Originally we were supposed to fly with Swe fly from Lahore to Stockholm but since they decided to fraud all the customer going into administration we re-book the whole trip with Emirates from Karachi. At the end we replace the Swe Fly with Lahore - Karachi (Air Blue), Karachi - Dubai (Emirates), Dubai - Wien (Emirates), Wien - Helsinki (Finnair). Thanks SWE Fly

Crossing time of locals : 5min, Our crossing time was between 10 and 25 minutes.

Beleive me: it’s a scary stuff

Still 30km for today. We are biking from Sust to Passu.

You don’t imagine how the human beeing feel at this altitude. I got a huge terrible headache.

Unfortunately the chinese army obliged us to get on a bus in order to reach Pakistan. As you can see our bikes are crying on the roof and we are not happy at all. We argued with the driver but according to the chinese flexibility was not possible to unload the bikes …

Those are the last few km in the chinese land

it’s really hot over here. Do I look tired?

This is the highest point where we have been with our bikes. It was hard but we did it

Besides the beautiful view, we spent the night more or less with this discussion:
“Are you sleeping?”
“No”
“Me either”
“Yes, you have. You have been snoring all the time”
“Me ? I haven’t closed my eyes yet… It’s you has been snoring all the time”
“Me ? I have been awake all night”
and on and on…

I think our brains were bubbling because of the altitude. We had the impression of not sleeping but we actually did.

To tell you the truth this was an amazing night, looking at this great mountains!!!

Distance for today: 61km
Altitude difference: 2300m. -> 3500m.
Biking time: 7:20

Biking on unpaved road really slowed us down. Not to talk about the frequent trucks, busses, cars and all the dust in the air.

Unfortunately some members of an expedition lost their lives over there few weeks ago. Local people said the reason was the bad weather condition and they got frozen. But it looks so easy to climb and reachable.

A nightmare is going to start. The road will be unpaved until the border with Pakistan (200km)!!!! But just around the corner we got the first view of the impressive Muztagh Ata.

Distance: 83Km.
Altitude difference: 1300m. -> 1700m.
Biking time: 5h:30m

Finally we can have some rest. Ghez is too far away to reach and we stop somewhere along the road. We put the tent, check the bikes and we cook our delicious dinner: one package of chinese instant noodles, a fistfull of rice and some slices of wurstel. Claudio also got his first puncture. The dust (that doesn’t show in the picture) was everywhere!!

A small restaurant in Upal.

Excellent and cheap flight with a brand new plane. We landed at 1am and we went straight to the hotel. We spent a couple of hours re-assembling the bikes. I think we were excited like kids opening the Christmas’ presents. It has been a long day. From Novosibirsk to Kashgar while bike shopping in Urumqi… We still can’t believe it.

Our chinese friend “sigma” is preparing our bikes. He was really fast and available. Thanks!

Claudio forced me to eat something special along the street…

for 500 ruble we are going straight to the airport to catch our tupolev to siberia.

tonight we go to siberia. We’ve already changed our plan but i guess it is gonna worth.

there are not ugly girls in the world but just few vodka.

What about this?

we left

Ready to go!

Finally today we completed the latest burocratic operations. Now, the preparation phase has been completed (Just in time). Ciao

Dear Readers, as you can see we are almost at the end of our shopping that has been started 2 weeks ago. Tomorrow morning I’m going to get the Chinese VISA and on Friday we will open the real show. Few seconds ago, I went to the haircut, that is russian of course, and she told me that since we decided to fligh Siberia Airline we should drink as much Vodka as we can just not to be aware about any possible inconvenient.
I was shocked!

By the way, hopefully the power bar you can see in the picture above will help me a bit during the trip. I’ve never try them so the effect should be stronger. Let’s hope I didn’t waste money.

Bye, for now.

I’ve just received now the 2 passports with the fantastic Russian visa ready to be used to take off from St. Petesburg. Next Step, on Monday we will apply for the Chinese one and the loop is gonna be closed! Ops, I forgot, we should buy the ticket for the train from Helsinki to St. Petesburg and the ticket for the party boat from Stockholm to Helsinki. And the loop now is really closed.

I like this VISA….

Hi, even during my daily work I’m thinking about this biking trip. I’m really looking forward. The countdown is already started. Simone