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On January 21 2014 I board an airplane for Dhaka. From there I will be working on another self-funded project. During my off days of working I plan on doing some motorbike trips around the country on a local bike. At this present moment, I don’t want to give away too much information but the planning is in the works.

There is a new print listed on Etsy and all profits will help go to the funding of this trip. A perfect holiday gift for anyone that’s lived on the road, or needs inspiration for 2014. I just can’t bare to do another Kicstarter at this moment, or rather, save it for something I’ve got brewing up on the back burner.

Happy holidays everyone, and I hope to get the rest of the Uzbek writing completed as I anxiously await my new China Work Visa. It’s been a very consuming process. Special love and thanks to those that have helped me with it, whether mailing items or allowing me floor space to sleep as I had to exit China to resolve the matter. New strict regulations. I guess if it was easy to obtain, everyone would have one. And of course, why should I expect anything “easy” or simple, ever.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/171865510/a-very-windy-road-along-the-border-of?

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Hidden Yak

Yea yea…we (still) ARE total jerks to one another every now and again…but at the end of the day…we still were BFFs of 2011.

More good times than bad…right, Guy?

Friendship is when you can move past differences and a shattering argument…and become tighter than before. It’s hard not to reminisce about the amazing days of summer…when I’m held up in -16C temps.

Yaxi, my Tibetan “little brother”.

I had arrived in Xiangcheng, Kham (Southwestern Sichuan) and was looking for a cheap place to stay. Repeatedly getting turned away because I was a foreigner. I had expected this as the city has a massive amount of police.

Walking down an alley, to check out a possible place, to check out a Tibetan hotel, Yaxi caught my eye but I turned away because my first impression was of beauty yet complete intimidation. He was also standing outside a gambling/arcade (he actually works there).

He tried to get my attention but I refused because I have my “rules”.

Running behind, he caught up with me and I couldn’t refuse talking. I stumble over my Chinese because I’m completely caught off guard.

We make the brief introductions, where I’m from, what I’m doing, and what I need. Yaxi, you are gorgeous.

From my photos, you would think that all Tibetans walk around in their traditional dress…but there is also the modern, city, Tibetans. Yaxi is a year younger than I.

He insists on pushing my bike for me. Chivalry is not dead among the Tibetans. We try 3 different hotels, continually getting turned away.

Pushing up a hill he looks at me and says, “you can stay at my home”…I stammer and reassures me his “wife” is at home through his beautiful and gentle smile.

To make this story a little shorter, I ended up spending 6 days there with them. I had lost my eyeglasses a few km back and was walking around with sunglasses at night. They did find a motorcycle and his wife drove me to the edge of town a few days later where I found my crushed eyeglasses…with one lens. I would live without eyeglasses for 14 days.

They were the most pleasant hosts and I didn’t spend a cent. We took walks, visited the temple, spent nearly every moment together. I would hang out at the gambling joint. Man, those Tibetans like to gamble!

One afternoon, out on the stoop, where this photo was taken…there was a very heated debate for an hour or so about “The D.L.”. Yaxi and his wife ARE Tibetans from Qinghai and they had workmates that were Han. There was screaming and shouting…when the Tibetans walked through the alley, they would either run quickly by or stand back listening to the conversation. I was hiding in the shadow behind the door, keeping a look out for police.

Yaxi and his wife look at me…I understood most of this conversation…and they look at me in sincerity and ask me in Chinese…”what do you think”? I sink into my chair and I say, “I’m an American…YOU KNOW what I think.” This is enough for them.

Last week I spoke to Yaxi on the phone briefly, he can not speak English. We ended up communicating more via text message. He is currently at his home in Kangding. He wants me to return to spend more time with him and his family. We briefly discussed the current situation and we both agree that I “can’t” come right now because it’s “very very very bad”, “but after”…”after” what I ponder.

Yaxi reassured me and that he and his family are okay, as I worry of him. Yaxi, my little brother…my thoughts are with you, your family, and all the Tibetans. “meiguoren he xizangren pengyou”

August 2011 – Touring is sometimes all fun and games!

Pulled from the archives of August 2011.

We were in Amdo/Kham Tibet. Nearly 4 days of cycling to see one of the three Tibetan Holy Mountains: Amnemachen.

Arriving in the town the night before and not finding a cheap place to stay, Brandon and I opted to sleep in an open field. No tents and under the open stars. Our favorite way. During the night we could hear a man praying into the early hours.

We had just hit tarmac after a very long journey through the mountains. Beat. I was pretty relieved to hear when Brandon admitted to this, because I thought maybe I was just being a baby. He at 22,000km let me know that the stretch we traveled together had been the most difficult in his life – in my opinion – probably both of our favorites.

I never accepted free rides or tried to hitch in China, but with Brandon’s Visa, we had to get to a PSB every 30 days. With his inability of speaking Chinese, communicating with drivers was left up to me. Sometimes I’d do dances on the side of the road, or lie down kicking my legs up in the air. Hell, who doesn’t want a crazy fun American passenger. Brandon pulled his weight, he was a work horse at getting our loaded bikes on trucks – and I felt safer having his short fuse around.

We spent nearly the entire day on the edge of town trying to hitch a ride. There was a little boy that spent it with us.

Earlier in the day, he had been throwing rocks at the road sign. There were probably 3 dozen stones in the road, trucks running over them.

Then Brandon helped him with a new game of lining up our empty beer bottles and throwing rocks at them. Thanks Guy, you’re such a great influence on the kids.

Needless to say, we went through a fair amount of beers, snacks, and cigarettes (as our nasty new habit from boredom and hangin with locals).

The little boy worked on keeping his snot in his nose, but that poor kid…haha…oh man. Then he brought me a bag of cookies and I could see the dried snot all over his hands and arms. Tibetan kids are notorious for this.

At one point he rides his bike out and Brandon and I cheer him on. We spent the entire day with this kid, with random visits from monks and local Tibetans. Of course the street sweeper, who was REALLY REALLY stoked to be cleaning up the BOYS mess!

We did get a ride, eventually, that took 18 hours because we got held up by a landslide on the mountains. Yes…for about 5 hours…rocks tumbling into a deep abyss. The pass was more than 5000m and the driver had this mix tape with about 6 song and one was the Cardigans “love me” and this other one that’s about a baby bottle or something. Brandon and I could hear it in our head’s for days after.

These are the moments, the days, that still make me laugh and remind myself how wonderful touring is.

Tibetan Hostesses, Kham (NW.Sichuan) Summer 2011

The girl on the left could speak fairly good English. She met Brandon and I at the restaurant her brother cousin owned. The two older girls in the photo are sisters. Their family had lived in these Tibetan mountains for generations. When we walked up to the temple, as they bought Brandon and I each a beer, she explained how the city had grown since her childhood.

There were about 2 dozen small Tibetan homes now, and a large area of homes and a dormitory for the monks.

These girls were half Tibetan half Han. Their mother, Han, had passed away near her birth.

The house we are in here is new, because her father had sold the older and bigger home. Since his daughters were growing up, and one in college.

I slept in her bed and Brandon got the floor. In the morning he gets up first and runs back into the room and tells me to get my lazy a$$ up because it’s 11am! “Oh sh*t!? REALLY???!!”

“No, it’s 9:30”.

Even though we left early in the day, we didn’t make a lot of progress because we kept getting stopped for tea and tsampa. We weren’t riding road or tarmac either. The road eventually broke into a cow path through some of the most beautiful valleys I have ever seen in my life. This route continued for a couple of days and over a pass.

I’ll never forget when we got out of the mountain valley and finally hit tarmac, a Tibetan invites us in for some frozen Yak meat. Yes…raw frozen Yak…Brandon and I especially enjoyed the cookies.

Pleasant Memories

As I’m trying to update my blog, and drag monsters out of the desert past, I should post some wonderful moments to remind me of all the awesome. Don’t you think?

Tibet camp, looking like a garden gnome. This was around 9am at over 4500m altitude. September 2011

Somewhere in Kham, Tibet…as we arrived towards a very strange Tibetan village deeply set in the mountains. July 2011

Xinjiang route dedicated to Masato, a friend/cyclist, hit by a car

July 2011
It was near the border of Yunnan and Sichuan, I had taken a back road from Zhongdian…it was where I lived with the nomadic milkmaids, and I was on the side of the road snacking.

I was beat. It had been constant climbing…a steady incline…and needless to say I had lost, then found broken, my only pair of prescription eyeglasses. Luckily I had a pair of sunglasses but can be inconvenient at sunset and after…that’s another story of how I toured China with no eyeglasses for 2 weeks. As I sat on the side of the smooth tarmac without another soul in site I see a loaded cyclist.

You have to be kidding me!

His name is Masato (Japanese) and he had been living in Chengdu and was touring Western China. He could speak almost perfect English and his Mandarin was quite good too.

We decided to meet at the next town to rest after exchanging phone no.’s. He was headed to a park/Mountain…I think it being called Yading. I decided to go there to after chatting with him.

I found myself on a mountain pass and the wind was strong, the sign said around 4700m, and the sun was setting. To make a story short: he texts me letting me know he is down the mountain and found a luguan. I’m trying to get over this pass and before I know it I’m descending 10km in blackness with no eyeglasses…and I’m freezing. I don’t stop to dress because I’m racing to get to the bottom because of vision problems.

Anyhow, Masato and I stay at the same hostel for 2 days, then travel to the Mountain Park together with a group of Koreans…we all become quick friends. Masato and I stay together at the hostel, as we ran away from the Korean snore’er. We stayed one more day at the original hostel and he left 1 day before I to head to Litang.

On the way to Litang, I met 3 Chinese cyclists coming from Litang. They told me they had met Masato and he had lost his hat. I assumed they meant his helmet and that was such a pity. Masato and I still communicate via
SMS. In Litang, after I met the infamous Brandon Wallace, and we went to a little restaurant together…one of the locals thats famous with the foreigners told me he met Masato and he had lost his knit cap – not his helmet.

Masato and I reunited briefly again in Kanding, where this photo was taken.

Anyhow, Masato headed to Chengdu and then to Xining then onto Xinjiang. You readers know that Brandon and I headed to the land of awesome.

When I was in Tibet, I got a message from Masato. He was in the hospital and had been hit by a car on the way to Kashgar. He was recovering from surgery and would have to return to Japan. I just received an email from him telling me his back has been broken and has metal plates. He told me the police informed him a Uyghur man hit him and did stop to help take care of the matter – thank goodness. The roads out here, and in Inner Mongolia, go on and on and on and very straight at times. So, people do not practice safe driving out here.

I want to say that not a day goes by on the road that I don’t think of Masato. Thoughts of Masato also reminds me to stay off main thoroughfares. I may get lost, or add days to my tour without real km progress, but…I’ll take my time to prevent my possible death…

So to YOU…MASATO…my Xinjiang route is for you, my friend. Get well soon and I wish you a speedy recovering.

I would love to hear from you!