julie stephenson

Todays 360k drive saw us heading even further west to the edge of the Taklimakan Desert at Rouciang.

After a great breakfast in town, which also serves as buying lunch for most of us; we headed out to the west through two different police checkpoints. We crossed from the province of Qinghai to Xinjiang with an out-check and 20 k later we had an in-check.

The road continued in fairly good condition until every time we came across a culvert repair gang with a side road that was badly rutted and potholed by all the overloaded trucks. Most of the trucks in this area are pulling 3 metres wide trailers so you can stack more on.

At about 10.30 we all stop together and have a morning cuppa and this has been the ritual for a while now. Some of the group have thermoses as I boiled two kettles of water for the rest on my small gas stove that is always in Penny.

From the coffee break we climbed to a pass at about 3500 metres to start our descent into the desert. This road down was through the most spectacular tight gorge eventually that slowly opened up into the Lopnur Desert. By the time we were in the desert proper we had descended to under 1000 metres so Maurie and I had to pull up twice in the process removing layers of clothing after a 6^oC start, as the temperature rose into the high 20’s.

All day we had been taking bypasses of bridges that were under repair.  We had about 30ks to go before town when we came upon a long line of stopped trucks and as we drove past them we got to front of the queue and found the problem. A truck rolled over at the start of a bypass with another truck bogged beside it plus a crane starting to remove all the reinforcing of the rolled truck. This was not going to clear quickly so we drove past the road works barrier and headed to the broken bridge to see what other options we had. Just before the bridge we saw some tracks over the edge of the road and across some rough stuff through a 8 foot wide gap between a couple of trucks. I looked at the drop off the road and the gap and reckoned that Penny could handle that as she had been in worse places in Africa on that trip, so over the edge we went. We stopped at the gap for a quick photo then off to town we went for the night.  On our arrival in town we found our fellow travellers had also made the tracks over the edge as their escape plan too.

This town is a relatively newly constructed town and we have decided not to spend 2 nights as planned, so tomorrow we will move on with the idea of 2 nights in Hotan which is an old city with a lot of interesting things to look at.

We left our overnight stay beside the lake for a 470 k day. We had found out we couldn’t stay at the planned stop due to foreign tourists no longer welcome in the Military town. That was fine; as it would give us an extra day somewhere else.

As we left town, once again we climbed over another mountain range in the cloud and mist. Descending the other side it all changed as we headed west for our overnight stop.

We meandered through a valley with high mountains either side and saw the first trees for about four days as these mountains had some sort of fur or conifer growing on them.  The trees turned out to be the extent of the forest we would see today. As we exited this valley it opened out into the start of a desert, as it was getting dryer very quickly. We passed some farming for a couple of hours but this got thinner and thinner until it was no more.

The road we were travelling on was a great freeway, with us making great time. At a toll gate the police advised us we could not stop for the next town and to keep going. This meant that at 1.00pm we only had to go 80 k to the overnight town. Alim said that it was just a small oil workers town.  As no-one wanted to spend the afternoon there we decided to soldier on the 550k’s to the next town, with some prospect of a nice hotel after four nights fairly close to the bottom of the ladder.

The road was good so we planned on being in town before the sunset at 8.30pm. This plan change made our day 955 instead of 470 kilometres; so it was Far Far Away from our start.

By this time we had entered full desert with no plants growing at all and no one living there at all.  The drive through the desert was nothing short of amazing and breathtaking at times with the formations changing constantly. At one stage we had a few spits of very fine rain from passing storms.

The part of the drive that everyone remembered so well was about 150k from our destination. The thing about this area with its great wind-blown shapes, was that the sun was in the right place and at the best afternoon angle to highlight the amazing features.

The last 20 k’s into town was through a massive oil field with wells all over the place.

The hotel on our arrival was fantastic as it had only been open for a couple of months and the rooms don’t smell of cigarette smoke, as there are no non-smoking rooms in China.

 Today was a short 140k drive to the small town of Heimahexiang on the edge of Lake Qinghai, which is the largest lake in China. The lake is 4,500 square kilometres and 25 metres deep at the deepest. As it has dried up a lot, it is now slightly salty; although Alim tells us that it has being slowly filling for the last 50 years.

    On the way to the lake we made 2 stops; one beside a canola or oil seed rape field in full flower, where Chinese tourists were having horse and yak rides around the paddock. The second stop was a kind of market town selling lots of animal skins. Most of the skins were fox, dogs, rabbits, a few wolves and some sort of medium sized mountain cats; but thankfully no snow leopard skins. The surprising and sad thing was the stall selling 2 real small tiger skins. Also at this place we saw some very large Tibetan dogs that are also call Lion dogs. When you look at the pictures you will understand what I mean!

    After checking into the hotel and being able to use their laundry to do some washing, we went for a drive further along the lake to look for a track down to the water’s edge. After about 9k we turned down this track through a farm to get to the waters edge. The farmer came down as we pulled up to collect the entry fee of 10 yuan. He should be very happy today because as we drove Penny down there, six other cars followed us down to look at her. They all had to pay the farmer the 10 yuan as well. Some of them wanted to leave straight – away but all who entered had to pay!

       I have started this blog beside the road at 10.00am. We have been here since 8.00am with the most unlikely car of the group crippled.

Rescue Reg from the past 2 days was in need of help. Last night he filled his Landcruiser  what he thought was diesel – but as he left the hotel this morning his car was smoking badly and had no power. We stopped 12k out of town and undid the fuel filter and sure enough, he had filled it with petrol!!!! Reg swears black and blue that he sniffed the hose before filling!!! 🙂 We have been here 2 hours working on getting the petrol out the tank. While we are doing this Garry has been back to town with jerry cans to get Diesel. We should be going by about 11.00am is our estimate to complete the job and give Rescue Reg a rescue!

       Once we get this sorted we have 350 ks to drive so we most likely will be dark tonight when we get tucked up.

       We are now at Gonghe – our over night stop. The drive ended up a lot better then had planned and we arrived at 5.15pm. So all is great. Tonight’s Hotel is back down at 2600 metres so it’s a lot easer doing everything. Last night’s hotel was at 4200 metres and we had a room on the 4th floor. I needed more stops carting my luggage up to the room than I needed when I walked up the 40 storey fire escape in the hotel in Bangkok a few weeks ago!!

     The 360k drive today continued beside the freeway construction site of yesterday. I’m still blown away by the scale of this project and working on at least a 600k freeway project and that probably isn’t the only one in China. Maurie and I had been wondering how all the new bridge girders were placed as we had seen no cranes big enough to do the job. Today we found out as we drove along they were just finishing putting girders on a bridge so we pulled up and walked over to the bridge and onto it to check out the Cantilever crane. If we had done that in OZ someone would have kicked us off the site or had us arrested. Whenever we feel we have time we get out and check out the machines and how they do stuff in China.

       The drop in elevation has also seen a marked increase in temperature over the previous couple of days. As we have moved further north the country side has got a lot dryer with the river in this town just a trickle.

      Just south of this town we passed the biggest area of solar panels I have ever seen and at guess it would be greater then 3000 acres. We also saw our first sand dunes in the same area.