Distance: 43km
Altitude difference: 1700m. -> 2300m.
Biking time: 3h:40m

We got in Ghez in the early afternoon, on time for an excellent lunch (some fried rolls and noodles with mutton). Ghez is a very small place, just few restaurants and kiosks. For 2€ we slept in a room attached to the restaurant. We spent the afternoon fixing the bicycles and I managed to get rid of a noious noise in the front derailleur.

some different views.

For hours and hours, the same landscape. We are in the wide canyon formed by the Ghez river. The road is always uphill, now some 10-15m/km.The canyon is getting narrower as we approach Ghez …

As we start biking in the morning, we are stopped because of some road work ahead. Enough time for eating some noodles in a bar nearby and loading enough water for the day. Of course, all the people are interested in the bikes, not us -)

Distance: 83Km.
Altitude difference: 1300m. -> 1700m.
Biking time: 5h:30m

Finally we can have some rest. Ghez is too far away to reach and we stop somewhere along the road. We put the tent, check the bikes and we cook our delicious dinner: one package of chinese instant noodles, a fistfull of rice and some slices of wurstel. Claudio also got his first puncture. The dust (that doesn’t show in the picture) was everywhere!!

Another break.It’s about 2pm, the hottest time of the day. Our heads are cooking. We have been biking on the border of the Taklamakan desert on a slightly uphill road (some 10m/km). Really a strange feeling to be in the desert with a bike. We rested a bit in the shadow of that little house.

Very clos to it and very hot

A small restaurant in Upal.

First break and first maintenance for the bikes. We thought that the little metal bridge prepared by Sigma won’t last for very long. So, we added a very carefully engineered fix (a stone) that in theory should help the bridge not to twist…”

Here we start biking the KKH!! It’s Thursday morning around 8:30. Kashgar is waking up just now. We have packed our stuff and carefully attached the bags on the backsit. We are not sure it will resist till the end but we hope. The load is probably around 12kg per bag.

Funny to note that Simone is wearing an helmet. He won’t wear it for the rest of the trip except in two “critical” situations. I’m not wearing it at the beginning, but later I’ll wear it most of the time.

We had a walk in the old city of Kashgar in the evening. Really a nice atmosphere.

First test of the bikes, few kilometers and the first puncture for Simone… really good start

Excellent and cheap flight with a brand new plane. We landed at 1am and we went straight to the hotel. We spent a couple of hours re-assembling the bikes. I think we were excited like kids opening the Christmas’ presents. It has been a long day. From Novosibirsk to Kashgar while bike shopping in Urumqi… We still can’t believe it.

Two taxis to rush to the airport. We also need to purchase the flight tickets…

It’s about 9:30 pm. In about 4 hours, Sigma assembled two mountain bikes, customized them for us with the disc breaks and the back sit (that required a metal part prepared on the fly from a nearby workshop), and finally he re-packed the bikes in the original packages. Impressive. We are on time to catch the 11pm flight to Kashgar, if we run back to the airport

It still needs some fixes in Sigma’s “workshop”. His experience in assembling bikes was really impressive.

Simone’s bike is almost completed

Our chinese friend “sigma” is preparing our bikes. He was really fast and available. Thanks!

Simone doesn’t really trust the food on the street

Claudio forced me to eat something special along the street…

While waiting for the bikes, we had a quick walk in the center of Urumqi. After the lazy Novosibirsk, Urumqi gave a totally different impression. It was full of busy people everywhere: students, builders busy with new constructions, painters hanging down from the walls, people moving stuff with trolleys and other people selling food on the street. Really a busy and fast-growing city. Impressive was that totally new commercial center, 5 or 6 floors, built with western standards and selling all possible products. Just with a short walk, I think we got a glimpse of the big change that is happening in the whole country.

The Giant shop really exists and it’s full of cool mountain bikes. We tried some of them and at the end we picked up two mountain bikes with half suspension, shimano gears and disc breaks for a reasonable price.. The seller (renamed “Sigma” because he was repeating that word all the time) promised us to prepare the bikes in a couple of hours. Simply amazing, we couldn’t believe it. We landed at 2pm and at 5pm we had already purchased the bikes.

First task: change money at the bank. We couldn’t find an exchange office or ATM in the airport, so we had to catch a taxi and drive to the closest bank. Not an easy task since our taxi driver spoke only Chinese, he didn’t understand the word “bank” and he didn’t have a clue when we were waving some dollars in front of him. At the end we found a bank and also some luck.

The clerk was very nice. She spoke English and instructed the taxi driver to bring us to the Giant shop downtown Urumqi. She understood that we were some kind of “alpinist”….

Excellent start for our plan. One hour for the immigration in China with some nurses over there ready to spread disinfectant on us…

We made it to Urumqi. Very soft landing. Siberian airlines must have the best pilots in the world if they can drive those old planes. During the flight, we played with the idea of buying the bicycles today and catching immediatelly the flight to Kashgar. We hope in some good Karma

We are finally on the plane from Novosibirsk to Urumqi. Not exactly the latest model of Airbus, probably it has some 30 years of service. At least the price was adequate

Finally out of Russia, heading to Urumqi in China

On the way back to the hotel we only found dark and desert streets. Really time to sleep. Once in our beds, the phone rang a couple of times and, while the person on the other side only spoke Russian, we understood that she was offering us some kind “extra room services”. Funny, in Russia, and especially in these remote places, certain habits will never disappear.

Besides all the cloppete cloppete on the dark streets and the very lound music coming from an empty bar in the park, the city was quite dead. At least, we couldn’t find a better place than an almost empty pizzeria near the park where they actually served us an excelled pizza with no mozzarella(it was finished).

There he is. Stil alive. In the wind, watching the rising sun from the East while holding the left fist. Perfect statue. I thought you could only find them in museums or in Belarus. Just wondering why it was left here…

If in the early morning we were struck by the silence of the forest, in the afternoon the silence was broken by something that cannot pass unnoticed from St Petersburg to Vladivostok even to a distracted traveller: the ubiquitous sound of “cloppete cloppete” produced by the high hills of the Russian women who are constantly trotting up and down the big avenues while wearing their extremely short and provocative mini-skirts… This definitely scored as cultural shock number one.

Jetlagged + no sleep last night…

We spent the night on the plane. It was actually a very short night due to the time difference. But we are finally arrived in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Really a different place than Sp. It’s cold, humid and foggy. It’s also very silent here. It’s very early morning, about 6 am, yet it’s like if all the sounds have suddenly softened from the noisy Sp. There is the huge Siberian forest, taiga, around us. That must be reason for such a silence. We don’t say a word like the other passengers and silently we walk to an old soviet construction that looks like the terminal of the airport.

boarding to novosibirsk

for 500 ruble we are going straight to the airport to catch our tupolev to siberia.

No doubts: one of the most beautiful city in the world

We’ve decided to change our flights and fly one day earlier to novosibirsk. So, we’ll spend the night there and we’ll have some time to visit the city. It’s always nice to have changeable tickets.

tonight we go to siberia. We’ve already changed our plan but i guess it is gonna worth.

there are not ugly girls in the world but just few vodka.