Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang, China
The challenge of riding the Taklamakan wasn’t a physical, but a mental one. Weeks of nearly unchanged scenery on a perfect new road caused my motivation to decline for the first time on this trip. Doing 100km a day was often quite easy, but doing more could only shorten my time in China as the visa officials in Golmud seem to start the visa extension from the day of receiving the application. So I slept late or stayed awake till early morning. It made no difference what time of the day I did my 4-6 hours of riding or when did I sleep. I was first annoyed of having sand and dust all over the place, but eventually it made no difference. Temperatures were chilly, but nothing dramatic. Positive on day and negative at night. Wind was mostly on my back and I avoided the worst dust storms.
Fredrika @thebikeramble had provided me with a coordinates of every place to get food and water in the desert, so I wasn’t needed to do much thinking at all. Highlights of the desert was to climb into people’s garden over high gates to get water. Once I also went into a house from an open window to get more water, when nobody was at home and the next house was 100km away.
#biketouring #China #Xinjiang #TaklamakanDesert #November2015
