It’s nuts really, the sources of these most iconic of rivers lie just 340 kms apart as the crow flies, the Mekong rising on Mt. Guozongmucha, and the Yangtze on Geladandong Mountain. As we ride from Golmud to Nakchu in Tibet we ride between the two mountains, from which spring the two greatest waterways of East Asia – […]
It wasn’t our preference to ride the Taklamakan desert again, we’d already struggled through that on our Silk Road ride of 2005. But the Chinese refused us entry to Tibet from the northwest and insisted we could only enter along the northeast entry route. Given we’d just entered China from the south west via Pakistan […]
Goodbye Pakistan, hello Chinese Turkestan – at least that’s the alternative name for the vast Xinjiang westernmost province of China, home of the Uyghur people who historically had allegiance to Ghengis Khan’s Mongol Empire. But once the Manchu Qing dynasty got control of East Turkestan in the 18th Century it was all over, this area became […]
Long one of the Silkroad’s most mystical locations – along with Samarkand and Bokhara in Uzbekistan, Kashgar, sitting in the far west of what is nowadays China is the junction between the east-west silkroad joining China to Europe and the north-south road from Urumqi to Kashmir (which we saw the remnants of in the north […]
Pakistan borders China’s western hinterland. Urumqi the capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region is one of the world’s furthest and isolated cities from the sea. But China is changing all that. In a exercise in expanding influence that is reminiscent of “The Great Game” that this region saw in the late 19th century when Russia and Britain […]
Pakistan turned out to be much more adventurous than Jo had planned. She hopes the incredible heat hasn’t affected Gareth’s brain, and just how do you get three motorbikes into a canoe? Across Attabad Lake
From Gilgit the climb to the Khundjerab Pass (4,800m) starts. We will take a few days to ensure we don’t get a repeat of the altitude sickness that dropped us that time in the Andes where we foolishly did 4,0O0m in one day. That’s the last thing we need given the lingering dehydration that the […]
We feel alone here, and certainly are a novelty whether we’re on our bikes of just strolling down the streets. The reason istourists are nowhere to be seen. Tourism took a hit in 2001 after 9/11 but it really collapsed in Pakistan in 2007 when the Taliban took over Islamabad’s Red Mosque and demanded that […]
As we sit and sip tea in this garrison town northwest of Islamabad and prior to entering the notoriously insecure province of Kohistan to our overnight stop in a compound at Besham and contemplate our big day tomorrow where we’ve been told to move along smartly and whatever we do not stop in Chilas, it […]
We finally get it together – bikes out of customs and visas for China sorted from the consulate here in Karachi, Pakistan. We are set to leave town, 3 days later than we’d planned but everything is in place, all 3 bikes and riders are good to go. It’s hot in Karachi the day we […]
