Shufu (2)

A short time later (a little too short really given the comfort of the car) we arrived at Bulungkoi. After unloading the gear from the car, thanking our driver and giving him his 300 yuan, we rugged up (the wind and weather was starting to get noticeably cooler) and got going.

We took the opportunity to stop briefly at our recent lunch spot for another bowl of goat soup as there wouldn't be another place to buy food for the next 40 or 50 kms. The bread rolls we got this time seemed to be the same ones we were offered about 5 days ago. They were certainly hard and stale enough to have been the same ones. By wrestling them into small pieces though and soaking thoroughly in the soup they helped fill the gap that the soup alone wouldn't.

A few more kilometres down the road we were at the top of the gorge once again and facing a ripper of a downhill ride. There was nearly 70 kilometres of switchbacks and long straight stretches ahead of us so, with the weather starting to close in rapidly, we decided not to linger. We had an added incentive to keep moving too. A couple of days earlier we had met an English cyclist who told us about a hot spring 15 kms down from the top, at the 1609 km road marker to be exact. With all that downhill ahead of us we figured we could afford to waste a little of the day soaking in a hot bath and frankly we probably both needed to.

As we began to descend we were met face on by a fierce wind blowing up the gorge. That we would have a headwind was not unexpected as the winds during the heat of the day tend to blow up the mountains and descend during the cool of night and early morning. It was a bit of a disappointment though that this wind was so strong. We needed to select easy gears and peddle quite hard down even the steepest sections of the road to be able to make any headway at all. Fortunately within a few kilometres we were out of the worst of it and moving once more with relative ease.

At the 1609 km road marker we turned down a short rocky driveway to an unlikely looking set of buildings near the river. This was the hot spring we'd been told about and, despite its modest exterior, the main building housed a large clean pool and several bath tubs that were continously fed by hot water from the spring nearby. We swam and soaked for about 40 minutes and got the cleanest we'd been in about a fortnight.

It was a very strange feeling to be swimming in a hot pool out here. Even though this part of China is bordered by some of the biggest mountains in the world, and we were among them right now, our strongest impressions and memories of Xinjiang have always been the extreme heat and dust of the desert. To be swimming in a hot pool seemed counterintuitive to say the least.

As we relaxed and let the hot spring do its job we could see through the few open windows there were towering white peaks above us. Huge blocks of ice hung menacingly on some of the steep slopes and it was clear to see where large chunks had recently broken away. We kept hoping to hear the loud crack and subsequent roar of one of these massive ice blocks letting go and avalanching down the slopes but it was not to be. If we hung around here for a few days or weeks we might be lucky enough to see exactly that but sadly we didn't have the luxury of that much time.

With the bath over we continued on. The road squeezed its way between sheer towering cliffs carved out by the roaring grey waters of the Ghez river. It clung impossibly to the sides and occasionally showed signs of having lost its grip in the past. When it had, whole sections of the road were plunged into the river and instantly erased. Avalanche was the other major threat to the road, and travellers, up here and and as we sped on there were numerous examples of recent rock fall dotted along the way. Although we stopped many times to take photos it was never a very comfortable feeling to stand in one spot for more than a few minutes so, again, we kept moving.

Finally, with the late afternoon came a widening of the gorge and a shrinking of the mountains. The road started to flatten out and turn north towards Kashgar. When we arrived back in Oytag we headed once again to the stall we had bought cold drinks from 5 days earlier and as we sat in the shade we toyed briefly with the idea of staying here again for the night. We had come a respectable 80 kms afterall but with the wind having swung around and now at our backs Kashgar, or somewhere much closer to it, beckoned.

We were both feeling fresh still and although it was now about 5.00 in the afternoon (Beijing time) it didn't get dark till around 11.00. After a brief look at the map we settled on the town of Shufu as the preferred stopping point for the night and, against our better judgement, turned our backs on Oytag and headed back out into the desert.

Two kms out of Oytag the wind turned suddenly into a stiff headwind and it began to rain. We found ourselves wondering if we should have accepted the good fortune that had got us so easily to Oytag a little more graciously and called it a day back there. The sudden change in the weather was only brief, however, like some sort of divine warning from the cycling Gods not to take their favour so lightly next time, and things soon returned to the way they were.

According to our map, Shufu was about 40 kms further on but either the distances on our map were incorrect or we weren't looking at Shufu for it did not emerge from the desert anywhere near where we expected it to. It did not appear anywhere near as soon as we expected it to either.

We ground on hour after hour until it was eventually too dark to see with sunglasses but still Shufu did not appear. Time and again a line of poplar trees in the distance would trick us into thinking we'd made it only to be disappointed to find a small village and then more open desert. At last, however, tired and with our legs functioning purely on memory, we rolled into Shufu in darkness. We'd come 152 kms for the day and 70+ of those since Oytag. Kashgar was just 16 kms away.

After asking around and finally being guided by a very kind, if somewhat drunk, Chinese man we came to what was apparently the only hotel in town. While Neil went upstairs with our inebriated guide to check out the rooms I waited out on the footpath with our bikes and gear.

Pretty looking women in short revealing skirts wandered in and out of the hotel constantly. The sight of such scantily clad beauties was at odds with the fact that this was a Uighur run, and therefore presumably Muslim, hotel. There was a nightclub (also not traditionally a Muslim thing) on the ground floor and then 2 levels of hotel rooms above. Weird, but I was too tired to give it much thought.

Neil was gone some time (but not that long in case you were wondering....) and when he eventually returned he had both good and bad news as he put it. The good news is they have a room with 2 beds, a TV and a bathroom. The bad news is it is up 2 flights of spiral stairs and we'll have to lug our gear up there. Oh yeah, and the place is a brothel. That explained what had been distracting me repeatedly down in the hotel entrance. Perhaps it also explained why our drunk Chinese friend was so eager to show us the place and why he, unlike most other people we'd asked, seemed to know exactly where to find it.

Oh yeah, said Neil, and another thing, the rooms have rats. Big rats!