Desert Misadventures

Well, lets just say that our desert adventures did not come out as planned. We left Golmud with a heavy load as we were preparing for a 2,500 km ride through China's driest and most inhospitable regions. We were planning to reach Kashgar, famous for its wild Sunday bazaar at the south western edge of the Taklimakan desert, by taking the less traveled and tortuous Southern Silk road. The next town or settlement was about three days away and there would be no source of water till then. Our panniers were loaded with tons of oatmeal, honey, dried fruits, peanuts, pears, sugar, powdered milk, dried yak cheese and tsampa (ground roasted barley, a Tibetan favorite) and we each brought an extra 5 liters of water for the desert-crossing, bringing our total water load to nine heavy liters each. Once we left Golmud, the road deteriorated fast. We found ourselves scrambling through loose gravel, jolting over huge rocks on the road or skidding through sand. As if the terrain was not difficult enough, half way into our second day we faced tremendous gale force winds blowing in the opposite direction of travel. It would continue to blow sand and dirt upon us for the next two days. This was the real desert. We saw mini tornados, dry cracked earth and empty riverbeds caked with salt reminding us that even if there were water... it would be saline. The only signs of water were the snow capped mountains in the distance, visible yet hopelessly inaccessible. But it was not the roads, nor winds, nor heat, nor uphill that did us in...it was the food poisoning. We had gotten a little comfortable in Golmud and before leaving had a nice feast at the night market... mistake. Well, that feast reappeared two days later for me and I visited the sand dunes many times before setting out in the morning. We covered 50 slow kilometers that day, but by night time I was better. The following morning Pablo fell ill. We cleaned up our campsite around one p.m. when the shade left us. (Our latest departure yet). But as we hit the road, it was clear Pablo was too weak to cycle. Fearing dehydration, we decided to wait for a truck to pass and catch a lift to the next town. We waited two hours by the roadside but no truck came... (I already know this will be the part of the story mom won't like) We knew we were not far from the town so we decided to push for it... we had to, we were running low on water and our three days' supply had been stretched to four. After a routine of barf, pedal, hide in the shade, barf, pedal, we made it to the town. We didn't find the nice old lady that would cook us soup and make us better, but we did manage to find a couch for Pablo to crash on. Then we found a room for the night and Pablo slept for 15 hours straight while I worked the PR. There was no public transportation leading away from the village and few vehicles traveling North in our direction... Plus with our bags and bikes we couldn't just hop on any car... we needed to wait for one big enough to carry us and our load. So the following morning, with Pablo feeling only a little bit better but not yet eating solid food, we decided to ride up to the next town. It was going to be a hard stretch though, civilization was still 150km away. But someone was looking out for us and our salvation came in the form of 4 chinese engineers and their big, bad, expensive, imported-from-America, Ford truck. They had been exploring the desert for oil and apparently had found some as they were in a good mood and offered us a free ride. Hurray! We accepted. Recovery followed in an oil workers' city in a cheap-but-still- expensive for-us hotel room with plush white sheets and cable with re-runs of the Olympics and all of China's victories. Two days later Pablo was still not feeling better so rather than sit in this rather dull town we decided to hitch our way to the next city on the map which should have onward public transportation. The hotel manager arranged for his friend to take us to where we could find a truck as none traveled northward from that city... and the friends acted as our agents interviewing the city residents for information on the next departure... We had all of two choices for our escape. One was hiring a private jeep at an exhorbitant price, or two, taking a truck that was 'broken' but would leave when it was fixed. We negotiated for the truck. Our money paid for a new battery and we were off... but only after having waited the whole day for the truck to be loaded. Our truck ride was great. It gave us a whole new perspective on the road we had been travelling on. Sadly we passed through what arguably was to be the best of the desert scenery. We missed biking through canyons and dry sculpted valleys and we missed riding down what could have been a two day descent. Argg. Finally arriving near Milan, a city worthy of a Lonely Planet mention, we decided to keep trucking through the desert to Hotan. This required two 12 and 15-hour rides. The desert landscape was beautiful but there simply were no people. We justified this decision with the squirmy statements from Pablo's stomach and by realizing that we were here to study housing and minority cultures. We could spend weeks in the desert seeing nothing, or by taking the bus, have more time to explore the South and its ethnic minorities. Now we are in Hotan... home of the Uygur minority which here is the complete majority. Hardly anyone speaks mandarin and all the signs are predominantly in Arabic. It feels like a completely different country and people here have closer ties to their neighbors, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan. No wonder they are struggling to separate like the Tibetans from China. Pablo's stomach has relaxed and we have been sampling the great muslim cuisine and night markets again. Today we are taking off towards Kashgar through dusty mountain roads to connect with the fabled Karakoram highway, for a more scenic trip through small villages. We'll post again in about 2 weeks from there... and hopefully upload more pictures. Thank you once again for all of the emails and words of encouragement. It's always nice to hear from home.