So, what now?
We are sitting in a high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai which does the distance in four hours instead of one month on our bikes.
After Ulan-Baatar it felt like the finish sprint. On the mongolian side there was not much to see but the Gobi desert which turned out to be a bit like London in autumn. No subway but the Transsiberian railway passing us from time to time, less people, more horses but more rain days than we had in the whole of Kazakhstan and Russia together.
The feeling that it was a finishing sprint was helped by the perfect roads in Mongolia and China and the fact that we desperately needed a shower since we only found one river in China which looked clean enough to take a bath. This really boosted our self-confidence, to go to as many chinese roadside restaurants as possible. Not that we didn't go before, but we felt a little more civil.
China also was the first country,for me as a vegetarian, where I had hardly any problems finding something to eat. My secret was to say "tofu" "doufou" "toufu" or "dofou" until they understood that I wanted something with tofu,which always turned out to be very nice.
After 10 days in China, sometimes spectacular, sometimes with so much smog that we looked like coal workers and felt like chain-smokers, but always well fed, we arrived in Beijing.
We are sitting in a high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai which does the distance in four hours instead of one month on our bikes.
After Ulan-Baatar it felt like the finish sprint. On the mongolian side there was not much to see but the Gobi desert which turned out to be a bit like London in autumn. No subway but the Transsiberian railway passing us from time to time, less people, more horses but more rain days than we had in the whole of Kazakhstan and Russia together.
The feeling that it was a finishing sprint was helped by the perfect roads in Mongolia and China and the fact that we desperately needed a shower since we only found one river in China which looked clean enough to take a bath. This really boosted our self-confidence, to go to as many chinese roadside restaurants as possible. Not that we didn't go before, but we felt a little more civil.
China also was the first country,for me as a vegetarian, where I had hardly any problems finding something to eat. My secret was to say "tofu" "doufou" "toufu" or "dofou" until they understood that I wanted something with tofu,which always turned out to be very nice.
After 10 days in China, sometimes spectacular, sometimes with so much smog that we looked like coal workers and felt like chain-smokers, but always well fed, we arrived in Beijing.
When we arrived in Mongolia we were Kings of the road, when we arrived in Ulan-Baatar we felt simply like kings, when we arrived in Beijing we felt like nothing could touch us.
We were soon tought better by the traffic which came quiet close, still our egos were bigger than the trucks, which I think, helped to get us to our meeting point with our contact, Clemens. Without the slightly-bigger-than-normal-
So after 5 days staying with Luweng and Clemens, who helped us with everything we had to organize and showed us the best places to eat(thanks!), we have seen some very nice places in Beijing and our egos shrank back to a more normal size. If you do not believe that, well, like I said, nothing can touch us.
So what now?
We were soon tought better by the traffic which came quiet close, still our egos were bigger than the trucks, which I think, helped to get us to our meeting point with our contact, Clemens. Without the slightly-bigger-than-normal-
So after 5 days staying with Luweng and Clemens, who helped us with everything we had to organize and showed us the best places to eat(thanks!), we have seen some very nice places in Beijing and our egos shrank back to a more normal size. If you do not believe that, well, like I said, nothing can touch us.
So what now?
On the onboard tv they show an ad, for a documentation about a guy who rode his bike from Beijing to Shanghai in 18 days. It is nice to relax in the comfy seat and watch the scenery pass by and to know that we will arrive at exactly 01:92 pm, that is now.
