The Good the Bad and the Goddamn Awful

After Wulan the map looked disconcertingly empty. There seemed to be no settlements of reasonable size for about 650km, so we prepared for at least a couple of nights camping.
If the map looked empty that was nothing compared to the place itself. I have never been to such a desolate place in all my life, I have never seen so much nothing. There seemed not to be a living thing for hundreds of miles, it was disconcerting and more than a little dull. Miles and miles of mud dunes gave way to miles and miles of pebble desert which faded once again into mud dunes in a seemingly unbreakable cycle. A stark contrast to the beauty and variety we had come to expect from Eastern Qinghai.
Given the bleak nature of our surroundings, it is not altogether surprising that the campsites we found for our two nights on this Martian landscape did not quite live up to those of previous evenings. On the first night we became worried that the wind had picked up and what seemed to be a dust storm was approaching. We stopped by the side of the road in the most sheltered area we could find and started to pitch our tents. It took us an hour of battling with inners, outers, poles and pegs in the ever-strengthening wind and the ever-thickening dust to put up our tents. Then, as the wind died down and the dust settled later that night, the rain came.
Luckily the tents stood firm and we were afforded a half-decent night’s sleep. The next morning however, we discovered that the rain had brought out the mosquitoes and, as the wind had changed, a hideous smell of rotting flesh had settled over our campsite. We had inadvertently pitched camp close to two rotting animal carcasses. So being bitten all over by mosquitoes, and with the stench of decaying animal carcasses in our nostrils, we struck camp.
Surely the next day could not be any worse? At this point is where I need to confess to a pathological desire to kill horribly and brutally the maker of our map. As far as we were concerned we wanted to follow the G315 which would eventually take us the 2500km to Kashgar. This was totally correct, except that our map showed us the route of the old G315. As such, it unnecessarily subjected us to the worst road I have ever driven on, and hopefully ever will drive on. Sand, rocks and gravel combined to create a motorcyclists’ hell.
Our slow progress was made even more painful by the fact that my chain kept falling off, so every couple of kilometres we had to stop to place it back in its appropriate place, rather than dragging along the floor. Eventually, and bizarrely, in this landscape replete with nothingness we saw a streak of light shoot across the sky ahead of us, swiftly followed by another. I am no weapons expert, but I have seen enough films, and enough ‘action news’ bulletins to know that these were missiles. It seems that this old road was still somewhat in use as a route to a small, but none the less imposing, army base.
When we reached the entrance to the base we came across a very surprised looking soldier, and two very surprised looking oil workers. Normally in such a situation I try and hurry on as quickly as possible, it is usually best to avoid giving the Chinese authorities any excuse to make one’s life difficult, as they will invariably take such an opportunity and run with it as far as they can. However, my chain was becoming so infuriating that I simply had to ask whether they had a spanner of the particular size that we needed, which it turned out the oil workers did. While the chain was being tightened we tried to ascertain where exactly we were. It was at this point that we found out that we were on the old G315, which had been abandoned for many years, and that we had three choices. To turn back and drive 100km to the turning on to the new G315, continue 120km on the road on which we were currently, but which would get considerably worse, or finally sit down where we were and cry our eyes out. As tempting as the third option seemed it was not, in the end, particularly useful and one can’t cry in front of a soldier anyway, so after much deliberation we decided that, although the road ahead may be bad, it did at least head in the right direction. So we continued. The road did, indeed get worse. Bones were rattled, arses were bruised and falls were made. It was a truly horrific experience. I’d like to say, in that favourite phrase of British public schools, that the experience was ‘character building’, but I’m not so sure. We drove for nine hours and covered 176km.
After this ordeal tarmac felt like a river of silk, it was an absolute joy to ride upon. However, after such an ordeal we were in desperate need of a good night’s sleep. We pitched camp in a desolate spot by a lake and began to feel a little bit better about ourselves. Until, that is, the wind began to pick up and on the horizon we could see a black cloud approaching at some speed. We just managed to finish dinner and pack things up before our second dust storm hit. This one was far more ferocious than the one the previous night, and it felt for a while, as tent poles bent and buckled under the strain of the wind, that the tents might not last.
Thankfully the tents did hold and the wind eventually died down enough for us to sleep, a fitting end to a truly despicable day.
The next day was to be our last day in Qinghai, a diverse and simultaneously beautiful and bleak province which, to be honest, we were delighted to leave. Our last night was spent in a hotel which was under construction in a desolate oil town on the Qinghai border, which felt like paradise compared to a tent in a dust storm.
The next day it was on to Xinjiang, our destination province, and not a moment too soon.