Greeting’s from China!
Yes – the Velomads finally made it out of Mongolia – after only what?…. 8
months! We’re currently (31st May 2007) ensconced very comfortably thanks to
the Peking to Paris 2007 Rally teams in Ereen / Erenhot (seems like there
are 2 different names for every city in China according which map you look
at – not counting the Chinese of course).
For those of you who haven’t been keeping up to date with our travels (tut
tut – not looking at our website?) you are probably going
“Whaaaaat? China? They were in Slovenia last time we heard from them.”
Yes – we know – that’s what silence for a year does for you but most of you
have realised by now that writing emails is not our hot spot. So no
apologies!
To bring you up to date.. in brief – we went to Croatia and Bosnia – turned
around went back to France (yes by bicycle), spent Christmas in London and
headed off back through Europe, the Baltics, Russia and arrived in Mongolia
September 2006. We got jobs in Ulaanbaatar teaching English so that we
wouldn’t have to cycle through the snows of winter at - 40 degrees
centigrade (ok – I realise many of you think we are complete nutters but
even we are not that mad). A little over 2 weeks ago we left UB and cycled
through the Gobi desert and arrived in China yesterday.
So those of you who’d like to hear a bit more read on…
Those of you who are too busy just take a peek at the photos.
Leaving Mongolia
Monday morning I went to the Chinese embassy to collect our visas –
breathing a sigh of relief – not only at the lack of the two hour queue
which had been the previous scenario a week earlier, but also at the fact
that we’d been given 90 day visas. Several sources advise that in summer
often only 30 day visas are issued to control the tourist influx – and this
was confirmed by the experience of one of the Hc’ers we’d had staying with
us.
Tuesday morning we pedalled off – 200kms to Choyr – easy peasy with paved
road and a strong tailwind – UB was clearly as happy to see us go as we were
to make our departure. In Choyr we were hosted by the dad of one of
Richard’s students. Poor guy didn’t speak a word of English (and despite our
Mongolian lessons we still didn’t speak a word of Mongolian). But he made
such an effort to look after us. His wife was away so he dragged 2
secretaries from work back home to cook for us and tried to give us liver
poisoning with the copious amounts of vodka he insisted we drink. The next
morning there was no relief - more vodka had to be imbibed – though to be
honest we needed the hair of the dog (or full coat of the werewolf might be
more apt). Off we wobbled - 6kms out of Choyr we hit the dirt road and the
Gobi proper – that soon sobered us up.
We’d heard that the wind was normally from the North West – which would have
been ideal for us – but the truth was that the wind changed direction daily.
Most days it was a cross wind and we had 3 days of sandstorms – luckily only
one was in the tent – but we spent that day with our legs in the air –
pressed against the sides of the tent to prevent the tent being flattened by
the howling winds. The other days we were fortunately indoors – once in a
school in Shiveegovi and the other in the home of an English teacher in
Erdene. Erdene is a place we’ll never forget. Firstly we communicated with
Tuya (the English teacher) by means of written notes – she could read
English but not understand or speak it! Secondly – Richard offered to repair
the puncture on one of the kids bikes – well it turned out to be 3 punctures
actually – but when he went to get some water afterwards someone kindly
stole our bike pump. There had been several kids playing there and we
offered a USD 12 reward (we wanted to offer more but were told it would be
too much) but to no avail. The local police man was called and he bashed on
a few doors and then told us to come to the police station the next morning
at 9am.
Admittedly we were late – we got to the police station at 9:30 but the
policeman didn’t get there until 10:30. Then we waited until 11:30 for the
kids to be rounded up. It seemed to be great fun for the kids – they were
running around screaming, kicking and laughing – driving us mad with the
constant “My name is …..What is your name?” shouts. At 2:30 the policeman
came out and shrugged and wandered off.
It was a major problem for us as we didn’t have a bike pump (we’d sent our
spare one ahead to Beijing to reduce weight) and we were advised that there
was nowhere to buy one in the village. So we bashed on a few doors ourselves
until we found someone who’d sell us one – though it hardly deserves the
name pump and gives you the equivalent workout of running a marathon to pump
one tyre.
The last excitement in Mongolia was at the border. We crossed the Peking
Paris 2007 rally – the 100 year anniversary of when the race was first run.
That time there were only 5 cars in the race (4 made it) this time there
were over a 100. I feel guilty as one English driver wanted to buy the half
kilo of porridge we had in our panniers but I refused. I figured they would
be in Ulaanbaatar long before we made it to Beijing, but in Erenhot – the
first Chinese border town it was easy to find – and cheap! The English
driver figured he couldn’t do anything with the 50 Yuan he’d offered and
gave it to us anyway. This gave the other drivers the same idea and they all
came over to offload the spare Yuan they had in their pockets – which we
gratefully accepted and said we’d drink a toast to them with a G&T when we
got to Beijing. Later that evening we found they’d given us in total over
4000 Yuan (about 400 Euros) – it would buy an awful lot of G&T’s!
We’ll send an update about China sooner or later but to be honest internet
access is much harder to come by here in China than we thought it would be
so don’t hold your breath!
IF ANYWAY HAS AN HOUR A WEEK OR SO TO SPARE WE COULD DO WITH SOME HELP!
Bad as we are at keeping our website updated it’s going to be even more
problematic now – in Russia and Mongolia we never found an single internet
café that would allow us to attach our laptop to their internet connection –
luckily we met many people though the Hospitality Club
(www.hospitalityclub.org <http://www.hospitalityclub.org/> ) who allowed us
to use their home connections. Seems like it’s a similar situation here in
China only not so many members of the HC. So if anyone feels like they could
spare an hour a week or so to help us keep our website updated we’d love to
hear from you. You’d need only need basic website skills (hard to find
anyone with more rudimentary skills than me!) and ability to use a software
package like dreamweaver /frontpage or ftp to upload. But even if you don’t
think you can commit to that time over a the next few months by keeping it
updated we also need help to sort out our website as we changed servers in
UB and it seems to be a real mess right now – with most pages and files
simply not loading. If you think you can help PLEASE let us know!
Take care – wishing you all peace and happiness
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Richard and Stani
www.velomad.com
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208 Peking Paris Rally.JPG
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002 Us at Sukhbaatar Sq.JPG
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