Small cyclist world

Xavier, Sarah and Holger

Again we were reminded of the small world of cyclists. Do you remember Raphael who we met twice, once in a hostel in Tashkent and the second time in Almaty during a couchsurfing event? In Chengdu we met French cyclist Xavier on his way from Tajikistan to Laos. When we told him about Raphael the surprise was big. Raphael was actually one of his brother's friend.

Back home, even before we had started our trip, we followed a German cyclist on his blog. We can't remember exactly how we found his Bike Project 2010 blog. But most likely it was due to his itinerary. He cycled Central Asia and the Pamir Mountains that was initially our plan as well.

In Chengdu Xavier was waiting for a fellow cyclist that he had met in Lanzhou before. When this fellow cyclist arrived in the hostel, he introduced us to Holger, a German cyclist, on his way from Germany to China. After hours of chatting we suddenly figured out that Holger was the Bike Project 2010 cyclist!

Isn't that funny? It's such a small world. Somehow we are all linked.

We'll be cycling with Xavier and Holger out of Chengdu tomorrow. Next destination is Leshan and its 70 m tall Buddha. It's still very wet in Sichuan. Fingers crossed for better weather!

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Chengdu City Tour

Our 24 km tour in Chengdu with two other cyclists we met here: Holger from Germany and Xavier from France. We got lost somewhere on the way. Fingers off the brake levers means suicide :-)

Bicycle problem: headset play

Since Uzbekistan I more felt than heard occasional crackling in my head tube. The threadless headset had abnormal play and going downhill the fork of the bicycle was shaking too much. I was afraid that it could be a serious problem.

Being in Chengdu, a megacity, with many bicycle shops, we didn't want to leave the city without having this problem solved. We went to one bicycle shop where the owner was supposed to speak English and unfortunately found it shut down. In the hostel they rang up another bicycle shop but they didn't speak English either. There wasn't much alternative. So I cycled to the shop and when I saw Giant and Trek mountain bikes inside, I knew it was a real bicycle shop and not one of those street repair shops. I "explained" what the problem was and the mechanic found the problem within a second! He added a spacer and the play was gone. There is still a lot to learn about bicycles and like in this particular case threadless headsets.

Problem solved! We can continue! We don't come back home yet!

The Sichuanese hotpot experience

3026 km and 49 hours later: we made it to Chengdu, Sichuan province, in southwest China. OK, we didn't pedal this distance but we hung in long 49 hours in a small train compartment. Actually the train ride itself wasn't as bad as we had imagined. That is probably due to the so called soft sleeper beds (4 beds in one compartment) that we had. Initially we wanted to have the cheaper hard sleeper versions (6 beds in an open compartment), but they were all sold out. We didn't regret the soft sleeper variant: much more comfort and more place for our many panniers (no idea how that would have fit the hard sleeper wagons). Also surprising was the cleanliness in the train. More than that, we also had nice 'compartment-mates', two Chinese girls on the way to meet the family-in-law of one of them. We were so lucky not to have old, spitting, snoring men that gnaw on chicken feet in our compartment.

 Probably everybody knows the Chinese instant noodles. Really every passenger on the train brought many of the noodle cups for the long ride and there is hot water supply in each wagon. Actually it was surprising how much food the Chinese took with them. We did understand later why. There is not much to do on such a train ride. Eating is the best time filler.

We arrived in Chengdu today. The train station is one of the busiest train station in China. When we got off the train, we went to pick up our bicycles. Did they survive? Yes, they did! And they survived even better than on the Air Baltic flight from Helsinki to Dushanbe. Both bicycles - unpacked by the way - were in impeccable conditions. As you can imagine we were really happy to get have them back!!

James and Sophia, if you read this post ... we are in the same hostel again where we stayed altogether 4 years ago. You always come to a place twice :-) And another second visit, we went to the same hotpot restaurant just around the corner. We ordered the spicy version of course and thought we would be used to it now. Oh, I was so wrong! Gosh, it was so spicy that I couldn't eat much. Sarah didn't mind the spice. Brave! I once read that the Sichuanese food is so spicy because in the past food quality wasn't that good, so they used the spice to hide the bad taste. I do confirm: Sichuanese hotput destroyed my taste buds!