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Click here to see photos from Jeff's
Chengdu Experience
October
21, 1999
This is
Nick Baggarly. Today we traveled from Xining City to Dulan.
Dan
Freedman of Calgary, Alberta asks how we like driving in China, a land
with many more bicycles than cars?
Well, if
you were a teen-age video game junkie during the 1980's you might
remember the arcade game, PaperBoy. You play the part of a boy on a
bicycle, delivering papers and trying to avoid things like cars backing
out of driveways, pedestrians, kids on skateboards, trucks, and women
with baby carriages, all of which seem to cross the road the moment you
approach.
Driving in
this country is exactly like an intense game of PaperBoy!
When we
first arrived we spent one week in Beijing waiting for the cars. During
this time the only driving we did was as a passenger in taxis. We took
some good notes watching the traffic patterns and customs of the cars,
bicycles, and pedestrians. One thing we immediately noticed is that many
intersections have only one visible signal light. The light is visible
from every approaching direction but their position in the intersection
was never in the same place which made it difficult to know whether an
intersection was signal controlled or not and sometimes you would be half
way through the intersection before you notice the light is red.
A word
about these small carts we keep seeing. Since we left Beijing we will see
a small motor driven cart stacked twice high with a leafy Chinese cabbage
that looks like bok choy. These carts are forbidden on the roads during
the day. If caught the driver will receive a large fine so they are
forced to deliver their produce to market at night. The carts are very
slow and while they try to keep to the right they have no reflectors or
lights so while we drive we must be very cautious of these and other
obstacles.
So, you
need to be constantly alert, even more so then when you drive on the
roads and highways back home, and it helps to have a co-pilot beside you
to call out obstacles and potential dangers. Most downtown roads in
Beijing were two or four lane undivided road with a wide divided shoulder
to your right for bicycle traffic. These people really have their wits
about them. They drive using instincts and intuition and they seem keenly
aware of the actions of others and themselves.
Two pieces
of advice my father, Brad Baggarly, taught me have come in quite handy.
Number 1 - Drive defensively, and Number 2 - Back up only as far as you
have to. This may seem like common sense but this is something that
should always be in the back of your mind when driving in a foreign land.
Likewise, when Mr. Zhang Jian Ping, our Chinese host and Manager of China
International Sports Travel, gave us some advice as he distributed our
Chinese drivers licenses in a formal lineup ceremony which occurred after
a short drivers test, eye, and health test. He said, "Stop at red
lights, slow down in small villages, and speed up in the wild." By
wild he meant the Chinese countryside.
So on to
today's journal report. We rose very early at 5:15 AM in Xining City
which is in the Qinghai province. We stayed at the Xining Hotel which was
very nice. By now I have quite a collection of hotel soaps, tooth
brushes, matchbooks, sewing kits, and shampoo as these seem to be standard
complimentary items at every hotel in China.
Since
Lanzhou, our interpreter Jack has been riding along with us. When Jack
was learning English he had to choose a name so initially it was Beatles
because he like the Beatles. Eventually he chose Jack. We all were
impressed with Jack's knowledge of all aspects of China, whether it be
historic, provincial, geographic, geologic, ancient or contemporary
knowledge - Jack seemed to know it all. He also had quite a grasp on
other parts of the world as he would frequently compare landmarks in
China to landmarks in other parts of the world. We couldn't drive five
kilometers without hearing an interesting fact from Jack. In a way
though, his job is easy because his country has such a long rich history
so there's always something to talk about. But I'm sure it wasn't easy
cramming all of those facts in his noodle. Jack takes his job very
seriously and he did an excellent job educating us along the way. We
thank him for his time with us.
Last night
we were treated to a very delicious dinner with Mr. Deng Haiping, the
Manager of Qinghai International Sports Travel. We're guessing that he is
Mr. Li and Jack's Boss. Before dinner he presented each of us with a full
colour brochure that describes all the various tours his company offers.
In it there were also descriptions of groups, like ours, who have hiked,
expeditioned, climbed, rafted, and trekked, throughout this fascinating
and huge province. And the brochure contained a lot of local information
as well like all the climbable peaks in this province and their height.
A big
tourist draw in China and in many other countries for that matter is
hiring an agency like this one, to find the source of a river. Many
people will traced their lineage to an area around a particular river in
China and they find spiritual renewal by visiting the source of this
river. The agency will provide a guide who knows the way. For example,
our guide, Mr. Li helped some Japanese travelers find the source of the
Yellow river which wasn't easy the first time he did it but since then,
he has managed to source many other rivers in China and guide seekers to
the waters they seek.
When you're
having dinner with people who don't speak your language, and you don't
speak a word of theirs it's easy to simply sit back and default to a
conversation with your English speaking friends and just talk amongst
yourselves. For various reasons it is sometimes not easy to have a dinner
conversation with your hosts using a translator. You'd probably have to
be put in this situation to know what I am talking about but I can tell
you, if you try, you'll always find something to talk about and it's
always worth it. We had a great time at dinner with Mr. Haiping and we
thank him for supplying with two of his best guides.
Today we
are driving to Dulan in the Tibetan Autonomous Region which is 400km (249
miles) away. Shortly after we left Xining City we picked highway 109
which is the road to Lhasa. This roadway was built by the Chinese
Liberation Army approximately 50 years ago in a huge scale labor project
that lasted many years. A lot of people died during it's construction and
they say that if you laid the number of casualties head to toe, they
would extend from Xining City all the way to Lhasa or about 1900
kilometers long! That's about 1180 miles long.
About two
hours into this day we crossed into the Tibetan Autonomous Region. We
stopped at the top of a low mountain pass and took pictures with a man
and his Yak.
Highest
point reached today was 12,600 ft which is a new record for these two old
Land Rovers, braking our previous elevation record set during our 1997
Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala expedition where we reached 11,200 feet
near Mexico City.
I'm obliged
to share some obligatory Land Rover content for my Mendo Recce friends in
The Northern California Land Rover Club back home. The Rovers are running
stock 2.25 liter engines with Rodchester B-series carburetors. The carb
main jets measure .048 inch in diameter and they run well at sea level
all the way up to about 7000 feet. Thanks to Pat Young, our
pre-expedition mechanic, and Keith and Tim of British Pacific and the
folks at Ace Fuel Systems in Santa Clara, we have a variety of smaller
jets to install for the big climb that is store for us three days from
now. We wanted to see how high we could climb with the stock jets so I
can now report that the 2.25L engine with stock timing and a Rodchester
carb can climb to about 10,500 feet before it begins to run poorly and
12,300 feet before it starts missing. For the kids listening, missing
means one or more of the engine's cylinders isn't firing like it should.
We spent a
large portion of our day above 11,000 feet but ended up in city of Dulan
at 10,500 feet so this was a good day of altitude acclimation to prepare
our bodies for the steep climb ahead up the Tibetan Plateau.
There were
some beautiful vistas (vista is Spanish for View for the kids in the
audience) as we drove across the North-Eastern portion of the Tibetan
plateau. We passed two large lakes. Koko Nor is China's largest lake
which measures slightly smaller than the Great lakes in the United
States. Following Koko Nor we passed rubber mountain. The Tibetan people
found the earth around this mountain to be very soft so they called it
rubber mountain. Around the corner from Rubber Mountain was Chaka lake.
Both Koko Nor and Chaka are salt lakes but Chaka is saltier. Koko Nor is
a name given to this great body of water by the British. The Chinese know
this lake as Qinghai which is also the name of the province we're in
right now. It contains huge numbers of fish. We stopped off briefly at
this lake to take pictures.
The Chinese
previously used this lake for torpedo testing but they don't any longer.
The Tibetans, however, know this lake as the Western Sea. That's what it
was called during ancient times. According to our guide, the Tibetan
Nature Oracle and other spiritual leaders converge upon this lake to
locate the next incarnation of Buddha. After the Dalai Lama dies, the
monks search the land for the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama
whose name means Ocean of Wisdom. They begin their search by reading the
waters of the Koko Nor Lake. If they see waves and choppy water, they
know he is in a mountainous region. If they see calm waters he is in the
plains or on the plateau. By reading the waters, an artist is able to
sketch his location, after which a full scale search begins to find an
area that resembles the sketch. Their search takes a long time and
usually, by the time they find him, the new Dalai Lama is just a baby or
young boy.
It was a
day of endless rattles as we traveled a 150 kilometer dirt and gravel
road that was very bumpy. Our speed on these roads was 40 kilometers per
hour or 25 miles per hour - that is, when I was driving. At mid-day Doug
took the wheel of Alaska and gave the suspension a good workout by going
20 miles per hour faster. Doug and Earle did most of the driving today
and they did a fantastic job navigating some pretty treacherous road.
There was a good deal of off roading involved. The majority of driving
today was dirt roads. Highway 190 is under heavy construction west of the
Koko Nor Lake all the way to Dulan.
Along this
stretch I saw a Tibetan boy sitting on the ground, with feet
outstretched-a large rock in front of him, a iron spike for a chisel and
a large piece of iron in his hand. He was making gravel for the roads in
the most manual process you can imagine. There was a huge pile of gravel
beside him and he seemed very happy in his work although the indigenous
people of this region seem genuinely happy at all times.
Once again,
we drove at night which we don't like to do but, unlike last night, there
was no rain and the road, for the most part, was clear of other vehicles
and obstacles. We arrived in Dulan at about 9:00 pm.
Well,
that's it for today. We hope you will tune in tomorrow for more from Team
AroundTheWorld1999! Good night.
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