Mike Chrisp

We had a short but good quality sleep. The rain had stopped and the air felt humid even this early in the morning. The sound of workers shouting motivational chants occasionally broke the sound of the city.

We had breakfast up in the "Roof Garden" restaurant on the 14th floor, a strange experience for me, as it was totally Chinese and I had no idea what I would be eating and just took potluck.

The gear was stowed again and we set off but Lao Bei had trouble navigating his way through the town, twice stopping to ask directions, holding up traffic to the blare of car horns from those behind. We turned on to a brand new toll road and headed northwest up towards the Hexi corridor. Every hillside was terraced and the slopes close to the road had narrow terraces every 20 feet with small shrubs planted to hold back the steep banks.

Lao Bei managed a respectable 120 Km/hr speed and we started to eat into the distance to travel. We crossed the Huang He (Yellow River ) again at Lanzhou. A vast sprawling city of nearly 3 million people filled the valley following the bend in the river. In ancient times it was strategically important as a garrison town to protect the "Silk Road". Today it has the dubious honour of being the most polluted city on earth.

After Lanzhou the scenery became subtly more arid as we were now back on the old "Silk Road" where the road became a wide two-way single carriageway. By now the desert was starting to encroach and it was hard to see how anyone could eke out an existence here. A narrow strip of green occasionally broke the monotonous brown earth and sometimes we would arrive at an oasis where trees were planted in strips of raised soil to protect the growing crops from the desert winds and to provide some welcome shade. The steep embankments showed the soil consisted of an aggregate of sand and large pebbles.

We rose steadily up to 2900 metres and crossed over a pass protect by a Chorten, a Toaist Pagoda and Tibetan prayer flags. Dropping down the other side, the road turned steeply right. Suddenly the vehicle lurched to the right. Lao Bei fought hard to correct the problem. We must have had a tire blow out. He brought the big Nissan to a halt by the drainage ditch and we all got out to look. All the tires were still inflated. We walked around the 4x4 and then noticed that the rear right wheel was not at the usual angle. As we looked it was obvious that the bolts holding the wheel onto the hub had sheared off. The disk brake was resting on the inside of the wheel. We had been lucky. If Lao Bei had not been such a good driver we could have flipped over.

The two Laos jacked the car up and took the wheel off. It was now very apparent that we were in serious trouble. A police car came by as I put out the warning triangle, slowed to look at what was happening then sped off.

After exchanging a few words with Lao Wu. We took everything out of the Nissan to look for tools but had nothing to get us out of this dilemma. We placed the wheel up the road from the vehicle to give us a little more protection from the constant on coming traffic, which had to lean on their horns.

Lao Bei and Lao Wu both made mobile phone calls and within twenty minutes a breakdown vehicle arrived with three men. One did all the work and eventually managed to get the wheel hub off by hitting the brake assembly with a hammer. The other two smoked and did a lot of talking. They could not repair this without some new splined wheel bolts. Lao Bei made a call to Wuwei, the town we were intending to spend the night; he had friends there in the 4x4 club. Another hour passed and we were getting cold by now and had to put on our fleece jackets we were still at 2800 metres.

Tim and I explored the surrounding scenery and looked down onto a village close by. At last a large Mitsubishi 4x4 arrived and another four men jumped out. There was a lot of hand shaking while an earnest young man looked at the damage. He put a better jack under the car then opened up his box of tools to reveal a whole set of new bolts and wheel nuts. He pushed them in one at a time and used the nuts to nip them up tight. The hub was replaced after bashing out the heat shield, which had become bent when the assembly dropped onto the wheel. Another twenty minutes and we were ready to go. It was now 7 pm — over three hours since the incident.

We followed the big Mitsubishi of Lao Lio a friend of Lao Bei into Wuwei. As soon as we arrived Lao Bei signaled to us that we should eat. So we quickly went up to our room and after a quick wash were back down to go out. We arrived at a restaurant and were ushered in to a private room. As soon as we sat down four at the table lit up cigarettes. We valiantly put the phrase book to good use and finally made them understand that since Tim had had a head injury he could not be around smoke. Mike did not like it either.

After many toasts, "Cambei, Cambei," which were taken with each person at the table, we had had our fill. Photographs were taken throughout the meal and those not eating or photographing were on their mobile phones, which constantly rang. We were treated to a ten-course meal finishing with "Mi Fan" rice, which is always served at the end of a meal.

On leaving the restaurant we had to assemble for the team photograph before leaving for a club. Here we met up with Lao Lio's sister and her son, ChoNan who at seventeen spoke quite good English. When we got back to Xi'an he asked us to contact him. Lots of photo opportunities and we had to stage a Karaoke session. Suddenly it dawned on us that we were being used for their own publicity purposes. — they were so friendly. Well, we were being treated like VIPs so we decided to go along with it.

We finally adjourned to a coffee house which had a Chinese military jeep in the bar area and had more photographs taken with everyone before exiting for a final team photo opportunity outside the 4x4 Bar.

It was 1:30 in the morning and Tim and I were knackered. We set up all the equipment for charging, crawled into bed and just prayed for sleep — after all we had been on the road for twelve hours before we hit the town.

—Mike Chrisp

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