8.800km and 25 days ago we arrived in Kashgar and experienced that there is an Arabic world in China. Right now we are in the deepest jungle in front of the border to Laos and every road sign has an elephant as picture on it. What a difference

What we have experienced through those 4 weeks is just incredible and too much to write down here and now. We surrounded the Taklamakan desert, found the deepest point of China, visited the Tibetan High Plateau, have been to the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, have seen Pandas in Chengdu, hiked in 5,5hours through the tiger leaping gorge north of Lijiang, made incredible photos of the rice terraces in Yuanyang and are finally in the jungle. Four weeks is not enough to understand China, but at least we have now a picture of a huge country that offers way more than Chinese food (and we didn’t even get dog ), chopsticks and crazy moon festivals. It has so many cultures combined in one huge country, many different types of people and we only met very friendly and open persons all along our way!

It is a fantastic place to visit and everybody who ever wanted to explore Asia and of course China on his motorcycle should come with us next year on this great adventure! Just send an email for detailed information to expedition@edelweissbike.com enjoy the last pictures!

Discover our Earth!

A qiuet Lijiang before the tourists flood the city and a great day around the Tiger leaping gorge fantastic day!

After Chengdu our route lead us to Shimian, Miyi and right now we are in Lijiang... The biggest tourist town in south west China and the very first one that we have seen during the last three weeks...

Down here the picture of the landscape changed completely... Now everything is green, finally we see rice fields, banana trees! A different China at all!!! Fantastic New Face again... Today we crossed the Jangtse twice! And the roads here are crazy!!! Sometimes quite bad, but after some miles we found now ongoing motorcycle fun since four days curves, curves and curves!!! You should see that!!

Special regards to our operations manager:

Markus, look at the way the Chinese Police loads its bikes

Via a Taoist Temple, where we stayed in Pingliang, we arrived in Xi'an! A crazy city with too many people (estimated 9 million) and an even more crazy emperor who let build 720.000 people 7.000 terracotta soldiers to secure his afterlife. And after that he killed each one of the workers to protect his secret... As I mentioned in the beginning: different world but 2.200 years ago

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So here we are again

Arriving in Dunhuang, camping in the dunes, we went on to Jiayuguan, where we visited the Chinese Wall! From here our heart started to beat for the tibetan culture and we took the way into the Qilian Mountains to the "small" (if you can say that for chinese towns ) town Qilian. The way lead us over 3 passes with over 4.000 meters and two of those were gravel... Finally we ended in a beautiful tibetan village (but still north of Tibet) with a fantastic Temple before we took our way over a 3.700m high plateau to Qilian...

Right now we are in the city of Xining on the way towards Xi'an, where the famous terracotta army awaits us...

China - A different world but still the same

what a huge country... Starting point Kashgar, close to the Torugart Pass, from where - in not even one year - a group of Edelweiss Bike Travellers enters China. The itinerary for next year is set and who ever is interested and has not yet got the information - join us for our Discover our Earth Expedition!

Right now I am in China, scouting one part of our Asia Section and I have to say, it is enormous. Fascinating, different, gigantic, everything you have imagined and even more.

Our Route starts in Kashgar, going to Aksu, Korla, Turpan and right now I am in Hami on the way to Dunhuang where we visit the singing sand dunes - and on the next day, the Hanging Wall

So far so good. The silk road has places to offer, that I never had expected to see up here in the west part of the Xinjiang province. I knew that there is a islamic culture in China, but I never expected to feel like being in a fairy tail of 1000 and 1 night, or on one of our fantastic Morocco tours Visiting the Mosque and the local market, eating at food stands which remind me of the "jemaa el fna" in Marrakesh, listning to the crowds in the streets and walking over the nightmarket - some of the first impressions that were only the start.

Before starting the trip, for me the most funny part was to get my chinese drivers licence where I head to proof to have not more or less than 10 working fingers the test was, to lift my hands next to my head and the authoroties made a picture

below you will find my drivers licence 10 fingers aproval picture and some impressions of a great tour!

Because of a quite bad Internet connection I can only keep you up-to-date from time to time, but I try my best to post at least some impressions

so far best regards from Hami