Ten Thousand Miles - The Blog

“Shibah” (shit in Korean). That’s the one word Liam remembers before hitting a reckless traiolered-tractor in the North of Jangsu province, on the way to Nanjing (just 4 days from Shanghai). The result was a broken left leg, a stitched up hand, and monstrous unpleasant scrapes. Both Gesan and Liam are alive and doing well, however still a bit beat up from the crash.

We are currently in Nanjing resting for a couple of days before we continue to Wen Xiang’s home, in Shangrucun. Our method of riding has changed to a combination of motorbikes, buses, and trains. Now. We will wait and see how we will arrive in Shanghai. But one thing is still certain. We are finishing our journey one way or another.

After refueling our energy in Beijing and taking care of some technical difficulties with the cameras, we we our on our way to Qingdao. We we’re finally on the way to the coast of China! It was the first time Gesan met the ocean. We had an awesome time in Qingdao beach and a great experience camping in the “Golden Sand Beach” in Xuejiazhuang.

Burying Gesan!

“Golden Sand Beach”

Tiananmen Square

Gesang Duojie - 19 from Gonga, near Lhasa, Tibet:

Mongolian customs can be hard to get accustomed to, especially those involving consuming strong alcohol out of a large bowl.

Today we are on the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia (i.e. China & Mongolia). We hit 4000km and yes, we do have some means of transport although our bikes were stolen. Things worked out wonderfully and extremely weirdly in the end.

Mongolian Mr. Dai about to sing a song over lunch.

Desert!!!

So. Today we woke up to some frantic knocking on our door, followed by some yelling. A biker friend of ours we met on the road was telling us to get up quickly because our motorbikes were missing. The night before he had mentioned how the area was thieve-prone. We are currently in the city of Yan’an in Shanxi province, mideast China.

We ran down stairs and saw that only one of our 3 motorbikes remained in the small garage-like room of our shitty hostel. So we began to investigate as quickly as possible and got the police to help us out. We went to station and to the surveilance room. In it we saw some tapes of early morning and spotted the thieves! They managed to turn the bike on and zoom out into the road!

We are now negotiating with everyone we feel was involved to see what will happen.

Either way we are getting to Shanghai and going through the same route. The only thing is that we don’t know how. Perhaps horses?

So, after getting out of Tibet we ended up in Xining, Qinghai. Our motorbikes were successuflly delivered to us and we continued our journey.

In the last couple of days we have traverssed some major terrain and in 3 days have passed by three provinces! Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan. The ride has been amazing and the landscapes magical. We have had some amazing days in the great plains, the mountains, and conifer forests!

7,000km to go!

So, half way through Tibet we came around a bend into a police checkpoint, and due to a lack of necessary paperwork we got stopped. After many many hours in a police station we got turned around and sent back to Lhasa, where we are now (after many more hours of negotiations with people here). Tomorrow we are being sent out of Tibet by train to Qinghai with our motorbikes. The journey will continue, just on a slightly different path across China. We had to pay transport costs across half of Tibet (4 people and 3 bikes) as we were sent back to Lhasa, and we are now all officially broke. But we do have some nice photos!

The four of us are now somewhere about 400km away from Lhasa.

We have 3 little 150cc bikes with which to ride 8000km through some crazy deserts and mountains. Today was the first mountain pass, at 4500m altitude. We also got our first taste of off-road riding, good fun.

Pictures coming soon!

After 48 long hours of sleeping on the floor of the train from Beijing to Lhasa we are finally here. That said, we had a great time on the ride. Amazing scenery and luckily we brought along some musical instruments to stay entertained.