the window and inside I met German Juergan (on a 6-week cycle holiday) and Keith & Tamar (an English/Northern Irish couple on a trans-continental journey). We rode on in convoy and camped together that night.  

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Juergan, Tamar and Keith

Camping with Juergan, Tamar and Keith

A large dinner followed by several drams of Kazakh vodka and Kyrgyz cognac led to a lazy start the following morning. We reached the border mid-afternoon and I was questioned in a little side room and threatened with a large fine for failing to register with the police in Kazakhstan. At length we got across and descended into Bishkek. The leafy, organised city is surprising for the capital of a country that many are hardly aware of. There are again many of Russian ethnicity and a developed appearance. Within 30 minutes or entering the suburbs I was showered, sat in a guesthouse, drinking a beer and talking to some of the 14 or 15 other cycle tourists staying there. A week of research and visa applications lay ahead of me. 

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