Cycle Touring Adventures and more....

Our trip through Kazakhstan was fast and furious but we chose for it to be that way. The rules to travel through Kazakhstan say if you are in the country for more than five days, you must stop in Almaty and get a second stamp in your passport. But if you are in the country […]

While waiting for our Kazakhstan visas, we decided to cycle for a few days around the Urumqi area. We planned out a loop that would take through the Tian Shan Mountains, over a 4200 meter mountain pass, and then drop into the desert. That plan, however, got shot down after we got snowed in at […]

We arrived in Urumqi a week earlier than planned. Our first plan had us arriving in Hami on May 12 and cycling to Urumqi to put in our Kazakhstan visas on May 19. But the train gods had different plans for us. We arrived in Hami bright and early on Monday the 12th but our […]

This section of our ride in China brought the most unexptected and (in my opinion) the most beautiful riding in my time on a bike in this country. For the most part the road conditions were great. Yes it was chilly, (one night it was -10C) and the wind got to us a few times, […]

On the first day of our 7 day route in the Urumqi area two my spokes literally tore off the hub. Not the best start to this part of the trip especially with a potential 100km of rough dirt road ahead.

The day started out nice enough. We had blue skies and gorgeous scenery but the roads were rough going. It was a constant up and the roads were beaten up because of all the trucks. About 2 1/2 hours in to our day we realized our dream of making it over the mountain in a […]

After a long days ride from Urumqi with lots of coal trucks and of course dusty dirt roads through gorges we finally found a place to camp for the night that was close enough to the Urumqi river for water.

It had been several weeks since Katie and I had had a proper English conversation with anyone so it was nice to sit down with the two of them and talk biking. Yannis and Kelly are planning a bike trip next year from China to Greece. Of course in true expat style Yannis & Kelly […]

Welcome to Dicos” (in Chinese) every employee would say in unison as a new customer walked in the door – strange. While hanging out with Yannis and Kelly we sampled the local fast-food restaurant. As it wouldn’t be a full Zhangye expat experience without some sort of “western food.” So off we went to Dico’s, […]

During our 7 day Qilian mountain leg, the cold nights started to get to both of us (well more me than Jared) so we decided to take a night off of the tent and find a hotel. We spent the day climbing over a beautiful mountain pass and had a well deserved 30km of downhill. […]

When we were planning our trip we knew we would be climbing over some high mountains which meant we would be sleeping up high as well. We expected our stretch from Shangri-la to Kangding to bring the highest, and therefore coldest, camping spots. But boy were we wrong! Don’t get me wrong, we did have […]

The journey from Shangri la to Kangding gave us dirt roads, amazing views, cold camping, and one blizzard but the best part of the road was all the yaks!!! Neither one of us had ever seen yaks much less so many yaks, so up close, and so hairy!