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.


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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.

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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.