Total distance cycled: 8,811 kilometres
Biggest day: 195 kilometres, 9 hours 40 mins in the saddle
Top speed: 73.2 km/h
Highest pass: Khunjerab Pass, Pakistan, 4733 metres
Longest downhill: 89kms from Khunjerab to Sust, Pakistan

Punctures: 11 (including five blowouts)
Bike repairs: 2 freehubs, 1 front hub, rim of back wheel, broken chain, 3 rear gear cables

Longest border crossing: China, they have a three-hour lunch break and we arrived just as it began…

Major cities: The Hague, Antwerp, Cologne, Salzburg, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Tbilisi, Baku, Bukhara, Tashkent, Osh, Kashkar, Islamabad

Most surprising language: Turkish – we’ve been able to communicate with various modifications of Turkish for 5,000 kilometres across Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and even into Xinjiang in China!

Most lovable local hat: The Kalpak, found all over Kyrgyzstan and proudly modelled here by Dan, who was given it by Abdulrahim (centre), the first friend we made in Kyrgyzstan.

Total time taken: 10 months cycling + 5 months waiting out winter in Istanbul + 9 months trip planning = 2 years!

Dan and I sat together in a miserable huddle sheltering from the monsoon rain. We’d reached Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, that morning, without the elation we’d hoped or wished for.

Pakistan had tested us in so many ways and it was here that we had to decide whether to continue cycling. My intuition was strongly warning me to stop right now and go home. Life was beginning to feel precarious – and I had an ominous feeling in my gut that staying would be dangerous.

Dan, on the other hand, wanted to continue on cycling and exploring the Himalayas in India and Nepal. But that meant waiting for 3 weeks more in Pakistan for visas.

We were shocked at the realisation that this was the very first time on our journey that Dan and I had differing ideas, goals, wishes and desires. But what gripped me more was that, having spent 18 months together, side by side for 24 hours a day, committed to our RideHimalaya expedition, these differing ideas could mean that we would go on separate journeys for a while.

I looked towards the armed guard that crouched behind machine gun and sandbags – protecting the ‘foreigner’s only’ campsite. I swatted a few mosquitoes that were buzzing around me. Another monsoon cloud broke and I watched the crowds on the streets, in sandals and shalwars, run for cover. “I want to go home”, I said.

We hugged and cried at the thought of finishing our epic journey, sad, exhausted and deflated. Would Dan go on alone?

Dan broke the silence. Squeezing my hand tight, he asked me to marry him.

It was at that moment I realised that when one journey ends, another begins. I sobbed a big teary “Yes!” – knowing that our journey of life together will be the biggest and best adventure yet!

Ramadan has started! For Pakistanis, this means no eating or drinking during daylight hours. So breakfast has moved to the ungodly hour of 4am, and a ferocious scramble for dinner takes place after the evening call to prayer at 7.30pm.

The Koran states that if you are travelling, you don’t have to take part in this austerity, but it is impossible for Dan and I to eat in public. Hoards of frothy-mouthed onlookers run up to us, deliriously asking us why we aren’t fasting, why we aren’t Muslim and why we don’t respect Islam. So we stock up on a daily ration of a kilogram of pakoras and ten samosas, and find a hiding place to eat them.

Here we are trying to buy fizzy drink and being refused.

As we began climbing up towards Babusar ‘Top’, we were tested by bunches of stone-throwing kids. As we strained and struggled and pushed up the steep inclines, they followed, taunting and hassling us and throwing stones at us. One man even rolled a boulder down the side of the mountain towards us!

But these boys were different, and it’s their faces I want to remember…

…they helped me push my bike up the steepest and roughest section of the deteriorating track.

The last few kilometres to the top were the toughest, with the air getting thinner and thinner and my breath getting weaker and weaker. I felt light-headed and nauseous and had to stop every few steps to rest.

This would’ve been an easier way to have reached the top!

The glory of reaching Babusar Top was not ours to be had. As we stood at the summit of 4173 metres, taking in the magnificent vista, we were approached by four tribesmen. Their eyes were lined black with kohl, they wore long gowns, turbans and long beards, and each had an AK47 slung on their back.

With signs of hostility, they told us that they lived here and asked us who we were and where we were going. Our idea to camp at the summit vanished. We waved a hasty goodbye to these ominous characters and began to descend.

The track worsened to some of the most terrible I have even ridden on, and for much of the time was flooded.

As we descended, we reached the epicentre of the 2005 earthquake that had killed 80,000 people, injured 50,000 and decimated villages completely. We stayed with international volunteer schoolteachers Ruth, Neve, Adrienne and Lauren at the newly-built school at the epicentre of the disaster.

A conversation with a local man gave us a bit of insight into the hostility that we were feeling towards us. He was sick and tired of the bad media that Pakistan had received and said of it, “If you think I am a terrorist, I will become one.”

Finally, when we reached Islamabad, we were exhausted. The monsoon was in full swing and mosquitoes were chewing on any piece of skin that they could find.

Sorry for the delay in posting blogs  – I’m gonna post our last couple of months over the next couple of days. Hope you enjoy xxx

Nanga Parbat, literally meaning, “Naked Mountain”, is named thus because it’s 8,126 metre faces are so steep that, in some places, no snow can stick. Its other name is “Killer Mountain” as it is one of the most dangerous peaks to climb.

Nanga Parbat is the ninth highest mountain in the world. It is also the most westerly peak of the mighty Himalayan range. Since Kashgar, reaching this mountain is our new destination, now that Lhasa is off the cards (see Change of Heart blog).

But to reach it, we must continue for a few more days along the rocky, precarious track that is the Karakorum Highway. A few more days… against headwinds of dust… and rubble from ceaseless roadworks… in 50 degree heat…

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We left Karimabad at the perfect hour of 5.30am. The air was crisp, and though it was still dark outside, the snowy peaks of Rakaposhi and Diran defined the separation of rock and sky. Few people were out and about at that time – and Dan and I smiled in delight.

And as we descended in an easy freewheel down to Aliabad, we watched the sunlight strike the mountains. The orange glow crept further and further into the deep valley cut by the fierce Hunza river until finally, it caught up with us. We stopped for a roadside chai, wiped our brows and caught our breath. The Himalayas seemed so near, yet so far, and I longed to reach them.

As the days went by, the heat grew in intensity and when we reached Chalt, the mercury topped a whopping 53 degrees. We decided to adopt a new regime of getting up at 4 each morning so we could finish riding by midday.

We’d already been using our friend Bryan’s trick of placing a sock over our drink bottle to keep our drinking water cool – a method that worked a treat! We’d also begun to wet our caps and stick our heads into the glacial melt in roadside irrigation channels or waterfalls, to stop our brains from boiling inside of our skulls.

Gilgit was the first major town since Kashgar, three weeks before. It was in Gilgit that we rested, had local clothes – the shalwar khameese – sewn up…

…and met up with our Pakistani friends Kashif, Arooba, Mira and Mahnoor that had befriended us at the border at Sust.

But Gilgit was full of confusion and mayhem. A petrol shortage had struck. Lines of cars, trucks and Suzuki taxis queued outside the rundown petrol stations, along with angry men holding empty containers of all shapes and sizes. Stiff military soldiers, wearing rockets, guns and batons patrolled the streets and the tension in the air was palpable.

Life in Pakistan had been fairly peaceful up until that point, but things were about to get nasty…

One day, as Dan and I were walking back to our guesthouse, we saw a huge plume of thick, black smoke rising into the air. It was blowing right into the largest Shi’a mosque in town. Curiosity overwhelmed me. As we got closer, we could see a crowd of men standing around a fire made from burning tyres. Many seemed excited, some looked intense and serious. Scared shopkeepers began pulling their shutters down and disappearing. More tyres were being thrown into the inferno.

Dan tugged at my arm. “Let’s get out of here”, he said. But the usual route to our guesthouse was blocked as armed police had begun to shut down the city. So hurriedly, we bypassed the marketplace and ran another way, through the fast-emptying back streets. Once inside the guesthouse, we heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire.

The guesthouse owner warned us that, for our safety, we should stay hidden in our rooms. He told us that a Sunni mullah had been assassinated in Karachi, and the Sunni’s were retaliating against the Shi’a everywhere.

The gunfire went on all afternoon. We were lucky that there was no curfew placed on Gilgit, as we’d heard of travellers becoming stuck for weeks at a time. Kashif had told us that 3 years ago, the whole city had been closed down for 2 months and nobody had been allowed to enter or exit.

We cycled out of Gilgit quickly the next day and reached the turnoff to Skardu. Unable to find a decent place to stay that night, we camped on a slim patch of grass on the side of the road. People had begun to feel less friendly, less helpful and less happy than I had experienced them to be when I cycled here in 1998.

Above is an archive photo of me cycling through Pakistan back in 1998.

Early the next day, as the Indus River joined us from its source in Tibet, we caught our first glimpse of Nanga Parbat – we had finally arrived at the westernmost peak of the Himalayas! The beautiful mountain rose majestically into the sky, seeming to defy the laws of gravity.

After almost 9000 kilometres and 8 months of pedalling, we’d reached the Himalayas! The joy of the open road, of adventure, of freedom, filled my heart.

But this happiness was short-lived. Just as we cycled away, a car pulled up, a man jumped out and called us frantically over to Dan. “What are you people doing?” he cried. “You are in too much danger! There are Taliban on this road! They will kill you and your wife!”

We were cycling one valley over from the Swat Valley – the place where the Pakistani military, aided by Americans, had recently swooped, scattering the Taliban and killing their leader. There had been some suicide bomb attacks in nearby Besham recently, which the Taliban claimed they had perpetrated.

We had been worried about the danger of terrorists ever since we’d entered Pakistan, and so had always been sensitive about which parts of Pakistan we would choose to travel. We’d also done heaps of research on our route and been speaking with checkpoint police the whole way down from Sust who had assured us that we were in no danger.

Our route would take us another two days along the Karakoram Highway. At Chilas we were going to turn off, and cycle an alternative route via the Kaghan Valley, so missing the dangerous section. It meant, however, that we would have to instead cross the infamous Babarsar Pass at over 4000 metres.

The motorist made us promise to contact him as soon as we reached Islamabad.

Towering jagged mountain peaks jut upwards from rocky side valleys, occasionally snaring the clouds that can’t rise high enough to pass over the immense shoulders that form the Karakorum Range. The glistening cap of 7788 metre Rakaposhi has been blinding me all day as I look down the Hunza Valley breathing in the rich, brilliant green high above the River Hunza.

We are in Pakistan, we feel so lucky and happy, and are glad of the choices we’ve made. Pakistan seems at first as a place where anything is possible.

For the meanwhile, there is a very rough road, dusty and scruffy, famous and winding, like only a road could be that is chiselled into the face of a mountainside, at times as high as 500 metres above the river it follows. Its name is the Karakorum Highway and it will deliver us to the plains of Pakistan and its capital Islamabad.

But first, since we have changed direction, we’ll enjoy the opportunity to slow down, take detours, walk amongst mountains, meet families and trek to glaciers, camp in lush green valleys and take time to adventure.

The Himalayas are getting close. After three more days of cycling, we will see the most westerly peak of the great Himalayan Range – Nanga Parbat – and we will savour that sight.

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Goodbye Kashgar…

…the old…

…and the new…

…the delicious…

…and the not so nutritious…

How happy we were to have met met Lok, Fish and Bruce, 3 Chinese cyclists about to embark upon the infamous G219 Tibetan Highway to Lhasa, the day before we left for the Karakorum Highway to Pakistan. They invited us to come with them to Yecheng and try and get permits, but we declined – albeit reluctantly – and wished them the best for their long and difficult journey.

But our route wasn’t to be so easy either, not just because of the terrain – but also because of these strange and ever-changing rules and regulations that make independent travel a nightmare in China. A few days before, we heard of a cyclist that had taken our road and had been turned back by the military at the first checkpost just out of Kashgar – forced to take a bus all the way to Sust in Pakistan. Another traveller we met had wanted to visit the high altitude lake at Karakol, also on our route, but was told he wasn’t permitted unless accompanied by a guide in a hired vehicle. Very expensive and very annoying. We didn’t know if we’d be lucky enough to get through this first checkpost, but we thought we’d give it a go.

The checkpost appeared, we kept close and put our heads down. I heard a loud, “OY!”, but kept pedalling. I heard another louder, “OY!” but still kept pedalling, not knowing if Dan was behind me or not. “Dan, Dan, are you there?” I shouted.
“Yes, keep going!” he replied, so we did.

Later that day, we saw a bus pass us with four bikes strapped onto the roof. Oh no, the cyclists we’d met in our hotel in Kashgar hadn’t been as lucky as us…

The intolerable wind blowing from the desert was dehydrating and exhausting. We stopped for a rest, sheltering from wind and blinding sun near a mosque and its mud cemetery. The family harvesting the field nearby came to visit us, proffering a honeydew and watermelon! When we cracked the watermelon open, the man was horrified that it wasn’t ripe, and he rushed back home to get us another two. Relief all round when we opened one to find it juicy and red.

The other 2 melons we strapped precariously onto the backs of our bikes. Goodness knows how they balanced there. But they refreshed us at the end of the day as we camped in the backgarden of a local family. After the pips had been spat, a giant sandstorm hit, and we escaped into our only-just erected tent.

The next day, the valley narrowed into a deep gorge. Mountains, bare and foreboding loomed above us, threatening landslides. Dan heard a rumble across the river and, looking up, saw a cloud of rubble and dust descending from the heights.

It was a tiring day as we followed the river up just past the military checkpost at Ghez. Reading the contours on our map, we decided this would be the best place to stop for the night as the gorge would continue steeply for another 20kms and there would be no place for our tent between river, road and sheer mountainside.

The only chaikhana (teahouse) in the village also served as a petrol station (selling fuel from old plastic coke bottles), and a raucous drinking hole. It had a small, stinky room attached to the restaurant with hard beds, which, much against Dan’s intuition, we decided to stay for the night. Just as we were about to sleep, we heard a loud, sharp rap at the door. “Police!”

A drunk and disorderly captain, wearing 3 stars on his breast, motioned Dan and I out of our room. Using aggressive arm swings, he signalled to us that we could not stay here the night and we must take a bus 70 kilometres away, to the lake at Karakol, where we were obliged stay in the tourist hotel.

This was ridiculous! We’d arrived in Ghez at 3pm, and it was 8pm now. Why hadn’t the soldiers told us we were prohibited to stay when they’d taken our passport details at the checkpoint 5 hours ago? We had unpacked, washed, were ready for bed and completely exhausted.

We argued, debated, pleaded and tried to reason with the unyielding military man – whose blatant misuse of power disgusted us to the core. Conversations went back and forth between myself, a translator that he had phoned, and him. After a 3 hour stand-off, the translator finally told me that if we did not leave, we would be sent to prison.

I attempted one last bluff. With a stern face I demanded the captain tell me his name and number because I wanted to make an official complaint. It was at that point that he disappeared, and never returned!

We left Ghez just before dawn broke. No-one was around as we filled up our water bottles with warm mountain spring water trickling from the mountainside. We knew the next part of the road would be steep and thirsty work.

It was beautiful. Occasionally, the road opened up and small settlements appeared, from where we could buy a fizzy drink, boiled eggs, or get some hot water to make noodles.

And as we passed Bulungkol Lake and Sand Mountain (Kumtagh), we raced against the wind and a fierce storm in the mountains.

This was the first time I was hit by altitude sickness, I was giddy and seemed to have tunnel vision, and the last 10 kilometres was tough as we ascended further to reach the striking Karakol Lake, framed by the Kongur-Muztagata mountain range.

We made camp and rested for a couple of days, swimming at midday in the icy water…

…and circumnavigating the lake by horse to find more springwater to drink…

It was a great rest and important acclimatisation, for the next section of the road would bring us to the Ulugrabatdavan Pass of 4098 metres – the highest yet.

Along the way, we passed woolly yaks and screeching marmots, ancient Kyrgyz burial sites and breathtaking mountain views.

The Karakorum Highway on the Chinese side is like a runway. With never a pimple or a crease, the gradient is always steady and smooth. It was therefore effortless to reach the top of the pass, where we ate lunch and had a siesta. We were woken suddenly by two other cyclists, heading in the other direction: lungi-clad Paulo from Italy and Fran from Argentina, who was carrying a didgeridoo! They only had 3 yuan (30 pence) and a few rupees to their name, so we gave them what Chinese money we had in exchange for their tatty, ageing Pakistani and Indian rupees. Fran didn’t think we’d get into Pakistan without a visa, and this put some doubt and worry into us.

It was then a long descent to Beskorgan, where we stopped the night in a yurtcamp run by some local Tajiks.

In Tashkurgan, the exit point for China, finally the Chinese rules and regulations caught up with us. We were forced to take a bus to Sust, the immigration point into Pakistan, 210 kms away! We were really disappointed as it would mean our journey would be broken up and we would miss cycling over the Khunjerab Pass. However, we managed to persuade the bus driver to let us out as soon as we got outside of Chinese territory, so we got to wheel down the 90kms from Khunjerab to Sust after all!

The border guards on the Pakistani side at Khunjerab welcomed us heartily.

It was a glorious and exhilarating ride from Khunjerab down to Sust, the official Northern Areas entry point into Pakistan. Giant, jagged peaks…Switchbacks…

…Meltwater rushing from ever-shifting glaciers… Smiling roadworkers…

…Crazy colourful trucks with jingling bells attached to their bumpers…

We were in Pakistan without a visa, and late for the immigration entry point at Sust, 89 kilometres away. Lonely Planet warned that all documents should be in order before entering Pakistan – firstly as there was a chance the Chinese wouldn’t allow you to exit without an onward visa, and secondly – because Pakistan may not grant a visa upon arrival. Fran, the cyclist we had met on the Ulugrabatdavan Pass had also put some doubts in our minds about this, as had the countless other travellers spinning gossip, fear and dramatic hearsay.

But we pushed on anyway, against the dry, strong headwind, and the dust that blew from the withered track that is the Karakorum Highway on the Pakistani side, stopping only occasionally to check where we were on the map and grab a handful of scroggin.

We finally reached Sust at 9pm, stumbling off our bikes at the gated post and saying a weary, “Asalaam ailekum” to the border guards.

Shereef, a large, fatherly figure in the local dress of shalwar khameese, appeared as if from nowhere and declared that he was, “Immigration”. But he seemed flustered – it was evening prayer time and his friend had the key to the locked customs building. As well as this, there was a power cut and he was reluctant to turn the generator on. So he told us to take a room in Sust and come back for immigration formalities at 9am the next day.

We asked him to recommend a place to stay and he escorted us down the road to a cheap guesthouse, chatting all the while. By the time we reached the bazaar, evening prayers had finished and we bumped into his friend who had the key for the customs building. So we turned back to immigration.

The generator was switched on and the building buzzed and lit up. Shereef’s friend took our passports to stamp and we admitted that we didn’t have visas, but please could we get one? “Oh, yes, no problem. I will give you 30 days visa, no problem. You can extend easily if you like, in Gilgit, Skardu, or Islamabad. As you like!” declared Shereef. “Let me just call another friend, he has the key for the visa stickers.”

And so it was, another friend was called in to help us. Meticulously, this man took our details, the visa fee, and gummed the visas neatly into our passports. “Please wait a moment”, said Shereef when this process was finished. “One more friend must come to sign your visas” he said, tapping at his mobile phone.

This was incredible. Not only had immigration been closed for the day, but 4 men had come out from their family homes to welcome us to their country and help us to fulfil the entry requirements of Pakistan.

And when all was done, Shereef declared, “This is Pakistan. We welcome you as our honoured guests!”

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We still hadn’t let go of the idea of cycling the Tibetan Highway, the G219 that leads through the heart of Tibet to sacred Mount Kailash and onto Lhasa, when we passed through customs and across the Chinese border into Xinjiang. I had folded and hidden our Tibet maps in my back pocket in case of a bag search. So much fear, intrepidation and drama had filled many of the travellers reports of journeys through China and particularly pathways that lead to Lhasa. We didn’t want our maps confiscated or entry blocked.

However, after a 3-hour wait in the scorching sun, border guards opened the gate, and with relative ease, slack and random swine-flu checks and a single pannier bag through the scan machine, we were processed as Aliens and entered ‘The People’s Republic of China’. Just whose ‘people’s republic’ is anyone’s guess! ‘Power to the people’ seems like a very alien concept here. It didn’t take us long to see this as the first example of Communist propoganda. This land does not belong to the people.

Initially, we were excited by the friendly Chinese people we met, and challenged by Chinese script and a hopeless chance of understanding anything said to us. But we soon discovered that Chinese wasn’t the only language spoken here. A variation of Turkish, spoken by the indigenous people of this land, the Uighurs, saved us from pointing and gesturing. Their traditional script is Arabic, which luckily Krista can read, helping us to decipher roadsigns.

Reaching this giant landmass, called China, feels like a huge accomplishment to us and means we’ve almost covered the distance we set out to attempt. But getting here is bitter-sweet. We see now that if we’d reached Kashgar 60 years earlier, we’d actually be in East Turkestan, the homeland of Muslim Uighars, and a very different place. For in 1949, the Chinese government expanded its borders and forcefully occupied Xinjiang, just as it did when it entered and began to decimate Buddhist Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

These occupied regions, rich in natural resources and ancient cultures, make up more than half of the landmass called The People’s Republic of China.

A beautiful but thought-provoking 250km ride from the border at Irkeshtam took us to Kashgar, the most westerly city of China.

In Kashgar, every morning, just after dawn, we hear a recorder version of “Happy Birthday” ringing out on the citywide PA system to celebrate 2009 being the 60th year of China as we know it. However, according to the faces of the indigenous Uighar population, we are very much in an occupied region under a Chinese government regime, and this is no celebration.

Unfortunately, the Uighars, who want for a quiet, content, peaceful life, practising Islam and tolerance, don’t have a figurehead and spokesperson like the Dalai Lama of Tibet. So when the Chinese government shut down all telecommunications and internet access in Xinjiang at the start of July, the Uighars voice was silenced.

A local man, calling himself Abdul (but probably disguising his real identity from us in fear of the Secret Police) told us that reports of the number of people killed by the military in the July demonstration in Urumqi, before communications were cut, could easily be five times greater. He explained the events that led to the demonstration, which sound very much like an effort to dilute the Uighar culture and population. The government took young Uighar men between the ages of 15 and 25 from their home and forcefully put them to work in a Chinese government toy factory thousands of kilometres away. In this factory, 80 Uighars suffered physical injuries from racial attacks and 2 were killed. As a result, Uighars demonstrated against Chinese government repression of their people, but killings and indiscriminate arrests by the military silenced their freedom of speech.

As we entered Kashgar, we were met by troops of heavily armed Chinese soldiers on street corners and military trucks circling the Uighar districts, day and night, in convoy. 19-year old soldiers, crammed into caged troop trucks wielding machine guns and riot shields naively and innocently waved to a sarcastic foreigner cycling behind. PA system messages blasted from the back of these trucks as they circled, leaving no moment of silence, propaganda of which locals told us they’ll never believe.

In the days we were in Kashgar, we saw huge troops occupying the shady spots in the main square under the trees outside the mosque where the pious old Muslim men have always sat. New recruits for the local branch of citizens’ police practice walking drills and aggressive chants, taking delivery of uniforms and huge wooden batons outside our hotel. We spotted snipers on the roof of buildings surrounding the bazaar.

A friend we made told us how the government are destroying the Old City and paying people out of their traditional mudbrick homes to replace with with ugly, faceless Chinese concrete appartments – actions that are very obviously erasing the presence and history of Uighar tradition and culture.

He doesn’t want to sell his home that has been passed on from generation to generation, but is worried that next year, his block will be demolished anyway and he’ll be left with nothing. So far, about 50% of the Old City in Kashgar has been destroyed.

We were left feeling sad and disturbed at seeing a very palpable example of racial genocide, cultural dilution, regime and oppression. The weight of our feelings could of course never be compared to that of the repression Uighar people are being forced to live with. Tibetans have been living under the same kind of conditions, but the international world is more aware of their plight due to the proactive and vocal Dalai Lama. He states clearly that the Tibetan people in Tibet are not free and are constantly living in fear. We feel that this is also true for the indigenous population living in Xinjiang.

For us, the journey we are on is not about politics or fighting the grain of a situation, yet we feel that, since we have the fortune of freedom of movement, we owe it to those who don’t, to remove ourselves from an area of the world that is controlled by such ‘bloody-bastard-guys’.

Passport in hand, Pakistan is the closest country we can enter without prior arrangement of a visa (at least we think so!). We’ll head south-west towards the Khunjerab Pass, past the Kongur-Muztagata and Sariqul mountain ranges through Tajik and Kyrgyz settlements.

Deciding to change our route and reach the Himalayas via Pakistan and India instead of via Lhasa has not been easy. But we have chosen to do this in opposition to the occupation of Xinjiang and Tibet by the Chinese government, who are imposing a fearful and oppressive regime over the Uighur and Tibetan indigenous people.

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Greetings from the road!

As we freewheeled down to the city of Kashgar, sun and dust in our eyes, haze in the air, second-largest sand shifting desert to our east, we felt elated to have made it this far. To me, reaching China symbolises having ridden halfway around the world – HOORAY for pedal power!

From Osh, Kyrgyzstan, we were joined by two cyclists, Ben and Sylvie, who’ve ridden all the way from France on recumbents.

The first 60kms of road was smooth as a runway. But then, as predicted, the roadworks began.

Smiling faces greeted us and we learnt our first few words of Chinese, yelling, “Nee-ha” (hello) to all the Chinese road builders as we bumped and clunked along. My forearms and hands ached from the vibrations and corrugations, my lungs stung from the dust of the trucks, but my heart sang with the mountains that surrounded us.

At the end of our second day, we were waved down by a young lad, Timur, who invited us to camp in his back garden. We stayed there for 3 days, swam in the mountain meltwater and visited the jailoos – the summer pastures – riding a donkey!

The families living in the yurts invited us in…

…and plied us with yoghurt, hard balls of cheese, green tea, fresh cream, nan bread and… fermented mare’s milk, a Kyrgyz specialty, known as kummuz.

Crossing the 3615m Taldyk Pass wasn’t half as difficult as I had imagined (I’d been creating a nightmare road based on what all the cyclists in Osh had described). As we climbed higher and higher, a cold flutter of snow greeted us.

Dan sped ahead, strong and sure, I was slower, having to stay in Granny Gear. This was not because of a steep incline, but because my gears were becoming more and more jammed. Ben and Sylvie had a near collision with a speeding truck, which hadn’t judged the angle of the hairpin bend.

The air was thin at the top, and I was breathless but happy.

And when I looked back at where we had come from, I was quite impressed.

The village of Sary Tash was horrible and we fought with the local kids who were throwing stones at us and trying to catch hold of our bikes. But to counterbalance this was the stunning view. And we followed this mountain range all the way to China…

The road deteriorated quite a lot more, but we didn’t care, we just loved being amongst all these beautiful mountains …

And 250kms later, we were in China, where the stinking floppy-humped camels, the wind-sculpted rocks and the mud-brick Uighur settlements kept us constantly surprised.

China has seemed so elusive, so far away for so long, and yet now its snow-capped peaks are beckoning us, inviting us, challenging us. These grand mountains bring tears to my eyes – their presence and strength remind me of my own eternal nature.

From Osh, a road winds its way into the Alay Mountain range. We’re gonna follow it for some 250 kilometres, crossing three high passes, to reach Irkeshtam, the border with China.

I’m a bit nervous cos we’ve met a stack of other cyclists here who’ve reported that this particular road is the worst they’ve ever ridden. Its whole length is currently under construction, and by all accounts, apart from the first smooth and tarmacked 60kms, it’s rubble, mud, diggers, sand and gravel all the way to China.

I hope my bike will last until we reach Kashgar. It’s creaking and groaning from within the front hub and the gears have some unsolved problems that elude even Dan. And neither of us know how we’ll deal with the altitude yet – the Taldyk Pass is at 3615 metres – and is the highest we’ve been on bikes.

But, one pedal at a time, and I’m sure we’ll get there.

Our trip is to raise funds for Rainforest Rescue, an environmental organisation working to protect rainforests of the world. Here is an update on their progress…

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Good news! Since January of this year Rainforest Rescue has planted 10,000 trees on previously cleared land inside the Daintree National Park in far-north Queensland.

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Also, on 13 May 2009, Rainforest Rescue purchased Lot 29 Cape Tribulation Road in the Daintree! This is the 11th property in Rainforest Rescue’s Daintree Buy Back and Protect Forever Project – identifying and purchasing precious rainforest at risk of development and establishing Nature Refuge status, which protects it forever under covenants ratified by the Queensland Parliament in Australia.

Owning this 11th property not only means that the unique rainforest flora here, including the impressive fan palms are safe, but rare and endangered species like the Bennett’s tree kangaroo and cassowaries now have a vital corridor through the rural residential subdivision from the Daintree National Park on its northern side to two declared Nature Reserves in the south. This is particularly important in this area, as residential development fragments essential cassowary habitat through clearing and the introduction of weeds and dogs.

Unlike the properties to the south of the adjoining road, which are in wet lowland areas, Lot 29 runs up the side of the foothills of the Daintree National Park, offering a significantly different ecosystem especially worthy of conservation.

The vegetation type here is described as notophyll to mesophyll vine forest with significant numbers of fan palms on the slopes with the main emergent being the swamp mahogany — host to the rare redeye butterfly and bottlebrush orchids. The biodiversity values of this ecosystem type are described as being ‘very species rich’.

As a dedicated Nature Refuge, no development is possible at all now on this property; no dogs, no traffic, no clearing, nothing. Just nature doing what it does best (under the watchful eye of biologist and Conservation Manager David Cook). You can visit this and other properties we have secured on a self guided tour, Rainforest Rescue can give you directions any time.

Your continued support is vital in keeping up the momentum on this project. Please help secure even more of the Daintree by making a donation to Rainforest Rescue.

Click here to donate, thank you! xxx