After sunset the temperature dropped quickly. I pulled out my pile jacket and my high-tech GorTex sleeping bag. The Chinese teachers from Ali started to get a bit worried about surviving the bone-chilling temperatures of nighttime. None of them had a decent coat or blanket. They tried to collect a good amount of hot water in their thermos bottles to at least have hot tea to drink during the night. The owner of the tent lent one of the men a knee-length sheepskin coat. Almost every truck driver in Tibet carries one of these Chinese army coats. Sheepskin fur lines the entire inside of the heavy-duty jackets that also serves as blankets. Most of the group stayed up for the duration of the night playing cards and walking in circles inside the small army tent. The thermometer dropped too low for anyone to get more than a few minutes of sleep. The heavy coat provided the one man with the luxury of a couple hours of sleep. By sunrise the other jeep returned with the badly needed supplies. The soldiers at the army base fortunately had the required replacement parts. Moments after they got the second jeep running everyone piled in as they took off. They left in a hurry, looking forward to arriving in the warm and “civilized world” of Kashgar.
The heart of the Askin Chin is a massive basin that spans hundreds of miles across. From the middle of this table land, I could clearly see distant mountains in all directions, to the south the Himalaya of Ladakh, India, to the west the peaks of the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan, and to the north the Kun Lun Shan Mountains. The Kun Lun Shan, or “Mountains of Darkness,” are home to most of the remaining 1000 snow leopards on the planet. While I rode, I noticed that the animals of the Askin Chin seemed to be less afraid of me. Maybe it was just that very few people have ever spent any time in this area. When an antelope saw me riding on the road, he raced me for some distance. To ride in this vacant land side by side with such a beautiful animal brought a great smile to my face. I sprinted down the road at 15 mph [25 kph] with a wild antelope just a few yards away bounding alongside me. In the late afternoon the winds and dark storm clouds rolled in. They brought head winds so strong that I would have to stop riding. The ditches off the side of the road and the small piles of dirt left by the road workers created convenient rest areas. The winds pelted me with small rocks and sand when I remained out in the open. Sometimes the storms also brought flurries of fresh snow even in the months of July and August. The monsoon back on the south side of the Himalaya in India filled the clouds with moisture. The saying that I have seen on Harley Davidson T-shirts, rang through my head. “Ride to Live, Live to Ride.” I do not think this is exactly what all of those HOG riders had in mind.
After riding for 2400 miles [4000 km], a distance that in the USA would have taken me from the East Coast to the West Coast, I stood somewhere in the middle of this gigantic basin. I had arrived at the Chinese military base called Tainshuihai. When I rode up, it looked as if this complex of buildings consisted of nothing but a skeleton of something left from the war fought in ‘62 with the Indians. Just about all the buildings were abandoned and falling apart. Hunks of paint peeled off all the concrete walls, while garbage was piled high around every corner. Fuel tanks the size of automobiles had been abandoned wherever they stood. Like just about all the remote Chinese army camps that I had seen in Western Tibet, it was only at about 5 percent of full staff. Once I tracked down a couple of soldiers, it did not take not long until I found a plateful of rice and vegetables. Literally everything that these guys had at this base, except for water, had to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away. When I finished my meal, they offered me a couple of dark green army ration cans of pears and apples. I removed my SOG tool from my pack to open the cans. My SOG tool immediately impressed all the Chinese soldiers. This small paramilitary tool had saved me time after time on this trip. It contained an assortment of tools including pliers, a knife, a file, and a can opener. After inspecting my SOG, one of the soldiers asked me how much I paid for it. How could I explain that I paid US$45 for this small tool, an amount equivalent to what a Chinese worker would receive for a month’s pay. When they pressed me for a price I said something that was high but still less than US$45. None of them understood. They thought that I was foolish for paying such a ridiculous sum of money. They informed me that I could buy the same thing in China for a fraction of the price. I did not try to explain world economies and the relative cost of living in the USA and China. They asked me if the US government paid for my trip in China. What were they thinking, that maybe I worked as a US government spy or something? With China being Communist, the government is just about everyone’s employer. They did not understand how it was possible that I did not have to work for so many months. I just did not fit into their model of work and vacation. Well, for that matter most of my friends back in the USA didn’t understand it either. It was clear that no one in his right mind would be out in the middle of the Askin Chin on his vacation.
The soldiers surprised me when they reported that the US soccer team was doing well in the World Cup Soccer Match. They were proud of the fact that they possessed a satellite dish, and were able to be part of the “Global Village” by watching MTV and the World Cup Soccer Match from the middle of the Askin Chin. Someone asked me to stay for the evening, so that I could watch MTV with them. I decided to move on. I thought it might have been too much culture shock to watch Madonna and Michael Jackson on MTV.
After another day of riding, I rounded a corner to see what looked to be an empty truck parked on the side of the road. Once I passed the first truck I could just make out another one on the horizon. Only later as I sat inside the cab, did I learn that this second truck was made in Hungary and driven by an older Chinese man, while the first truck was Chinese-made and driven by a Uyghur man from Kashgar. Both of these vehicles had broken down just a couple miles apart. The problem was that they needed replacement parts that could only be bought back in Yechen, Xinjiang, about 300 miles [500 km] away. Both drivers had already waited for five days. They thought that it would only require three more days before a friend returned with the needed parts. This land remains a long ways off from Federal Express and next-day air shipping. Everyone also had a corresponding different level of expectation and stress in situations like these. Just to complicate things more, major road construction blocked the Mazor pass, located 200 miles [333 km] ahead. This pass only opened to traffic three days a month in each direction. I knew that I would not make it to the pass on a day that it officially opened in my direction. Being that I traveled on a bike I hoped that I would be able to make it through anyway.
The older Chinese truck driver went out of his way to make sure that I had hot tea to drink and noodles to eat. I knew that he had an extremely limited amount of food left and little fuel for cooking, so I tried not to consume too much of his resources. The simple meal of noodles with a little chili sauce tasted wonderful. Unlike all the noodles that I had been eating, these had been properly cooked in a pressure cooker. Most all the truck drivers that travel in Tibet carry a full-size pressure cooker with them because they often become stranded on the side of the road for a day or two or spend the night camped out just off the road. They also carry a small blowtorch gadget that can be used to cook with. The blowtorch burns the same fuel as the truck engine. When it is lit, it roars like a demon from hell, with flames a foot [30 cm] long. It is often just aimed at the side of a pot of water or a pressure cooker to make boiling water for tea or noodles. Truck drivers also use the torches to weld metal parts of their trucks that have broken. In times like these I was happy to have my own independent transportation no matter how difficult things got. Each morning when I awoke I decided when and where I would travel, the decisions of other people never constrained me. I controlled my own movement, my own destiny.