Land of Abundance, Home of the Panda
by Amy and Wim

Billions of squinty eyed little people pushing us, shoving us, and spitting their boogers on our toes.  Unintelligible Chinese characters swarming around our heads.  Hoards of onlookers laughing at us as we get charged insane tourist prices.  Police watching our every move. "This city is closed, no pictures, we have to confiscate your camera!"  Who can we ask, where do we go, how can we function in such an alien country?  Dry cabbage and dog for breakfast, lunch and dinner, stinky hotels and community toilets.  Wim and Amy...two little fish lost in a big scary Chinese pond.  Or at least that is what we expected.

"Wim and Amy...two little fish
lost in a big scary Chinese pond.  Or at
least that is what we expected."

We had just stepped out of Laos, the land of sticky rice and bamboo huts, and we had stepped into a shocking world of stores that sell things, people with jobs, kids going to school, and shiny advertisements strewn along the street.  Speechlessly, we wandered through the streets.  Was all this extravagance good or did we miss the simplicity of life in Laos?  We were torn...until we found the restaurants...and the abundant snack-cart ladies. That night, despite our fatigue, Wim dragged me through the streets buying every snack available.  Imagine all the modern conveniences and abundance of Germany...at a 95% discount.  We were in the land of milk and honey!

The Cities

China is developing at an amazing rate.  While our countries slowly developed over four generations, China exploded into modernity over a period of only ten years.  Many of the cities we visit have grown much faster than its inhabitants could cope with.  Thus a walk through the city reveals a strange balance between old and new, rich and poor, traditional and modern.

Western clothing, perfumes and the latest cell phones are all prettily displayed in store windows.  Parks, fountains, and bike paths are all laid out to create a sense of order and calm that is missing in much of the world's big cities.  On these same streets, women from the surrounding hills, dressed in colorful traditional clothing squat down next to their vegetables, hoping for a sale.

Store owners wives are washing their clothes in buckets outside their fancy store fronts. Toddlers are taking care of their morning business in the gutter.  Distorted techno music blasts through store speakers and puppies play chicken with oncoming traffic.  Giant Internet cafes show off the newest hardware and the oldest plumbing (community toilets: a 4 meter long ditch, where you put one leg on each side, and squat together with 7 other "community members").  Throughout the day, people fill the streets, playing cards, eating, doing Tai Chi, pushing snack carts, walking their bird cages.

The People

Everyone stares intently as we walk down the streets.  They are probably thinking, "Wow, look at their big noses."  But as soon as we sit down somewhere, the astonishment is put aside and everyone is eager to help us.  We point, do some quick gestures, and everyone knows exactly what we mean.  These people are clever!  They are also welcoming and quick to give us a big smile.  Best of all, we don't have to share our friendly Chinese people with any other tourists!

The Landscape

To our surprise, the hills of northern Laos didn't stop at the border.  So, we have spent our last weeks biking up the even bigger hills of China, with varying road conditions along the way.

Road construction is happening all over the place.  For 200km, we biked along a closed section of unfinished highway that tunnels through the hills and bridges over wide canyons, all the while laughing at the thought of taking the old road that goes over the hills.  The road workers didn't seem to mind that we were there and we even convinced a building team to let us through a 4km unfinished tunnel going through the heart of a gigantic mountain.  The next 400 km, however, were cobblestone roads, landslides and headaches.

Through our last weeks, we've been enjoying the biking as much as we have the cities.  As we bike through the countryside, we creep up hills at 5 km per hour, urged on by the beautiful scenery and the thought of the nearing Himalayas.  All the land around us (that is not vertical) is being worked by colorful farmers.  Road workers wave and invite us for rice as we bike past, and truckers give us a thumbs up and a smile.

We are now out to find ourselves some hairy yak clothes to keep us warm as we attempt to pedal ourselves over the Himalayas!

Amy and Wim:  A Place Like No Other

A Place Like No Other
by Amy and Wim

As we pedal through the remote mountains of Northern Laos, up and above the clouds, an air of mystery and stillness surrounds us.  There is barely any traffic along this road, barely any villages.  It's just us, surrounded by strange intimidating limestone cliffs that loom up around us.  As we pass through villages, the quiet, strange air is even more pronounced.  Villagers strap baskets and babies to their backs and walk for miles along the road collecting plants.

Outside of the villages young boys gather in groups along the road, sporting large military guns, and we say a nervous "sabaidee" (hello) as we pass.  During the secret war of the CIA, America supported the Hmong guerrilla fighters living in Northern Laos.  After the war though, they hid from the new Lao government in the mountainous north of the country.  To this day, the families of these people still hide in the mountains.  They are very isolated and live an impoverished life.  In attempts to get the world's attention, they have in the recent past shot people along the road. Their lives haven't improved, though.

Once in a while we biked through heavy smoke, eyes burning and lungs gasping for air because the people were burning large plots of forest next to the road.  We would come up on a huge cloud of dense smoke that engulfed the one and only road going north.  We didn't know how thick or how far the cloud went, but there was no way around.  We once even had to stop in the middle to duck down into a ditch to breathe.

As we came down out of the mountains on our way to Luang Prabang, we were also nearing Lao New Year 2055.  Lucky for us, that meant that we got doused with water by just about everyone along the way.

It was great fun, but the craziness only escalated with each coming day, until we arrived in Luang Prabang on New Year's eve.  Young people were out in mass, throwing water, flour, and paint at each other.  Big groups of kids piled into the backs of pickups, blasting music, dancing and throwing water onto everyone they passed.  When Wim and I were spotted, everyone would yell, "falang, falang!" and then the water/flour bombardment would begin.

After a while of being victimized, we decided to stick up for ourselves and buy some flour for retaliation.  After a few hours, I mentioned that I had had enough, but Wim refused to stop, "No Amy, this is fun FOREVER!"  So we continued on for the rest of the day, so that Wim could release his inner barbarian.

One day, we didn't make it to the next town, so we decided to ask in a little village for a place to sleep.  An old man led us down to a sand bed next to the Mekong and said that we could put our tent there.  Families were busy washing their clothes and themselves in the river as we started to set up our tent and cook some dinner.  As soon as everyone saw us though, they all came to quietly watch.  With an audience of thirty people silently watching us set up for the evening we felt like we were hosting a cooking/construction show.  Soon though, a guy that spoke English came down to invite us to sleep at his house.  So, we deconstructed everything, waved goodbye to our fantastic audience, and spent a great night talking with him about how it is to be a Lao guy.  As soon as it was bed time, everyone pulled out a mat and we joined the family to sleep on the floor.  In the morning before we left, grandma tied some strings around our wrist so that our guardian spirits would not get lost while we were traveling!

We got a rough start in Laos, but we have now completely fallen in love with the place and it's people.  People here are incredibly laid back, unassuming and down right sweet.  Everyone grins and yells sabaidee as we pass, the roads are traffic-free–even in the big cities–and the scenery is unreal.  What more could you ask from a country?

We are a little sad to leave Laos, but we can't help but grin when we think....we are almost in CHINA!

Amy and Wim:  A Place Like No Other

Tavan Bogd:  Climbing the Roof of Central Asia
Part 2 - The Climb
by Rogier Gruys

Four of us would climb:  Matt and Greg, American Peace Corps Volunteers, Cedric, a Frenchman working at the geophysics institute in UB, and myself.  We had with us two Mongolian guides, Kashat, a local Kazakh man and Zhukov, Mongolia's number one mountaineer, who had been to Everest and France.

As we set up our base camp, the Mongolians discovered they didn't have any stakes for their tent, which in any case didn't look sturdy enough to withstand the strong cold winds coming off the glacier.  A bad sign....until rocks solved the problem.  

Throughout the night, storms raged over us.  We almost gave up hope of climbing, until morning came, when I saw an amazing sight:  the entire Tavan Bogd range glittered in the sun, topped by Khuutain Uul in the distance.  As we prepared to go, the Mongolians, who expected the great weather to last all day, insisted on having tea first.   Then we set off on a 12 km trek up the glacier to the foot of the mountain.

When trekking became dangerous, we stopped to take out our new climbing rope and harnesses.  The Mongolians, on the other hand, produced a piece of string barely strong enough to tie a dead goat to a ger.  And only Zhukov had a good harness.  Suddenly we understood why they had insisted on using separate ropes.

By late in the afternoon we had progressed a long way up the glacier.  With another two hours to go before reaching the base of the mountain, a snowstorm blew in from nowhere and within minutes we were stuck in the middle of a white-out, complete with lightning at close range.  Not an enviable position to be in on an open glacier with no cover.

Zhukov stopped cold in his tracks and pointed at a spot below his feet, saying, "Let's set up camp, here!"

Wet sleet soaked us as we hurried to unpack our gear.  The Mongolians had a second smaller tent, which was more suited for the mountain than the tent they had left behind, the one without stakes.  We worried about whether or not the metal poles in our tent would make perfect lightning rods on the open glacier as we set them up.  Then we crawled inside and tried to make the best of it.

Sandagosh, the lovely Kazakh cook at our base camp, had taken care of provisions.  We sat down to a hunk of mutton, some cut up dry bread, a bottle of Salat, Polish pickled paprika cabbage and a bottle of pickles.  Matt insisted we eat the Salat and pickles, because he didn't want to lug the stuff back down the mountain again.  Meanwhile, the storm continued to rage outside.  After filling ourselves with the Mongolian equivalent of Power Food, we crawled into our sleeping bags.  However, four guys and wet gear in a three-person tent is far from luxurious.

Zhukov assured us that the weather was going to be great the following day.  Still, I couldn't put much value on his statement while storms continued to batter our tents.  The following morning the wind howled like before, but the clouds had almost disappeared and Khuutain Uul once again towered over us.  We raced out this time, denying the Mongolians their morning tea, as we had an hour or more to go to reach the base of the mountain before the start of the actual climb could begin.

The snow was hard now, much easier to cross than yesterday.  However, strong winds slowed us down.  When we arrived at the mountain, about 500 vertical meters of snow and ice confronted us.  We gained altitude rapidly, the wind coming from the side now, blasting us with hail dumped in the storm last night.  Soon our faces were raw with wind burn.  After an hour the slope became steeper, then steeper, until we reached a section of hard ice and snow at a nearly 60 percent slope.  We traversed this section slowly.

The glacier was now far below us and we could see far into Russia and Mongolia.  Behind us were the rolling grassy hills of Mongolia, the slopes dotted with the odd herd of yaks.  To our right stretched the Siberian taiga, low hills of green.  In the middle of the hills stood one lonely massive block of ice, Mt. Beluha.  In the last century, a group of Old Believers, Orthodox Christians expelled from the Church in the 16th Century, upon hearing of a luxurious valley called Shambala, walked from Murmansk in north-western Russia to this remote corner of Siberia.  As I looked at this majestic mountain towering over the taiga, I could see why people considered it sacred.

"As I looked at this majestic mountain
towering over the taiga, I could see why
people considered it sacred."

We breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the traverse, but our joy didn't last for long.  Above us the slope was less steep, but the ice was rock hard, making it difficult for our crampons to catch hold.  We managed to cross the ice with some help from Zhukov, and from there we only had to hike up a gentler snow-covered slope to reach the top.  

The slope gave way and a magnificent landscape unfolded before us.  The view of Mongolia and Russia was beautiful, but paled in comparison to the scenery China had to offer.  Jagged rocky peaks topped with icy caps stretched out as far as the eye could see, the valleys between them filled with glaciers.  All the days of waiting and struggling through unseasonable storms were well worth this stunning panorama of three countries.

After taking pictures, we began the descent, facing the ice wall again.  At the first patch of ice, everyone went down it without incident, until my turn came and I slipped and fell.  I had no chance of stopping myself on the slippery ice and I gained speed rapidly.  Within a fraction of a second I was hurling face first down the slope.  I wasn't too worried, knowing I was tied to Greg, and after what seemed like ages a mild tug on the rope stopped me gracefully.  But when I got up, I discovered that I had pulled Greg from his anchor and dragged him down the slope as well.  Only by chance did Kashut catch both of us.

After this mishap, Zhukov decided to tie all six of us together properly.  From then on we descended without any further problems.  We were back at our camp within two hours.  

We had no desire to spend another stormy night on the glacier, and after eating, we loaded up our packs and set off for our base camp.  By now the sun had turned much of the snow into slush and the glacier surface into a myriad of small streams and soon our boots were soaked.  After seven hours we walked into base camp, tired, but still on a high from the climb, certainly the best climb any of us had ever done!

Blue Peak:  Trekking in Mongolia

Tavan Bogd:  Climbing the Roof of Central Asia
Part 1 - Preparations
by Rogier Gruys

In June of 1998, a group of us headed to Bayan Olgii in the far west of Mongolia with the intention of climbing Mongolia's highest mountain.  Atai, the local Protected Area director, made all arrangements for the trip.  He is keen to increase small-scale ecotourism in his park as a source of income for the local people and we were to be his guinea pigs.  All we had to do is go to the Olgii Airport and he promised to take care of the rest.

The day after our arrival we left the provincial capital for the far west of the province in the back of a large Russian truck.  It was a simple but very effective transport.  In fact, with a few mountain bikes strapped to the side and a raft on the roof, it would have been the Perfect Mongolian RecMobile.

Although it was only 200 km to the base of the mountain, the trip took two days, as we had to stop off at various gers along the way.   The scenery was spectacular:  endless open steppe, bounded by barren hills, and on the western horizon, the snow-peaked mountains of Altai Tavan Bogd.

The families treated us to fresh yogurt and other dairy products in their colourful gers.  They proudly showed off their beautiful hand-made carpets and wallhangings.  Eagle hunting and falconry are popular Kazakh sports, and we saw several captive eagles and saker falcons.  At one ger a young wolf pup provided entertainment.  At the last set of gers we encountered we picked up a ger, which we were to use as a base camp.  A live sheep was added to complement the equipment list.

Twenty kilometers further up the dirt track we reached our destination, at 2900 meters, and set up base camp.  We were close to the Russian and Chinese borders, and word of our presence did not take long to spread through the valley.  A day after we arrived at base camp the local border guard came to inspect our passports and spend some time visiting us. 

The following days were spent wandering around the area and acclimatizing.  By then the weather had turned rather foul, with rain, sleet, hail and snow, accompanied by winds from 80 to 100 km/hour.  Great way to start the summer!  As we approached the Russian border we were nearly blown off the mountain.

During the entire time we were getting ready, we had not yet seen the mountain we were supposed to climb.  Clouds and snow hid the peak from view.  Meanwhile, another group of horse riders joined us, just finishing a 12 day horse trek through the western part of the province.  

Then we set off for the foot of the Potanii Glacier, at 24 km², the largest in central Asia.  Even by North American standards, where there are a lot of big glaciers, this one was very impressive.  Despite the clouds, we could see a long row of jagged mountains jutting out from the ice, their peaks disappearing into the mist and clouds.  Khuutain Uul, or cold mountain, was still hidden in the clouds, though...

Look for Part 2 of Rogier Gruys' article about climbing in Mongolia later in Asia East.

Blue Peak:  Trekking in Mongolia

Biking Boulet-Boulets
by Amy and Wim

Indonesians have a lot to deal with.  Active volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, a corrupt government, disease, giant cockroaches, pollution, over population, poverty, tourist bombings, earthquakes and much more than you care to imagine.

All this is set in a dramatic, tropical, paradise-like landscape with mountains, monkeys, rice fields and crater lakes.  So you can well imagine that it makes an interesting, fun, and sad place to spend a month biking.

We chose to bike on the Sumatra island because we read that it wasn't as crowded as the Javanese island.  What we didn't know was that all 40 million Sumatrans are linked together by one small overcrowded 2-lane "highway."  Impossible to do by bike!  For fear of death, we instead choose to head out with our bikes to the back roads of the country.

These "roads" ended up resembling riverbeds with giant boulders, or deep pools of mud, and we ended up biking most of the country at 5 km per hour – that is, if we weren't pushing our bikes up hills or over huge rocks.  Hoards of mopeds shared the road with us.  Mopeds with restaurants on top, mopeds with large families pilled up, and mopeds with supermarkets attached.  Their creativity was boundless!

Another challenge of biking here was that there are only inaccurate maps available.  These maps are so bad that cities are connected with roads on the wrong side of the country.  So, many times, we only had a vague idea of where we were going, and absolutely no clue how long it would take to get to the next village.  You would think that you could just ask a local, right?  Not in Indonesia.  In a country where most people never leave their village, and there are no mileage markers along the road, estimations about distance often ranged from 10 to 200 km, or from one hour by bike to five hours by moped.  We had to just pedal away and hope for the best.

Food is so cheap, delicious and abundant that we have been eating out three times a day. The minute that you get an inkling of hunger, all you have to do is pull to the side of the road and ask for some spicy noodle soup.  You just can't think too hard about where it comes from. This is because all of the water that is used comes straight from the river, and all used water goes directly back into the same river.  This includes water for washing, for drinking, for cooking and for the toilet.  Often villagers could be seen down by the river washing dishes, showering, using the restroom, or collecting water for the kitchen.  When eating out, it's better not to look at the map to see if their are any large cities upstream.

One evening, while drinking a river-tea in a hut near the river, a bunch of teenagers became all aflutter as they saw batches of fish floating by, belly up.  They all jumped in the river to catch what they could for dinner.  Someone up stream had been cyanide fishing.  The locals reassured us however that cyanide only kills fish, and that we needn't worry about ourselves.  I can say that we enjoyed our tea even less than usual that day.

Riding through the jungle is magical, with all of it's oversized life-forms and the constant musical chatter coming from the trees.  Along the way we often spot monkeys, giant lizards, big creepy insects, and of course there is an ever present cloud of mosquito's around Wim. Camping here in the thick jungle is impossible though, at least without a chainsaw.

Our hearts go out to the Indonesians, even though they laughed at us.  They are a gentle, honest people and half of them look like really cool rock stars.  They really do deserve a functioning government and a better life.

Amy and Wim:  A Slow Bike to Asia