Yearly Archives: 2016

Tonight we’re in Zhangye, which is near the western end of China’s Great Wall.  There’s probably a joke in there somewhere about Donald Trump trying to get the Mongols to pay for the Great Wall, but I’m tired and I’ll … Continue reading →

Last night, I wrote the Riding China chapter about our day entering the Gobi Desert. In it I mentioned that the Gobi looks a lot like our eastern Mojave Desert, and then I suggested seeing a few camels might make … Continue reading →

Gresh and I were joking last night about having left the Tibetan plateau. “I like the sound of it,” he said.   “How many people can start a story with  “When I rode my motorcycle on the Tibetan plateau…’” I agreed.   … Continue reading →

Whoa, blessed relief…we are in Linxia (not Ningxia, as I reported our destination yesterday).  The spellings of Chinese things in English are easy to get distorted. We’re down from the Tibetan plateau and its elevations of 12,000 to 14,000 feet.  … Continue reading →

Greetings from the Tibetan Plateau, folks! We’re up here on top of the world, and we’re staying the night in a town called Aba (it’s pronounced “obbah”).   We rode beautiful mountain roads, and then we rode another 100 kilometers on … Continue reading →

Yesterday was a challenging day. It started easily enough with a breakfast in Wenchuan and a great ride through the Chinese mountains headed toward Seda (it’s pronounced “Seh-Dah”) but by late afternoon the skies opened and it poured cats and … Continue reading →

Ah, the Pandas…what a thing to see! It was brutally hot and humid, but the pandas were cool (literally, as they are kept in an air conditioned enclosure with all the bamboo they can eat).   In the afternoon, we rode … Continue reading →

It’s 6:00 a.m. in Chengdu (all over China, actually, as they keep the same time zone across the country), and I’m waiting for the breakfast buffet to open.  In the meantime, a few more China photos… Time for breakfast, folks, … Continue reading →