For the next couple of hours I would ride for a hundred feet [30 meters], then stop and rest, ride again, stop again, slowly inching my way higher and higher. Once again the Himalaya worked their powerful alchemy on me, turning my legs from solid muscle into jello. Now I know how boneless chicken are made. Midway up the climb, an army truck stopped. Two good-looking Chinese guys jumped down to discover the nature of the presence. A slight pain pulling at my chest had caused me to take a roadside rest break. I knew that I would have to move even slower. They wanted their picture taken alongside my bike and me. I obliged them and continued the climb. Once I reached the top I jettisoned the bike in the dirt, and kept walking pushing one hip forward then the other to swing my limp legs out in front of me. I kept walking, sucking in the thin air as fast as I could. I knew that my days in Tibet had come to an end when I saw the top of the pass, not a single prayer flag waved in the wind. A small wooden sign stuck in the barren dirt marked the pass, with writing in Uyghur and Chinese painted on the sun bleached wood. Around the bottom of the post hung a kata, a Tibetan blessing scarf. A sadness came over me, because I knew that this signaled the end of the Tibetan part of my trip, I was now entering the Muslim province of Xinjiang.
For a moment I thought back to 1992 atop the Lalung La Pass. This pass marks the top of the largest downhill in the world, a continuous descent of 15,000 vertical feet [4573 meters] to the banks of the Sunkosi River. On the route from Lhasa to Kathmandu the 17,060-foot [5182 meter] Lalung La Pass is the final obstacle before the Nepal border. When my two British friends and I reached the top of this monster pass tears of joy and relief ran down our faces washing the dirt from our sunburned cheeks. After making an offering of incense we recuperated atop the pass. The passing Tibetan travelers toss paper prayers into the air as they cross the pass, yelling “Lha sollo! Lha sollo!”, to give thanks for a safe journey. Thousands of these two-inch-square prayer papers imprinted with a written prayer and a picture of a flying horse littered the ground surrounding us. As we took in the splendor of the Himalayan peaks around us, a strong wind started to stir. Seconds later we all lifted our heads to see a small funnel draw the thousands of small pray papers hundreds of feet [50 meters] into the air. This magical event gave us all a few seconds to reflect on what we had survived and what still lay ahead.
I had heard of Sirengou from the road workers back in Domar. They had indicated to me that I might be able to find some food in Sirengou. Of course the exact location stood miles from where the workers had indicated on my map. It turned out that it was just a collection of torn and broken down army tents in the Askin Chin. Three main tents had been erected on opposite sides of the dirt clearing. When I arrived a group of a few dozen Chinese soldiers occupied the area between the tents, they stopped to work on their trucks and satisfy their hunger. Soldiers eating bowls of rice and vegetables filled each of the tents. Outside gangs of men dressed in green army uniforms took apart suspension systems of trucks and rewelded gas tanks with hand-held blowtorches. Taking the remaining portion of the day to eat and rest was the only thing that I needed to do. Since this was a totally transient collection of tents, the authorities had not stationed any police in the area. Even if I did encounter a policeman, they could only send me to Kashgar, which is where I was headed anyway.
While I continued to refill my belly with more bowls of rice, two jeeps from Ali arrived at the tent where I ate. A few schoolteachers and their friends piled out of the jeeps. After everyone sat down at the small tables in the tent, I learned that one member of the group taught math and another taught English. They had all lived in Ali for just two years and they were headed back to central China for a short vacation. The only way out of Ali consisted of driving overland to Kashgar and then flying from Kashgar back to where you really needed to go. The two teachers exchanged friendly conversation with me. They were both Chinese intellectuals stranded in Western Tibet. None of their group really knew how to live out in this cold and barren land. They traveled in light clothes and cheaply made Chinese jackets. After a few hour break their driver informed them that one of the jeeps had broken down and failed to start. I helped them ask around in the convoy of army vehicles for some of the parts and supplies that they needed, but it resulted in a fruitless search. As the sun started to go down it became apparent that they would have to spend the night in Sirengou. Both of the drivers took the one working jeep and headed to a distant Chinese army base that hopefully had the needed parts. This represented their only chance.
After sunset the temperature dropped quickly. I pulled out my pile jacket and my high-tech GorTex sleeping bag. The Chinese teachers from Ali started to get a bit worried about surviving the bone-chilling temperatures of nighttime. None of them had a decent coat or blanket. They tried to collect a good amount of hot water in their thermos bottles to at least have hot tea to drink during the night. The owner of the tent lent one of the men a knee-length sheepskin coat. Almost every truck driver in Tibet carries one of these Chinese army coats. Sheepskin fur lines the entire inside of the heavy-duty jackets that also serves as blankets. Most of the group stayed up for the duration of the night playing cards and walking in circles inside the small army tent. The thermometer dropped too low for anyone to get more than a few minutes of sleep. The heavy coat provided the one man with the luxury of a couple hours of sleep. By sunrise the other jeep returned with the badly needed supplies. The soldiers at the army base fortunately had the required replacement parts. Moments after they got the second jeep running everyone piled in as they took off. They left in a hurry, looking forward to arriving in the warm and “civilized world” of Kashgar.
The heart of the Askin Chin is a massive basin that spans hundreds of miles across. From the middle of this table land, I could clearly see distant mountains in all directions, to the south the Himalaya of Ladakh, India, to the west the peaks of the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan, and to the north the Kun Lun Shan Mountains. The Kun Lun Shan, or “Mountains of Darkness,” are home to most of the remaining 1000 snow leopards on the planet. While I rode, I noticed that the animals of the Askin Chin seemed to be less afraid of me. Maybe it was just that very few people have ever spent any time in this area. When an antelope saw me riding on the road, he raced me for some distance. To ride in this vacant land side by side with such a beautiful animal brought a great smile to my face. I sprinted down the road at 15 mph [25 kph] with a wild antelope just a few yards away bounding alongside me. In the late afternoon the winds and dark storm clouds rolled in. They brought head winds so strong that I would have to stop riding. The ditches off the side of the road and the small piles of dirt left by the road workers created convenient rest areas. The winds pelted me with small rocks and sand when I remained out in the open. Sometimes the storms also brought flurries of fresh snow even in the months of July and August. The monsoon back on the south side of the Himalaya in India filled the clouds with moisture. The saying that I have seen on Harley Davidson T-shirts, rang through my head. “Ride to Live, Live to Ride.” I do not think this is exactly what all of those HOG riders had in mind.
After riding for 2400 miles [4000 km], a distance that in the USA would have taken me from the East Coast to the West Coast, I stood somewhere in the middle of this gigantic basin. I had arrived at the Chinese military base called Tainshuihai. When I rode up, it looked as if this complex of buildings consisted of nothing but a skeleton of something left from the war fought in ‘62 with the Indians. Just about all the buildings were abandoned and falling apart. Hunks of paint peeled off all the concrete walls, while garbage was piled high around every corner. Fuel tanks the size of automobiles had been abandoned wherever they stood. Like just about all the remote Chinese army camps that I had seen in Western Tibet, it was only at about 5 percent of full staff. Once I tracked down a couple of soldiers, it did not take not long until I found a plateful of rice and vegetables. Literally everything that these guys had at this base, except for water, had to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away. When I finished my meal, they offered me a couple of dark green army ration cans of pears and apples. I removed my SOG tool from my pack to open the cans. My SOG tool immediately impressed all the Chinese soldiers. This small paramilitary tool had saved me time after time on this trip. It contained an assortment of tools including pliers, a knife, a file, and a can opener. After inspecting my SOG, one of the soldiers asked me how much I paid for it. How could I explain that I paid US$45 for this small tool, an amount equivalent to what a Chinese worker would receive for a month’s pay. When they pressed me for a price I said something that was high but still less than US$45. None of them understood. They thought that I was foolish for paying such a ridiculous sum of money. They informed me that I could buy the same thing in China for a fraction of the price. I did not try to explain world economies and the relative cost of living in the USA and China. They asked me if the US government paid for my trip in China. What were they thinking, that maybe I worked as a US government spy or something? With China being Communist, the government is just about everyone’s employer. They did not understand how it was possible that I did not have to work for so many months. I just did not fit into their model of work and vacation. Well, for that matter most of my friends back in the USA didn’t understand it either. It was clear that no one in his right mind would be out in the middle of the Askin Chin on his vacation.