Nomadic eastern Tibet

The Zangzu

No cycling today – hallelujah! Some of the people in Hezuo bus station could have walked straight out of prehistory. There were a few incredible-looking characters around - dark Genghis Khan lookalikes with long hair and moustache. They wore thick robes with dangling, straitjacket sleeves, and a headscarf. Often, a big ornate dagger hung from the long, brightly-coloured belt. These were Zangzu people - Tibetans from the eastern edge of the Land of Snows.

There were a few beggars around, proffering their suppurating stumps. One kid was accompanied by a wizened old woman who must have been about four foot two. The old lady smiled mutely, thrusting her upturned palm towards my face, jigging it up and down, withdrawing it, and then repeating the process. I stonewalled them. She was not to be denied, though; she and the boy knelt in front of me, pleading silently with outstretched arms. This was too much. I caved in.

The bus broke down twice, the second time for good. We were in a Zangzu village.

The women wore pink headscarves and thick, all-enveloping robes trimmed with brightly-embroidered geometric patterns. The village kids were fascinated by me, and I certainly didn’t disappoint. I sat by the roadside, waiting for the next bus on to Langmusi, and munched wearily on the same old travel food - bread, vacuum-packed pickled vegetables, and long-life chicken sausages. A stooped old lady padded along the dirt street, a huge woven basket strapped to her back. I marvelled at her toughness – the basket contained a humungous cargo of yak dung.

The Zangzu keep muscular, shaggy guard dogs. On the bus trip, I saw a group of them fighting each other, chomping into flesh and shaking their heads furiously. The stuff of postmen’s nightmares. We got into the beautiful village of Langmusi about 4 hours late, but I didn't care about beauty or punctuality. What mattered was that I wasn't cycling. My legs had ached all that morning and afternoon, but were starting to recover by evening.

I decided something was needed to ward off psycho mutts, so I bought a good heavy stick in Langmusi the next morning. The previous day’s aches and grim humour had vanished. I tied everything to my bike, and set off breezily.

A wide, flat strip of pastureland cut through low hills. Yak browsed on thin clumps of dark grass broken by tiny dirt hummocks. As the road zigzagged up towards a low pass, a couple of Zangzu guys passed on a motorbike. One suggested I grab his belt and they drag me up to the top, but I said no, I had to keep cycling.

A fierce wind thrashed the polychrome tatters. I’d descended about 200 metres beyond the pass when I heard an outlandish howling from behind me. I looked back up, and saw a figure on the pass, tossing multicoloured confetti into the air, hooting, shrieking and chanting. He kept throwing and throwing, and the paper was blown all over the mountainside. I managed to catch a few scraps as they tumbled and leapt along the ground. On each piece was a picture of a decorated horse springing through a flamboyant thicket of plants, birds, tigers and genie jars. Further down the mountain, I found scatterings of near-identical confetti. You can buy the confetti in shops here, and many temples and mountainsides are half-drowned in the stuff.

The people in this area are devotees of Bon, a religion that claims to be directly descended from the ancient pre-Buddhist shamanism of the Tibetan plateau. Academics, however, think it’s more likely that Bon is an idiosyncratic offshoot of Tibetan Buddhism, and that it emerged several centuries after the Indian mystic Padmasambhava brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century. Buddhist texts record that the local deities put up stiff resistance to Padmasambhava; not surprisingly, these rival entities are described as dangerous fiends. Padmasambhava eventually mastered these atavistic gods, taking the edge off their fierceness. After spreading the Dharma (Truth) in the Land of Snows, the sage departed for the southwestern universe of the magical cannibals.

Although Padmasambhava got the better of Tibet’s ancient gods, they’re still powerful. Even now, Buddhist monks perform complex rituals to stop malicious sprites from escaping their lairs. Matthew Kapstein of the University of Chicago describes a ritual for expelling a ‘gossip girl’, a spirit who invades small communities to plant curses and spread malicious rumours. An effigy is made from various household objects, and the exorcist invokes the words of Padmasambhava:

Daughter of malicious gossip! Listen up!
If you, malicious gossip, have no body in order to go,
Let this hollow straw be malicious gossip’s body.
Malicious gossip, associate yourself with this body and go away!
If malicious gossip’s body needs a head,
Let this red clay pot be malicious gossip’s head!
Malicious gossip, associate yourself with this head and go away!

And so on. Malicious Gossip is urged to construct her body from items including cowrie shells, slices of radish and turnip, and a black pig-hair brush. The sorcerer exhorts Malicious Gossip to use a black-and-white rodent as her horse, and a gnarled yak-horn as her palace. He presents her with talismans to be attacked in place of human victims.

Both Tibetan Buddhism and Bon are profoundly intertwined with folk shamanism. For most of Tibet’s people, the world still teems with gods of well and creek and mountain ridge, with chimerical imps and the powerful, many-headed deities of Buddhism.

The road descended a little, reaching an incredibly flat, wide, lonely plateau. A sign announced this place as the Ruoergal Nature Reserve, and the altitude as 3,700 metres. Nothing much could grow up here. The dark green plain stretched to low hills in the distance, the dreary flatness broken only by scattered hummocks of dirt. My walkman radio couldn’t pick up anything here; I cycled on in silence.

While letting a herd of yak cross the road that evening, I handed the Zangzu shepherd a smoke. He invited me back to his tent for some food and kip.

I thanked him, but said I should be heading on. I cycled over some low hills. It seemed I’d left the nature reserve - the plain ahead was dotted with the dark, elephant-sized yakhair tents of nomads. Towards dusk, I parked my bike near one of these tents to ask whether I could put up my own tent nearby. Clutching my dog stick, I walked towards a couple of kids. They evidently thought I wanted to give them a thrashing, so they fled. Their two guard dogs came snarling after me. By waving my stick and growling, I kept them at bay fairly easily, and slowly walked my bike out of their territory.

Not knowing what the Zangzu people were like, I didn't want to camp without permission. As the dusk thickened, I found a man by the side of the road with his son and wizened mother. The guy was a taciturn sort, but he offered to put me up for the night in one of the two rooms they used in a long, ruined bungalow. It had probably been a hostel once. Most of the rooms were broken-down, with gaps in the roof, empty window frames and floors strewn with sheepturd. As per usual in rural western China, each inhabited room was a complete unit, with clothes, bedspread, and a blackened stove piping smoke through the roof. The man ordered granny to set me up. She laid down a mat and sheepskin blankets, and stuffed the stove with dried yak dung. They were all fascinated by my modern equipment - radio, small torch, walkman, sleeping bag. The little boy spent hours shining the torch on my postcards of Ireland.

The old woman disappeared into the twilight, soon returning with a flock of sheep. I watched from my doorway as she clucked, shushed and quacked at the nervous animals, cramming them into two derelict rooms beside me. Then a herd of yak emerged from the darkness, followed nonchalantly by the man of the house. The yak seemed to know the drill, ambling slowly into a roadside paddock. Last in were the horses, tied to doorposts in the courtyard by the sheep’s rooms. A tethered guard dog paid the animals no mind - it was only when the strange-looking human poked his head out the door that the leaping and raving started. I was just dropping off to sleep when my hosts came in and rustled me up 12 yakmeat dumplings - fairly tasty, and very generous for people as poor as they. It would have been a little precious to tell them that actually, I didn’t eat red meat; so I tucked into the salty fare.

At six in the morning, the old woman came into my room to light the stove. The morning was warm enough, so she’d folded her brown robes down to her waist, uncovering a western-style, sky-blue sweater. The two soot-blackened kettles came to the boil. I poured clean water from one of them onto my coffee granules; the other one bubbled with a disquieting oily fluid. Before leaving, I looked through all my stuff for something I could give them. I asked the woman if she was in any pain, and she said all over, all the time. I gave her a few paracetamol, with some bandages, thread, and Lipton's teabags. The previous night, I’d offered to pay my hosts, but they refused.

Breakfast awaited me in the next town. I set off. Near a cluster of yakhair tents in the next valley, two shaggy, rottweiler-sized guard dogs came barking after me. I grabbed my dog stick, and hopped off my bike. One of the dogs was pretty vicious, but I kept it at bay by shouting and banging the ground with the stick. Then three more dogs bounded into the fray; one of these took up barking position behind me. Surrounded as I was by five belligerent powerful dogs, I was getting scared, and looked quickly from dog to dog to see if any of them would start the attack. Waving my stick with my right hand, trying to balance and wheel my heavily-laden, topply bike with my left, I inched my way along, shouting, blood rushing. One by one, the dogs dropped off. At last, even the most vicious one called it a day. Up at the crest of the hill, I looked back into the valley. By the tents, people were moving. I thought 'how nice of them not to call off their dogs'. Perhaps they'd thought the dogs weren't likely to bite me, and had assumed I’d know that. Or maybe they were bloodthirsty knaves.

I felt really weary that morning; it might have been the altitude, or a virus. That whole day, I covered a measly 50km on the bike. In the afternoon, a group of five Zangzu women waved me over to their hut. I accepted their offer of food, more out of curiosity than hunger. I was taken aback to see a flashy little solar power generator just outside the shack. Over the next couple of days, I’d occasionally see one of these outside a roadside hut or tent. Government issue I suppose. The women brought me into their home, a Stone Age hut of straw, wood and yak dung. It was pretty murky, with only a tiny hole in the wall to let out the thick smoke from the burning dung. A cluster of pink-cheeked, pigtailed teenage girls watched me, giggling. They scrutinised my postcards of Ireland. Their gaily-trimmed robes were folded down to their waists, exposing bright western-style blouses and chunky bead necklaces. Communication wasn’t easy, since their Chinese was even worse than mine. A stooped, cheerful granny fixed me a bowl of tsampa - a grim, watery barley porridge.

friendly old zangzu woman who fixed me some horrible tsampa porridge

I pretended to enjoy it, and guiltily declined a second helping, saying I must be getting on. I cycled off, waving to the growing throng by the hut.

Weird cobwebby structure in Buddhist temple complex

That evening, a Zangzu horseman cantered over to the road, and asked me whether I'd like to stay with his family for the night. I accompanied him over the fields and through his herd of yak, parking my bike by his yakhair tent. Yaks endure the savage cold of Tibetan winters; so not surprisingly, the tent was good and warm that night. It hadn’t been in the same spot for long; the grass ‘floor’ was still green. Strewn around the interior were pots and jars, a saddle, grubby blankets and a barrel of water. They used a hollow, sturdy chunk of metal as a stove.

My host’s mother had a permanently wry, pained expression. When greeting her, I tried to shake her hand. She was taken aback at this, but the son told her to go ahead and shake hands, so she offered a fingertip to the gauche foreigner. His young wife had an open, smiling face; she rustled up some pre-packed spicy noodles. I told my hosts they were delicious. ‘Surely not’, replied the man. Ordinarily, he would have been right; but days of tsampa, vacuum-packed vegetables and stale bread had lowered my sights. Some nice-looking girls hunkered down in the middle of the tent, watching me clamber into my sleeping bag. I considered taking up yakherding. As I was curling up, my host draped a couple of sheepskin blankets over my sleeping bag.

I have to say that the Zangzu are the most hospitable people I've met. Their hospitality is completely generous, but there’s no pomp and ceremony about it - they invite you into their home, give you blankets and chow, and clear a patch of floor for you to sleep on.

In the middle of the night, the yak were restless, their deep grunts escalating to a weird guttural crescendo. The man suddenly hooted, which seemed to do the trick. Or at least I fell asleep again.

Answering the call of nature in the morning wasn't too easy - some over-curious yak kept nuzzling me as I tried to pee. As I retreated, their taste in golden beverages proved to be somewhat awry.

When I was leaving, the wife smilingly refused to shake my hand. I realised there must be a touching taboo between the sexes. I thanked them as best I could, and set off into the drizzle, along a gradually rising, wildly rutted dirt road.

Stopping at a bridge for a smoke and some of my dire packed food, I met a cheerful, somewhat demented character. His friend, who spoke no Chinese, was of Xizang stock – a Tibetan from the central or western provinces of Tibet. He wasn’t as dark as the Zangzu, and lacked their fierce Mongol features. My demented buddy whined 'hello' at me, and sang fragmented ditties. I sang him a little Barry Manilow (at the Copa, Copacabana . . . ), and he picked it up, replying with a weird little Sichuanese version. I travelled on up the forlorn valley, the cold drizzle turning into a light sleet. In a solitary tent-shop by the road, they were selling that horse-god confetti, alongside a yellow soft drink with Ricky Martin on the label. Ricky must have been pretty cold up there in his shimmering satin top, but he looked as happy as ever.

Once over the desolate, blustery pass that evening,

tibetan prayer flags at the top of a pass

the road ahead wasn’t the easy downhill coast I’d expected. It was nearly dark, so I asked a young Zangzu lad if I could camp near his tent. He said he had a free bed, and invited the cunning freeloader in. I'm not sure if the bed was actually free, or if he felt bound to be generous - a couple of his friends came round later for a right royal booze-up, and ended up sleeping on the floor. I slept through the whole thing, only waking briefly to see shouting faces leering down at me.

China - Buddhists & Muslims

I had my first good sleep in a while. Woke up to the dark desert. The Gobi is very big, gravelly, grey, mostly flat, and pretty depressing.

15th.

In the early hours, some women got off the bus, and unloaded their huge bags from the roof. Unlike in Ireland, the men didn't rush to help the feeble damsels. I did a bit of token bag-catching, but didn't bother anymore after a couple - I probably seemed more weird than chivalrous.

After 46 hours on the bus, got into the big city of Lanzhou. It sounds a painfully long trip, but I came out of it fairly refreshed - it was easy to sleep, and my legs were glad of the respite from cycling. Lanzhou is said to be the most polluted city in the world. In terms of garbage, that's not at all true; but the air is pretty thick and foul - factory belches get trapped in a long, narrow valley.

Quickly enough, I found a minibus on to Xining. Inside this vehicle was the worst starer in the world. This muslim teenager ogled me for about 45 minutes straight, and I got progressively twitchier. Eventually I couldn't take it any more. I eyeballed him from a distance of 2 inches, and sat back, relieved that I'd done the needful. But I hadn't - he kept looking. Maybe some people could have taken that in their stride; after all, he was just curious - and a couple of Islamic eyeballs aren't going to do me much harm. But relentless staring is something I can only be logical about in retrospect. At the time, I just got more and more nervous and angry. I finally blurted to him "wo bu shi dianshi" ("I'm not television"). This did the trick - but I still harboured murderous thoughts towards him for the rest of the (6 hour) trip. Which sounds strange (and probably is strange), but I'm not exaggerating.

I think I saw my first interethnic hostility on this bus ride - one of the muslims, a tough-looking guy who made me think of Bugsy Malone movies, told me not to let a Han (ethnic majority Chinese) couple sit next to me. When they eventually did, he stared daggers at them for a while. He was a bit of a thug; but resentment of the Han people is in some ways easy to understand. They've annexed Tibet, and have tried to impose their culture on many ethnic peoples in the western reaches of China.

Thoroughly sick of buses, I hopped off in Xining and went to find a hotel and a cup of tea. Not for the last time, the locals put up stiff resistance to my request for sugar in my cuppa. The tea there was grim - made from yak butter? One of my first tastes of Tibet's pretty skanky cuisine.

The next day, I cycled out to Ta'er Si, a major Tibetan monastery. A young Buddhist monk was giggling uncontrollably at the lanky foreigner - I told him (in English and therefore incomprehensibly) that I'd kick his ass, which was quite satisfying. A bunch of monks were watching Arnie (Conan the Barbarian) on TV. 'Great!', I thought - a fascinating culture clash for me to write about. Of course, the monks are into modern stuff just like anyone else - they race around on motorbikes when by rights they should be quaintly plodding around on foot. On another TV, a trio of foxy lasses performed in front of a strangely quiet, seated stadium.

This guy and his wife ran the toilet in the monastery. They looked after my bike, and gave me a free meal before I left

It was raining most of that day; that evening, I stopped for a bite to eat. It got dark a good hour sooner than I expected - I'd travelled almost a time zone eastwards from Urumqi. There weren't any hotels about, but the Han restaurant owner offered to put me up for the night. He and his wife didn't want to charge me anything, but I said I had to pay them at least something. The wife said 7 kuai (70p), but I said this was out of the question, and generously offered a pound. Later, I realised the true extent of my scabbiness, so I gave them two quid the next morning. Before going to bed, I watched a 1993 martial arts movie on the telly. The baddies were Japanese, and truly evil. Japan's mistreatment of Chinese people is past history, but it seems like there's still some bad blood. Halfway through the movie, there was an almighty bang from outside. A minivan had smashed into the back of a parked jeep; if there'd been someone in the van's passenger seat, their legs would have been pulped. The lucky driver staggered out unharmed; clearly sozzled, he lit up a smoke.


17th.

I started up the road to the pass ahead. I felt very weak and slow, and the kilometre markers made me feel even more leaden. It was snowing - much preferable to rain, because my clothes and bags don't get miserably saturated. Fog rose off the road; passing trucks swirled it like a hand swiping through cigarette smoke. The strange ululating song of a Tibetan shepherd drifted over from the mountainside. Snow lay on the ground higher up, and the flurries thickened; near the top, I could hardly see anything in the whiteout.

Over the top, and I raced downhill in relief; not far down, though, I had to turn left up a stony, grassy track. I cycled for 100m, but my legs weren't up to it; so I got off the bike and walked it up. I don't think the Coming of the Paleface happens too often on this road; the locals seemed pretty dumbstruck. They were Tibetans; swathed in plain, heavy robes with riotous lining, the women with pigtails and bright pink headscarves. I plodded up to the next pass. I stopped to put on more clothes for the chill ride downhill, and looked back along the valley I'd just climbed. Clouds flooded off the mountains behind, filling the valley with ominous speed. Down I rode.


18th (?).

Packed my tent, and rode up a rough, wheelchurned dirt track. It forked. I'd lost my map earlier, so I trusted my instincts and went downhill. Soon enough, I met a couple of truckers who told me I was going the wrong way. Over a couple of mountains, I stopped for lunch. I asked for sugar in my tea, but instead was given a small plastic packet containing sugar crystals, tealeaves, and lots of different kinds of nuts, roots and berries. The waitress chucked it all in my cup and poured water on it; I was suspicious that she was having a joke at the clueless foreigner's expense. I drank it anyway, and it was by far the tastiest tea I've had. I resolved to buy loads of it and drink it from then on.


19th (?).

Passed a man and a little girl herding a mixed flock of yak, sheep and donkeys. I heard loud bangs, and took a closer look. The shepherds were using slingshots to keep their unfortunate animals bunched. They'd swirl the slingshot round and round, and then release the stone with a great crack, hitting a long-suffering grassmuncher on the rump.

That evening, I stopped in a village for supplies (i.e. lots of sugary food). "Hello audience" I said genially to the gathering onlookers. 'Excellent', I thought, "I've finally come to terms with being gawped at". I cycled on. A group of kids stopped ahead of me, and gazed and giggled at the remarkable white entity. I wanted to plough my bike into them.

A couple of middle-aged women stopped me to wave a small tuber at me and babble questioningly. I didn't know what they were on about, so I started to leave. One of them got behind the bike and pushed me up the road for a few metres; 'come on, come on!' I shouted at her when she ran out of steam.

3 kids on road from Xining to Linxia

Camped for the third night in a row (becoming truly pungent at this stage).


20th (?).

Someone shouted into the tent at 6:45 in the morning. I was elated to have my sleep interrupted in this way; I groaned and kept quiet until the early turd left. That morning, got onto a downhill tarmacked road. Yippee - sped downhill for an hour, eating up the kilometres, ears popping. I reached what I later found out was the Yellow River, one of China's two great rivers. I cycled along the river for a while, until I discovered that my light-speed descent had been in the wrong direction; I'd have to head back uphill. This time, I was on a rocky dirt road. It took about five hours to reel in the lost kilometres; my legs were in bits and I was feeling mightily sorry for myself.

This was a very traditional Hui Muslim area, the men in white bowlshaped caps and the women with black cloth hanging down to their shoulders. I saw a blind man tapping his way along the road, and realised that in my time in China, I'd hardly seen a single disabled person. Soon after, I happened on a tiny village clinic staffed by a beautiful Muslim girl, and stopped to buy a soft drink off her. In my pathetic Chinese, I tried to ask her if all crippled people were put in institutions here - she answered yes to whatever she thought my question was.

Before the next pass, a motorcyclist fell off his bike near the top of a small hill. I helped him push it up to the crest. He was completely locked, and sat down on his bike, head bowed. Last time I looked back, he was still there, staring boozily at the ground.

That night, found a hotel; listening to the BBC World Service, heard that in preparation for the visit of the 2008 Olympic inspection committee, the Chinese had applied green paint to the brown grass in Beijing. I found that the jar of honey I'd bought a while back had leaked - the inside of my foodbag was sticky and gammy for days to come.

Next day, cycled through spectacular scenery - kind of like Death Valley in California, but split by a river and lush green terraces. I'd twice been told that the road was in terrible condition, and that I shouldn't cycle it; but I ignored the warnings. The whole road was under construction, so the shouts of 'hello!' came thick and fast, along with the occasional anomalous "hi" or "ok". Wended my way through the rocks and corrugations; further down, the road was smothered in dust. I passed a sort of primitive elongated tractor. It was being driven by a couple of kids - one of about six was working the pedals, and the four-year-old was doing the steering.

After lunch down at the river, I continued up the dustiest road on God's Earth. The chain on my bike was clogged and crunching against the gears; the screwcap on my waterbottle was jammed by the particles. There wasn't any space to camp - as in many places in China, any remotely horizontal land was used for either houses or crops. I'd been warned that there were some dodgy types around; so I was lucky to find a little hotel around nightfall. They helpfully gave me a horsetail duster to whip the dust off with. Watched by a horde of kids,

Some of the kids watching me and shouting 'Hello!'

I applied a hearty flogging to my bags, my bike and my self, pausing to give the wee ones a thrashing. Eating my supper later on, the whippersnappers kept knocking at the window outside, jumping up and down and shouting 'hello! hello!'. The owner's kid had been assigned to give me some peace, so when the nippers peered round the curtain, he'd spit at their faces, cackling gleefully when he hit the mark. I appreciated his efforts. On the telly was an ad for pills to make your bones stronger and your brain bigger; it featured Albert Einstein and a kid in graduation gear.

I didn't sleep too well that night - the early morning blaring of trucks saw to that. Chinese towns and cities generally aren't too noisy, but you need earplugs to live in the villages - truck drivers are concerned to protect people's lives, but not their eardrums. I was quite worn out cycling up to the next pass that day - almost cried with relief when I reached the top. I was resting just over the crest when a bus driver beeped his horn and shouted (guess what?) "hello!". "Give me a break!" I snapped. He found this highly amusing, and guffawed as he drove on.

The road dipped and snaked and plunged, passing the goats and the dark low shrubs of the plateau. I coasted down, past herds of yak and through cold, rockstrewn valleys. In the afternoon, I reached a gentle, terraced valley, bright yellow streaks of rapeseed punctuating the green fields. The air was warmer here, and insects flicked against my skin as I raced downhill. There was a small, grubby town further down the valley. A young Han guy chased after my bike, shouting at me to stop. He wanted to practise his English in exchange for showing me around, which suited me fine. He was friendly and inquisitive, although his movements betrayed tension of some kind. There was a Buddhist temple perched atop a buttress of a hill above the town, and we trod up the steps leading up from the valley. A Buddhist himself, he interspersed tour-guide duties with incense-burning and kow-towing to the gods. The temple was peopled by leering, garish, multiheaded idols. The mural covering most of the left wall depicted a heaven and hell very similar to our own. Buddhist hell was populated by red demons with fire rising from their ears; these individuals pronged the buttocks of screaming misbehavers. The clean-living folk had a better deal – mounted on fine steeds, they galloped joyfully into the clouds.

My guide’s accent was a mixture of Chinese and fruity BBC World Service. He asked me "have you made love with a woman?". Apparently, the people around there didn't have sex before marriage - this would harm their chances of securing a desirable spouse. He was 23 and unmarried. We bumped into a friend of his, a university student with excellent English, and we strolled back to my hotel room for. They both spoke highly of the Communist Party. At the moment, they said, it's definitely heading in the right direction with its policies. They admitted that the Party had made some mistakes in the past. Foremost among the Party’s errors was instigation of the Cultural Revolution, a deadly mix of ideology, despotism and mass hysteria. As Flower Power blossomed in the West, Chinese authorities and intellectuals were humiliated and brutalised by delirious mobs. Gangs of students beat up their teachers, and students manned traffic lights, ordering drivers to start their cars when the lights turned red. This was ideologically laudable, since red is the colour of the Communist Revolution and therefore couldn't mean anything negative like 'stop your car'.

My conversation with them was interesting, but rather frustrating. These guys seemed totally unaware of how far the Chinese government has strayed from the ideals of Karl Marx. The administration is brutal in its repression of dissent, and allows some of the world's worst sweatshops to operate on its soil.

Next morning, I was woken at 6 by a knock at my door. It was Mr. BBC China. He said he'd been worrying during the night - perhaps the police were aware that we'd been talking late. I felt like applying the police beating myself, and managed to eject him fairly quickly. Back he came at 8:00. He said it was time to get up - I had to leave soon if I was to get to the next town by nightfall. He started asking me questions about sex - had I made love with many women? Had I made love with a Chinese woman? What was sex like? I said I needed to sleep. He said 'first, I want you to teach me a few words of English'. I said 'no, sorry, I must sleep, I need at least another hour'. His mouth beamed and his eyes darted uneasily. He backed out the door. After he left, I thought argh, maybe he'll be back after 60 minutes on the dot. I couldn't sleep, and punched the wall. He didn't come back until 9:45. I packed my bags, grumpily answered the flood of questions about sex, and left as quickly as I could.

even i thought this was cute

same pic further away

the chinese are insane gamblers

That evening, I made it to Xiahe, home of the major Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Labuleng. Xiahe was a friendly, potholey town with English-speaking tourists, hotel showers and menus in English. I spoke lots of English, cleaned myself up and ate well.

Next morning.

In the courtyard of the lavish main temple, about seventy monks were sitting on the steps in their worn red robes. They wore strange ochre hats, crescent-shaped and topped with yellow, punk-style manes. They sang deep, repetitive, multilayered chants, swaying back and forth to the weird harmonies. A lone monk stood on the golden roof; every so often, he'd sound a large gong. Tears welled under my eyelids; I was watching a very old, strange, different culture at work. The monks stood up, and moved into the inner temple. A group of Western tourists trooped in after them; I hesitated, then guiltily followed suit. We stood by a wall covered with thousands and thousands of near-identical paintings of the Buddha sitting in the lotus position. The dusky inner temple, about 250 feet deep by 300 feet wide, was choked with visual riches. The monks sat amongst painted pillars and rich, tasselled hangings featuring plants, vivid geometric shapes, and fearsome dragon gods. At least some of the monks were using the bizarre ‘throat singing’ common to the plateaux of Tibet and Mongolia – individual monks could simultaneously chant in a deep rumble and a high-pitched, almost electronic buzz. Not a ceremony I'll forget.

Outside, a group of shaven-headed young monks beckoned me over.

tibetan monks in typical pose

Decorations at the Lamas' living quarters

Mostly, the questions were the usual ones - 'where are you from?' 'How old are you?'. But as at the small monastery two days before, the first question was "Do you know the Dalai Lama?". For Tibetans, the Dalai Lama is an awesome figure. Perhaps their feelings resemble those of ancient Egyptians towards their pharaoh. They call him Yeshe Norbu (The Wish-Fulfilling Gem), or Kundun (The Presence). The title ‘Dalai’ was not applied to Kundun until the third incarnation, Sonam Gyatso. In 1576, Gyatso was invited to the court of Altan Khan, ruler of Mongolia. The two dignitaries exchanged compliments. The Tibetan praised Khan as "King of the Turning Wheel (of life) and Wisdom", and the Mongolian lauded his guest as the "All-Knowing Sceptre-Holder, the Dalai Lama". ‘Dalai’ is the Mongolian word for ‘ocean’, and ‘lama’ is Tibetan for ‘guru’: hence ‘Dalai Lama’ – Ocean of Wisdom. The Tibetan’s eloquence and magical powers dazzled the Khan (it can’t just have been the flattery that impressed him – he was no doubt used to that). He became a zealous convert to Lamaism. And where the Khan went, Mongolia followed: shamanism went into decline. Mongolians gave up slaughtering animals to appease the gods, and no longer sacrificed widows to their departed husbands.

In the seventeenth century, when the fifth Dalai Lama was having trouble with rival Tibetan sects and secular armies, he asked Gushi Khan, a Mongol prince, to sort things out. Khan invaded Tibet, conquered all the Dalai Lama’s enemies, and promptly handed the entire country over to the Dalai Lama’s control. I mean come on Gushi, that is so not In The National Interest. The same Dalai Lama, Ngawang Gyatso, also declared himself the reincarnation of Avalokitesvara, a mighty god of compassion who is a crucial figure in Tibetan Buddhism. According to legend, twelfth-century monks dug up a gter ma, a book of wisdom which Buddhist masters had buried centuries before. The gter ma revealed that the first Tibetans were born when Avalokitesvara took the form of a monkey and mated with an ogress. It was Ngawang Gyatso who ordered the construction of a magnificent palace in Lhasa, and named it ‘Potala’, after Avalokitesvara’s heavenly abode.

P. Stobdan, senior fellow at New Delhi’s Institute of Defence Studies, calls reincarnation ‘the most ingenious form of religious and political control ever devised.’ Authority passes from Dalai Lama to Dalai Lama just as it passes from king to king; but the Dalai Lama is far more commanding than any temporal ruler. What’s more, his upbringing is completely controlled by Tibet’s lamas. This system has brought enormous power to the Gelugpa (Yellow-Hat) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who used the authority of reincarnated leaders to wrest power from Tibet’s secular nobility.

The present Dalai Lama fled his kingdom after the Chinese crushed the 1959 Tibetan uprising. I told the monks what little I knew about him – about the strange portents, visions and rituals that led to the discovery of the most recent incarnation. These days, of course, the Chinese authorities are using all means at their disposal to dominate Tibet. Stobdan remarks glumly that:

… irrespective of what the present Dalai Lama may decide to do with his future, the Chinese are going to find the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama according to their choice and method, … in connivance with the Buddhist clerical elite inside Tibet. The post-Mao leadership in China has … realised the importance of traditional Tibetan institutions for their control over Tibet.


The evening before, I'd been talking to a British woman who'd been working with the Red Cross around Central Asia. She remarked that the monks were like big kids, which struck me as true - the young ones seem to be always messing and wrestling. They're very physical with each other, constantly hugging and draping their arms around each other's shoulders. Heinrich Harrer, who in 1943 escaped a British POW camp and fled into Tibet, writes that many Tibetan monks "live in strict celibacy and are forbidden to have anything to do with women. Unfortunately homosexuality is very common. It is even condoned as giving proof that women play no part in the life of those monks who indulge in it". Harrer became tutor to the Dalai Lama. His best-seller ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ gives a unique insight into the last days of that remarkable theocratic nation. In many respects, Harrer was an exceptional man. But he was also a homophobic former SS squadron leader, whose racially pure marriage had been given the blessing of Heinrich Himmler.

At about noon, I set off down the poplar-lined road, through wooded valleys of maroon and green. Bundles of sticks stood atop some of the flanking hills, lashed together in irregular, vaguely ominous shapes. The road was paved and smooth, but I was absolutely wrecked, and could only make about 10 kilometres an hour. I stopped for lunch at a roadside café, and ended up faced by an enormous pile of spicy chicken, the flesh aged and dark. A drunk leaned slantwise in his chair, head against the wall, mouthing curses. He subsided into a fetid, ungainly slumber. Then, yet another crash. A crammed minibus was kerwacked by a chugging blue three-wheeler (a vehicle beyond my ken – a sort of miniature taxi-van). The three-wheeler careered along the gutter, narrowly missing my parked bike. The driver regained control of his vehicle and fled the scene, leaving the ailing minibus pouring fuel onto the road.

That afternoon’s cycle was tough; my worn-out body complained at every turn of the pedals. I limped into the town of Hezuo, and decided that I'd have to take the next day off. My hostel room was clean, and came with a television and two Buddhist monks. I slept. They rose at dawn. I didn’t.

Cowboys, boozers and Kazakhs (NE China)

30th April 2001. Xinjiang province, northwest China. Just before leaving Yining city, near the Kazakh border.

The next 10 days or so would be the toughest cycle of the whole trip. I was headed for the Khan Tengri mountain range, a northern outpost of the Himalayas. I knew it’d probably be a while before I saw another shower, so I washed my hair with a sachet of ‘Rejoice’ shampoo. Trawling around a corner shop to buy supplies for the trip, I espied packets of dried fruit labelled 'To Agitate Family'. Most products have labels in both Chinese and English - the manufacturers must head straight for the dictionary to translate the brand name into English. I needed to change travellers' cheques; in the bank, the girl behind the glass was using both an abacus and a calculator. Abacuses are still very much in use here. I also bought myself a double cushion for my bike seat, which saved me much posterior grief.

So I left Yining, cycling through farmland streaked with yellow rapeseed. As the morning wore on, the traffic thinned, and the farms petered out; I passed into the dry scrubland of a river valley. My walkman radio could only get one station, but I heard some good traditional music for the first time - plaintive ethnic Muslim songs. The people around here do have television, but I was like an extra station - when I appeared on the scene, even the adults stared shamelessly. The spotlight took some getting used to. At times, I didn’t care too much; at others, I found myself muttering curses at the slack-jawed yokels, sorely tempted to give the over-inquisitive children a hearty thrashing. The 'hello!' count went through the roof - whenever I helloed back, they’d howl with laughter.

The valley became greener as the road wended upwards; it was flanked by arid, scrubby mountains, which gave way to snow-capped peaks up ahead. In Yining, I’d written down the lyrics of my favourite Irish song, 'She Moved Through the Fair'. I sang it as I cycled through the empty valleys, where the self-consciousness of a novice singer wasn’t a problem. A couple of weeks later, when I reached internet land again, I printed off the lyrics to 'House of the Rising Sun' and 'Mr. Tambourine Man', two other songs I love.

I sang and cycled, passing small villages and groups of raggedy camels shedding their winter coats. That evening, I found a camping spot up in the hills, hidden from the road. I switched on my radio, used my Chinese dictionary to flick a scorpion away from my chosen spot, and began setting up tent. An incredible Han Chinese army marching song came on the radio. The lead singer was clearly possessed. He’d bellow out a chant, and an army of thousands would roar back at him. Impressive. I hammered tent pegs into the rocky earth, avoiding stepping on the dung beetles that struggled through the tough grass.

It was getting late. Pools of shadow filled the steep ravines to the east, and the dusk thickened around me. I crawled into my tent, zipped up my sleeping bag, and curled up blearily. Just as I was nodding off, two Kazakh horsemen clopped by and stopped outside. They wore Western-style clothes, and would have looked almost Spanish were it not for their black skullcaps and narrow eyes. There are Kazakhs and Kazakhs. Some look almost Chinese, some almost European; some have the rugged, sharp oriental features of the Altay Mountains which span China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The name ‘Kazakh’ probably derives from a Turkic word meaning ‘wanderer’ or ‘independent man’: The Kazakhs were one of the fierce nomadic tribes of the steppes, who included the Mongols, Huns, Tartars, and Seljuk - names to strike fear into the hearts of mediaeval folk across Eurasia.

I gave the cowboys a postcard of Ireland, a couple of smokes, and some dried fruit - just in case they were feeling any malice towards the defenceless 'laowai' (foreigner). Or in case their families needed agitating.

The next day took me gently up the broad valley, which was so thoroughly farmed that when evening came, I couldn’t find a camping spot. I approached a young Kazakh cowboy and asked if I could camp on his land. I set up camp surrounded by fascinated kids. The following day, the little ‘uns were herding precious few sheep - a football team's worth stood watching me pull up sticks.

The little monkeys took my keys and unlocked my bike and started riding it around. I had to tell them to take it easy with my stuff - no sooner would I have something packed than they'd take it out and start looking at it. Of course, the kids were more inquisitive than the adults; but in general, people here seem to have a more communal attitude to possessions. Usually, they wouldn’t bother asking whether they could look at my books - they’d just take them and pore over them with interest.

When I dropped into a restaurant for lunch, the Paddy Carroll Roadshow turned into a three-ring circus. Some kids were standing at the doorway watching me eat, and I started making faces at them just to relieve the strain of being watched permanently. They loved this, and we twitched and wriggled until I got visibly bored and the owner roared them out of the place. Of course, they crept back and started grimacing at me again, which was kind of nice so I gave them a couple more twitches.

The sky was darkening ahead, and the wind picked up. Insects were thick in the air, and I had to keep my mouth well closed. As I cycled up the valley, white-flecked hillsides were slowly replaced by glaciers and mountaintop snowfields. It was cooler and more fertile in this part of the valley, and every inch of land was cultivated. The mountains were closing in on either side, and finding a camping spot was mighty tough. I ended up pitching my tent by the roadside, just beside a shelter belonging to a slim, reserved Muslim called Yisemar. As night fell, he brewed us some tea and shared his naan bread with me. Yisemar was a Hui Muslim. The Hui are descendants of Arab and Persian traders who came to China between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. Although they now speak Chinese, their culture is still very distinct. Their weddings sound particularly fun. After the couple have been declared man and wife, neighbours seize the bridegroom, refusing to let him enter the bridal chamber until his face is liberally smeared with red dye and black soot. Then his mother is cornered. The jovial mob dangles two strings of red chillies from her ears, puts a battered straw hat on her head and hangs a small copper bell around her neck. She is mounted on a donkey or cow, which they chase around the courtyard. I doubt whether marriage was on the cards for Yisemar, who was faintly camp. I wondered what life in the Upper Yining valley was like for a gay man.

Next day, the real climbing started - after I'd escaped the village dogs. Three of them chased me, and one of them sank its teeth into my pannier bags. Many of the dogs around here are hulking psychos. I found them less prone to chasing me when I got off my bike and walked slowly by - they just loved a fleeing target. But with one slavering Cujo further up, I just went like the clappers.

Passing a mountain stream, I decided my smelliness had to end. I scrambled down the riverbank, stripped off, and scrubbed myself, watched by a couple of intrigued Kazakhs. Luckily for my prim self, they turned away when I started soaping the antipodes. I felt strong that day, and got well up into the mountains. I was coming up through a fair amount of snow, with the occasional truck-sized glacier by the roadside. Forests of tough evergreen reached high up the mountainsides; even in early May, snow lay thick on the branches. An 11,000-foot pass lay ahead, and I guessed I’d be able to make it that evening. According to the map, it was only ten kilometres from the chill, squally town I reached at about six. I hauled my numb ass into a small restaurant, and asked the tight-lipped cook if she’d rustle me up a hot soup. It arrived, full of steaming chunks of red meat. Ordinarily, I don’t eat meat; but that evening, there could only be one victor in the struggle between appetite and conscience. Boy did that soup taste good.

The squat, frowny cook opened up a little, and persuaded me not to try the pass - the four remaining hours of daylight wouldn’t be enough. I asked her how cold it got here in winter. 40 degrees below, she said.

Finding a hotel was no problem - up here, the valley’s alpine beauty makes it a popular getaway for the Chinese middle classes. A tourist family sent their two little girls to offer me a meal in exchange for teaching the girls some English. The food was delicious, and as the Han family plied me with the ferocious rice spirit known as baijiu, I felt myself becoming a supremely witty teacher. They turned out to be very eager pupils - no young messers they.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My map had been entirely correct - the distance to the pass was indeed ten kilometres - for a single-minded bird. The long road snaked and backtracked. As I climbed, the trees thinned; the snow thickened on the ground, slowly drowning the leafless scrub. The wind picked up, but I was warm enough in shirtsleeves and cycle shorts. The sky was muffled by a huge drab cloud, but I still had to don my sunglasses - the snow itself appeared to generate light. The dirt road had turned to icy brown slop; it cut through icicled walls of snow that grew as I climbed. At the pass, a horizontal blizzard suddenly whipped up, and I hastily covered my stinging legs and put on my coldweather gear.

I slowly wended my way through a queue of trucks at the top. 'I think you are marvellous!' a Han Chinese gentleman told me. The road up ahead was blocked by a truck wedged between high walls of ice.

My fan club helped me drag my bike over one of the snowdrifts flanking the truck. By this stage, the weather was getting pretty ferocious, and I cycled downhill as fast as I could. The fierce blizzard pelted the parts of my face that were exposed under the balaclava, viciously stabbing my nose and eyes - I really should have chosen the wraparound sunglasses in the optician’s in Beijing. Freezing, I jolted down the dirt track, my fingers in an agony they'd never experienced.

Not too far down the mountain was a huddle of flat-roofed huts, just at the edge of a broad, savagely wind-whipped plateau. I tramped into a large eatery-cum-sleepery, and sat dazed by the stove, watched by truckers and Uighur villagers.

I looked at my radio. It was already 7pm. I got talking to a companionable, sharply-dressed Uighur lad in his twenties. He advised me to sleep here rather than cycle on a few kilometres and camp exposed to the fierce winds of the plateau. We were in a low building made entirely from adobe and protected by an adobe windbreak a few metres to the south. All the rooms were large and communal, and separated by ‘door-curtains’. It was run by my Uighur friend and his family. The Uighurs are thoroughly central Asian in appearance; high Russian cheekbones, dark skin like Arabs, eyes Caucasian but slightly narrowed. In the 8th century, the Uighur tribe established a large empire in Mongolia and parts of Siberia. They developed an alphabet and embraced a medley of religions. They became civilised and soft. In 840 AD, their empire was demolished by Kyrgyz horsemen. The Uighurs fled south and west, to the fringes of the Gobi and Taklamaken deserts (the Taklamaken desert lies north of Tibet and southwest of the Gobi. ‘Taklamaken’ is an Uighur word meaning ‘go in and not come out’). There they stayed, forcing a living from the arid Xinjiang soil while somehow contriving to maintain their rich culture. Centuries before Guttenberg’s printing press, the Uighurs knew how to print books; some scholars even claim that acupuncture was in fact an Uighur invention.

There was a big animal pelt on the bedroom door to keep out the cold. A few guys brushed through the curtain leading in from the eating hall, and we all lashed into the baijiu. We each sang songs from our own cultures - Kazakh, Uighur, Han and Irish.

As I got drunker, I did some rave dancing for them. I probably looked a complete dork, but they were quite appreciative. One of them said my dancing reminded him of Jackie Chan, the endearing martial arts film star. Praise indeed, I love the guy. I misjudged how much I was drinking, and ended up puking outside in the chill. My Uighur friend dragged me inside, put me to bed, and gave me a barf bowl. What a capital fellow, not letting me freeze to death out there.

I woke up the next day in dire condition. Not only was my brain pickled, but I was painfully sunburnt from the mountain pass - the sun hadn't appeared once, so I hadn't bothered with the sunblock. Live and learn.

It was not my day. The zip on my pannier bags decided to give up the ghost, and I found that the replacement zips I'd bought in Dublin were dodgy. Most seriously, the back (luggage) carrier on my bike was tilted sideways by the potholes of the previous day. Proceed I could not. So, I asked my Uighur friend, could I get a bus to the next village to buy a new back carrier? He said I could, but as the day wore on it became apparent that the mountain pass of the day before was still blocked, and I'd have to stay on another night. Which was annoying, although a bit of vegetation wouldn’t do my hangover and sunburn any harm. I sat despondently in the main eating hall, fixing my pannier bags 'MacGyver' style with a bit of string and a sharpened chopstick.

A middle-aged Han traveller started talking to me. He was friendly, but had a way of touching my knee. Then he offered me some money. I was quite taken aback, and thought possibly he was soliciting me in some way - but a few days later, I had the same experience from someone else. I have no idea what it was all about. He chattered on, and my hungover self eventually fled the effort of trying to understand Chinese. In the next room, my black spirits were slightly lifted by a pretty good Hui (Chinese Muslim) singer playing a long, old-style lute. He and the audience sat on a humungous bed that almost filled the long, narrow room. His singing was lusty; he would catch a sound in his throat, and make it dip and oscillate. I shambled off to bed, and woke up that evening feeling half-human again. My friend’s sister had borrowed my walkman without asking, but handed it back unapologetically. More of that communal stuff.

In the eating hall the next morning, I heard someone ask 'where are you from?', and was so startled I didn't reply. 'Wow! Foreigners!' I said, and had a good talk to them for a couple of minutes. They’d just come in off a bus, and were a youngish English couple who'd spent eight years in Uzbekistan teaching at a school for the blind. ‘Far out’, I thought to myself. For me, that’d be an interesting gap year job - but eight years would be a bit of an ask. And then they come to Xinjiang for their holidays!

They described how the Uighurs on their bus had been staring daggers at the Han Chinese passengers. Considering the events of the past few centuries, this hostility isn’t very surprising. In 1862, the Uighurs expelled the Manchus, who’d seized the Uighur homeland of East Turkestan (now officially known as Xinjiang) over a century before. But the newly liberated country soon fell victim to the ‘Great Game’ played by Britain. Her Majesty’s Government feared a Tsarist expansion into East Turkestan, and bankrolled a new Chinese invasion.

Since 1961, the Chinese government has detonated scores of nuclear bombs at Lop Nur, a largely dried-up salt lake in the Taklamaken desert of southern Xinjiang. Uighurs living nearby are plagued by cancer, memory loss and skin disease.

Ablajan Layli Naman of the International Taklamakan Uyghur Human Rights Association writes that:

Uyghur people who choose traditional Uyghur language schools over Chinese education can't find jobs in Eastern Turkistan. So the majority of Uyghur children study at the government run schools from elementary level to obtain easy employment. I have one brother in Eastern Turkistan and he has three children, my brother sent to them to the government school and they have very good jobs from the Chinese government, but they speak the Chinese language, even at home. They don't speak perfect Uyghur language, they don't understand Uyghur history, they don't know Uyghur culture, they can't read or write Uyghur letters, and they can't understand Uyghur songs either.

It only looks like Uyghurs in the picture. Once I asked my brother "Are you happy with this?" He did not answer my question, he just sighed.

The government encourages Han people to move west to the towns and cities of Xinjiang; over the past fifty years, the province’s Han population has multiplied tenfold, to about seven million. This policy is called ‘adding sand’ (to the ‘cement’ of Xinjiang society). The authorities pay lip service to the rights of ethnic minorities; Uighurs and Kazakhs are given high-ranking regional posts, and then quietly controlled.

My English-language haven disappeared almost as soon as it had arrived; the couple’s bus had just stopped for a few minutes to allow the passengers to chow down.

Not long afterwards, I caught a bus headed for the village of Baluntay. The plateau was dark and stony, and almost entirely bare of vegetation. Black, snow-daubed hills crouched on either side. Every few miles, one passed a cluster of low huts. The inhabitants must have been hard-pressed to extract a living from this place. Some yak grazed by the roadside, and fled the bus with a strangely doglike run. Though impressive, this landscape was abysmally lonely.

The road cut through a low, stadium-size glacier, and down into a steep valley. Wonderful things began to reappear: plants, people. We reached Baluntay, which had shops. And restaurants. A hotel. Cement. I got myself a hotel room, and greedily washed everything in my possession - bags, clothes, body. The grime was infinite, and cleanliness was sweet. Refreshed, I wandered into a restaurant, where I chatted to my fellow diners. They plied me with cigarettes. In China, offering a smoke to a stranger is a good way of breaking the ice - at least, where men are involved. People were interested in talking to me, so it was almost inevitable that I start on the lungbusters again. It's funny - whenever you meet people individually, they tend to be nicer. People in groups are much more likely to laugh and incessantly say 'laowai! hello! hello!'. Crowd psychology is the same everywhere, I suppose.

Rather a lot of mountains separated me from my next goal, the desert town of Turpan. I cycled up through a semi-arid, scrubby river valley, on a nicely flattened dirt road that accompanied a train track. A jeepload of sporty, prosperous-looking Han men stopped to give me two cans of Red Bull, which were to come in mighty handy later. Every hour or so, a modern cargo train would choonk along, providing a great audio experience. The echoes seemed to well back from inside the mountains; the engine muffled inside tunnels, suddenly dinning out the far end. A friendly signal crossing guard ushered me into his hut and gave me a smoke and some bread. When he poured some tea into a jar for me, I guessed he didn’t often have visitors to his little concrete shack. He was understandably eager for a chat. He informed me that although the road back to Urumqi was glaciated and impassable, I’d be able to take the Turpan road, which reached into the fringes of the Gobi desert.

I cycled into the next village, where a group of Kazakh men hailed me, saying the road ahead wasn't cycleable. They eventually got it through to me that whilst the road to Turpan was in an atrocious state, the Urumqi route was doable. I decided to go with the villagers’ advice, since there were lots of them and only one signal crossing guard. The pass on the Urumqi road was about three and a half thousand metres high, so I decided to get as close as possible to it that evening, and try and do it good and early the next day. That night, I camped in a subglacial valley populated only by yak. It was cold. Inside my sleeping bag, I wore thick socks, jacket, everything. Near midnight, I had to draw my emergency plastic blanket over my feet.

I upped sticks in the frigid morning, with an audience of one flat-capped, barehanded Kazakh horseman. His mute shepherd’s stare didn’t invite conversation. Once I had all my gear piled onto the bike, he trotted off wordlessly. After about half an hour’s cycle, I neared a herd of yak standing restfully on either side of the dirt road. As I headed into the herd, the animals on the fringes moved away, and I managed to get a couple of photos of impressively-horned old bulls against the backdrop of snowy mountain peaks. Further into the herd, I found they weren't moving away so quickly. Some began grunting, and I started feeling a little uneasy. Though domesticated, these are big animals, and well capable of hurting you. I cycled on a little. There was a yak calf on the road ahead. This I didn't like one bit - perhaps the adults would get protective. The calf moved off the road, but a shaggily white, well-horned adult charged after me. I pedalled for dear life. The animal was about a metre behind me. I was scared it'd butt my pannier bags and knock me off my bike; then I’d have been in real trouble. It ran after me for fifty or a hundred metres (it’s hard to know how much time passes in these situations), and then eased up. I cycled on for another 100 metres or so, stopped the bike, and started laughing: half in relief, and half at the bizarreness of the situation. I'm pretty sure the yak could have got me; luckily, it only wanted to scare me off. It succeeded. And I escaped being skewered by a herd of gore-happy yak.

I had to make the pass early. Tufts of hardy mountain grass gave way to barren earth and rock. I pushed on. Blobs of snow grew and merged, and the patches of earth shrank and divided. I stopped for a few minutes for a smoke, and to stuff myself with energy chow - raisins, chocolate, and the last can of red bull. I tried cycling on, but couldn't. My heart was going a million beats a minute - the altitude was starting to tell. I pushed my bike up the road, breathing roughly. Ever more distant snow peaks emerged from behind the shoulders of the nearer mountains. The snow was thick underfoot. Slush-capped rivulets gradually replaced furrows dug by car tyres. My feet started breaking through the snow and into the rivulets. Changing tack, I pushed the bike along the dry, rocky edge of the road. I kept going, the road growing steadily tougher. I got to the top at last, with plenty of daylight to spare. Down I headed on the other side, the bike's wheels breaking through the slush, freeing the rivulets below.

To my right, a huge blade of mountain thrust skywards, encased in gleaming snow. A cold brown wasteland yawned below; clouds and sunlight vied on the valley floor. The road zigged and zagged down a steep mile of mountain.

Several turns down, the road started drying out, and I was able to change into thick dry socks. I cycled happily downhill. A couple of miles down, there was a large modern building with a little restaurant. I sat by a little table, and immediately fell into an exhausted stupor. One of the diners tried to strike up a conversation with me, but his companion saw how wrecked I was and told him to leave me in peace. I got out my jar of coffee and had two strong cups. I greedily wolfed down some red meat - well past objecting. The genial cook charged nothing for the food - he must have seen the state I was in and taken pity.

I partially emerged from my swoon, and headed on down the valley. Every hundred metres or so, I would see little bewhiskered creatures running for cover, or hear their loud cheeps of alarm. These were grey marmots - burrow-living creatures resembling prairie dogs. Their habitat is so cold that for almost eight months of the year, they’re either hibernating or drowned in torpor. In these mountains, they’re one of the snow leopard’s main summertime snacks.

Soon enough, the road abruptly became tarmacked - my joy was unbounded. I sped down, alongside a frozen river. The ice tumbled motionless along the valley floor. A few miles down, the water suddenly freed itself from the ice, rushing noisily over the riverbed.

I had to find somewhere to camp; but this was no easy task in a valley the shape of an axe cut in a block of wood. Since the restaurant, I hadn’t passed any settlements. I eventually found a little niche on the outer edge of the road. It was a tiny chalky outcrop - messy, but comfortable enough.

As I was bedding down, I briefly felt pretty queasy and headachey. I was lucky I'd come down so far so fast, otherwise the altitude sickness might have turned my insides outside. Though I was utterly wrecked, I was kept awake for a couple of hours by the coffee I’d had earlier. But yes, I'd drink it again! I'd totally needed it. I eventually fell into a deep coma, and probably slept through a couple of trucks passing within two metres of my head. The cliff face above me looked prone to landslides, but the rocks chose to smile on me that night.

I felt slightly nauseous again when setting off along the river the next morning, but that passed quickly enough. Down the valley, I passed into a village that was thickly stained by the grey belches of a factory chimney. I found a shop in which to buy a top-up for my dwindling water supply; outside, a couple of guys offered me money. I wondered how much I could collect if I started taking these Good Samaritans up on their offers. It seems to work best when I’m looking filthy and destroyed. I asked them how near we were to Urumqi. It was 81 kilometres away - closer than I'd thought, so I decided to make the city that night.

I cycled down the beautiful valley and into a nightmare town, a noisome splotch of industrial vomit. Huge chimneys befouled the air, and effluent turned the lovely river a bright sickly green. There were roadworks below the town, so I had to walk shin-deep across three shallow fords in the sick river.

The road now had distance markers every kilometre, and having targets probably made me cycle half as fast again. The valley cut through shrinking waves of mountains; after 35 kilometres or so, I stopped for lunch among the low, cultivated foothills. I ate a massive Xinjiang special: a huge plate of chicken and potato, mixed with red and green peppers on a bed of thick noodles. Superb.

About an hour away from Urumqi, I passed a couple of men stacking luggage onto the roof of a bus. One of them knelt on the ground by a couple of sheep, trussing their feet together. He heaved the sheep up to his colleague on the roof, who tied them to the rest of the luggage. I don’t think the animals were in for a pleasant ride.

I made Urumqi at about 8 that night. It's not my favourite city: ugly, and I always have trouble getting out of it. But it was nice to stay under a roof. And I saw (and used) a litter bin on the street! Great stuff. I had the impression there was a shower with my hotel room, but there turned out not to be; so I washed myself determinedly in a basin in my room, hoping no-one would walk in. I slept well.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next part of my cycling trip was to start in the small city of Xining, in the vast province of Qinghai. This is actually northeastern Tibet, but you wouldn’t know it from Chinese maps.

The bus trip from Urumqi to Xining was to take about 40 hours, and I wasn't greatly looking forward to two nights on hard bus seats. Urumqi gave me its usual goodbye present - Niagarous diarrhoea. Thanks to my imodium pills, though, the trip wasn’t the stinking calamity it might have been. Good fortune was raining on me from all angles: the bus was a sleeper, with rows of mattressed bunks.

We left Urumqi in the evening, under oppressive, strangely broiling clouds. Passing the factories and petrol stations at the city limits, a dust storm kicked up, whipping through trees and powdering through the framework of the closed bus windows. The last houses petered out, and the Gobi Desert stretched ahead. We drove by a youth who for reasons unknown was dragging a long, heavy chain through the brush. His shirt flapped wildly and his hair flailed in the stinging gusts. The bus moved into the dark wasteland, through a half-seen army of wind turbines. They stood thirty feet tall, vanes rotating slowly in the scouring gale.