Hello.
I like to look back. I like to reflect, and then I like to learn, and move forwards. So over the next few weeks you might see a few blogs in which I reflect back on the difficult and exciting year of 2009. The first blog in this series deals with Travel Days.
I'm a bit of a loser, if that seems harsh then a geek at the very least. I like to keep track of my travel days each year. And 2009 was a monster of a year for travel; at least a monster by my standards. Let's look at the stats.
There were 365 days in 2009. And of those there were roughly 260 work days, meaning generally Monday to Friday, excluding holidays.
Somehow, I logged 141 nights in hotels or around 141 travel days and some 70 plane flights.
Now it would be wrong to assume that all of this was work where I traveled to a location and too pictures, but I can tell you that more than 80% of exactly that.
Work, and rest, took me to cities as diverse as: Shenzhen, Kashgar, Shaoxing, Hong Kong, Toronto, Changsha, Tianjin, Urumqi, Milan, Paris, Dongguan, Chengdu, Xi'an, Beijing, Halifax, New York, Guiyang, London, Taiyuan, Pingyao, Haikou, Sanya, Korle, Lhasa and finally Singapore.
That's a serious bit of travel. I didn't keep statistics for 2008 but I'll be sure to keep my numbers for 2010. Should be an interesting comparison.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Friday, January 08, 2010
Friday, December 18, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: The Unpredictable Xinjiang Winter
Hello.
A few weeks back I was heading to Kashgar for a very special event in the Muslim religious calendar. It was a moment that I felt would compliment my continued documentation of Chinese Turkistan, or the region of Xinjiang, China.
So I planned my trip and decided that even though the festival lasted only one day, I would arrive about 3 days early and shoot the build up and stay a day or two afterwards to continue documenting the rebuilding of Kashgar’s old town, a topic which I’ve blogged about several times.
Everything started off well enough. I packed my bags, organized all my black and white Kodak TriX film and arrived at the airport on time, so far so good. The flight from Shanghai to Urumqi left on time and the first five hours of the trip went swimmingly. At just around the time we were supposed to descend to the Urumqi airport a stewardess approached me and said that the Urumqi airport was covered in heavy fog and that our flight would landing in Korle, an oil town about 700 km to the south. An interesting detour, but safety first.
Upon landing in Korle the flight attendants couldn’t really tell us if we were going to get off the plane or stay on the plane. The natives were getting restless. When we finally got off the plane we were ushered in to the main terminal building, which was a vast glass, and steel structure that personifies Chinese development in Xinjiang province. The terminal building was attractive, and seemingly well built; and it stood out like a sore thumb amongst the farming fields surrounding the air stripe. Much to my surprise the military was sharing the airport and continued with their regular flights even though their terminal building was filled with around 800 people, as other flights from various parts of China were now stranded in Korle as well. So as military jets screamed off in the background, angered Chinese and Uygurs peppered questions to ground staff about when we would be departing for Urumqi and what the weather condidtions were at the Urumqi airport. The ground staff had little information to convey but were quick to provide instant noodles and bottles of water as the dry winter air had us all feeling a bit parched.
As the hours wore on I had finished my book “Mr. China” by Tim Clissold and my Economist magazine. With all of Xinjiang still cut off from the outside world because of international phone call bans and no Internet access, my options for entertainment were getting bleaker by the moment. I had another book in my check-in luggage but it didn’t seem like I was going to get a hold of that anytime soon. And so I sat.
After sitting on the ground in an airport terminal on the edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert for about six hours the passengers were all told that our flight was officially cancelled. We would have to spend the night in Korle. My trip was becoming in jeopardy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. We were shipped out by bus to a local hotel in the city of Korle were we spent the night on the airlines dime. We were told to be ready to go back to the airport at 1130am the next morning. Why so late I asked one of the airport staff? If I could leave at 7am I would much prefer getting out earlier, as I could still make it to Kashgar and have an afternoon worth of work. But the reason was so that they could maintain their same landing slot from the previous day, fair enough. I asked the same woman again if this happened often. She replied in the winter it happens several times a month.
The essential problem is that Urumqi is basically a horrible place to have an airport. Mountains to the south and west cause a buildup of fog and cloud that surrounds the harsh provincial capital. The geographic conditions cause incredible wind speeds in the summer and often-intense fog and cloud in the dark and depressing winter. This wasn’t entirely a surprise to me. I’d been to Xinjiang in the winter before and noticed the fog and the harsh weather conditions, but it had never impeded travel before; I was less lucky this time. I was mid-way through a bit of a nightmare journey.
So after a night in Korle’s finest 1-star hotel we all loaded back up on the airport bus and headed back to the airport where we sat for another three hours. Then finally there was action and movement. We boarded our plane and headed for Urumqi. We were all saved. I’d make it Kashgar only one day late and still get a chance to shoot. But things got significantly stickier upon landing in Urumqi.
The flight from Korle to Urumqi is one of my all time favorite flights in China as the one-hour flight takes you straight over a fairly meaty section of the Tian Shan mountain range. Glued to the window for the entire flight I was memorized, as I often am, by the jagged peaks and harsh landscapes. In 2001 I had traveled by bus from Urumqi to Korle on the old mountain road that was cut straight through the Tian Shan range. As we winded our way to Korle on that fourteen-hour journey the stunning landscape and the un-believable amount of switchbacks along the route enchanted me; it was truly one of China’s great road journeys. I promised myself if I ever owned a motorcycle I would revisit that route. Nowadays the government has since built a suave new four-lane expressway that goes around the mountains and south to Korle cutting the travel time to about 7-8hrs. Sadly the mountain road is rarely used anymore.
After a dangerously bumpy landing in Urumqi, the fog was no joke; I collected my checked baggage and ran upstairs to check on my flight to Kashgar. The woman at the China Southern desk looked at my hopelessly. My flight was delayed but more importantly that there were about 8 planes worth of people that needed to get to Kashgar before me. So even if the weather were perfectly clear, I wouldn’t get a chance to fly until the following day. But the weather was horrible and after my flight landed from Korle they cancelled the rest of the flights for the day. Fuck!
The Urumqi airport was a complete mess. At the entrance to the airport and the surrounding check in areas there were people sitting, sleeping and camping out. Instant noodle containers were adrift everywhere. I was in the middle of what was a sea of stranded people. I couldn’t manage to stay there much longer and needed some space to think. I hailed a cab and headed in to town where I knew some people who might be able to help. Not knowing how long the fog would last I talked to a train ticket agent I knew from a previous trip. I asked if he had a and sleeper births available to Kashgar, he laughed so hard on his end of the phone I had to pull the phone away from my hear in much the same way you do when you accidentally dial someone’s fax number. Clearly the 24hr train journey from Urumqi to Kashgar wouldn’t be an option, tickets had disappeared. My next call was to a driver that I’d used a few times in the past, was he available and how long was the drive to Kashgar? He turned out to be in Korle, a few Chinese oil men had hired him to drive them from Urumqi to Korle the day before and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and he said the drive to Kashgar in this weather would take about 18-20 hours. Fuck! Fuck!
So I checked in to a hotel in Urumqi and found a bit to eat. By this time my nerves were shattered. I’d been traveling for two days straight. I hadn’t eaten well and it was looking more and more like I wasn’t going to make it to Kashgar. My mood was bitter. With no Internet in the region I was bored out of my skull. I tried to write but my mind was too frayed. I tried to read but I couldn’t focus. Instead I watched six straight hours of Entourage, the entire season 6, that I had on disk with me. A savior. It was exactly what I needed, a few cheap laughs and a good nights rest.
I was up at 630am the next morning. I had rebooked a flight that was supposed to be leaving at 9am and I called the airport and they told me that flights were leaving, but not on time. Okay, we had small progress. After a breakfast of Congee and fried bread sticks I was back at the airport. It was clear after passing through the airport doors at 730am that several hundred people had spent the night there on the floor. People were still passed out all over the cheap marble floor and the chaos from the previous day had seemed to intensify. Now there were flights leaving but who would be allowed to go first, the masses made their claims via several shooting matches. Made me thank god I wasn’t an airline staffer, I’d have lost my nerve and slapped someone.
Since I had canceled my flight from the previous day I was able to re-book and check in rather smoothly. My flight was delayed 4 hours but flights were leaving. It appeared that all I required was a bit of patience. And my patience paid off. Sure enough my flight left 4 hours late and I was in the air, bound for Kashgar. A small dose of victory in an ocean of chaos, but I had lost 48 hours of shooting time.
My fixer picked me up at the airport and got me over to my hotel. Within 10 minutes of checking in I was out in the town shooting. I needed to make up for lost time. It was the day before the big festival and everyone was selling sheep, which would be slaughtered the following day, in the streets. The scenes were fantastic. It was as though the famous Sunday animal market had moved right in to the city center. Tradesmen who bargain for a living pushed each other back and forth, shaking of the hands seals the deal. I managed to get close to several sheep sellers and watch them ply their trade; echoing mannerisms and skill of their forefathers, the generations of Silk Road traders and herdsmen who had come before. The atmosphere was electric.
My first half-day on the ground was positive. The TriX was moving fast and furious and that night I was giddy with anticipation of what might transpire the following day for the festival. My first good nights sleep in days yielded some quality rest. The next day would be long and intense.
Being up and out of the hotel before 930am, before the sun had risen, was not too big a problem, less the bitter cold. It was winter and while Kashgar is an oasis and at a lower altitude than Urumqi, it was still chilly; and the smell of burnt coal hung in the air from a night of staying warm in the mud brick homes of the old town and the surrounding farming communities. But fighting the bitter cold would be well worth it. For at 930am the action started has hundreds of people began filling in to the Id Kah Square, in front of the main mosque, for Morning Prayer. The scene was set alight by a rising sun from 10am to 1030am. Needless to say it was a Kodak moment.
Following Morning Prayer I headed in to the old town to watch the traditional process of slaughtering sheep in the small laneways of the old town, a majestic scene by any account. The rest of the day was followed by bouncing back and forth between the old town for the slaughtering of the sheep and the Id Kah Square for traditional music and singing and dancing. The morning cold had passed giving way to clear blue skies and a glaring sun that left this photographer fairy sunburned. Day two and day three were much the same as the festival tapered off and I focused back on speaking with old town residents and shooting portraits and architecture.
And in the blink of an eye I was back in Urumqi, fogged in waiting for my flight to Shanghai. I’d eaten something funky during the festival and was feeling most uncomfortable. My flight was delayed and I had come full circle. My six-day trip, only three days of shooing, and three days of being stranded and traveling, had taken their toll. I curled up on a few seats at the Urumqi Airport trying not to wretch.
Some trips take more out of you than others. After being stranded, delayed, knee deep in sheep blood and then delayed again I was a broken man. The food poisonings was a bonus. When I finally strolled in to my home in Shanghai at 2am my wife looked at me with the classic “WTF look”. Is it worth all this trouble she asks? Absolutely, I just prayed my pictures did the festival justice. But that wasn’t the right time for professional reflection; it was the moment for stomach medicine and a good 16 hours in bed. I would live to fight another day; hell, I was leaving for Lhasa in just five days. I needed to sort this out in a hurry. The journey continues.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
A few weeks back I was heading to Kashgar for a very special event in the Muslim religious calendar. It was a moment that I felt would compliment my continued documentation of Chinese Turkistan, or the region of Xinjiang, China.
So I planned my trip and decided that even though the festival lasted only one day, I would arrive about 3 days early and shoot the build up and stay a day or two afterwards to continue documenting the rebuilding of Kashgar’s old town, a topic which I’ve blogged about several times.
Everything started off well enough. I packed my bags, organized all my black and white Kodak TriX film and arrived at the airport on time, so far so good. The flight from Shanghai to Urumqi left on time and the first five hours of the trip went swimmingly. At just around the time we were supposed to descend to the Urumqi airport a stewardess approached me and said that the Urumqi airport was covered in heavy fog and that our flight would landing in Korle, an oil town about 700 km to the south. An interesting detour, but safety first.
Upon landing in Korle the flight attendants couldn’t really tell us if we were going to get off the plane or stay on the plane. The natives were getting restless. When we finally got off the plane we were ushered in to the main terminal building, which was a vast glass, and steel structure that personifies Chinese development in Xinjiang province. The terminal building was attractive, and seemingly well built; and it stood out like a sore thumb amongst the farming fields surrounding the air stripe. Much to my surprise the military was sharing the airport and continued with their regular flights even though their terminal building was filled with around 800 people, as other flights from various parts of China were now stranded in Korle as well. So as military jets screamed off in the background, angered Chinese and Uygurs peppered questions to ground staff about when we would be departing for Urumqi and what the weather condidtions were at the Urumqi airport. The ground staff had little information to convey but were quick to provide instant noodles and bottles of water as the dry winter air had us all feeling a bit parched.
As the hours wore on I had finished my book “Mr. China” by Tim Clissold and my Economist magazine. With all of Xinjiang still cut off from the outside world because of international phone call bans and no Internet access, my options for entertainment were getting bleaker by the moment. I had another book in my check-in luggage but it didn’t seem like I was going to get a hold of that anytime soon. And so I sat.
After sitting on the ground in an airport terminal on the edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert for about six hours the passengers were all told that our flight was officially cancelled. We would have to spend the night in Korle. My trip was becoming in jeopardy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. We were shipped out by bus to a local hotel in the city of Korle were we spent the night on the airlines dime. We were told to be ready to go back to the airport at 1130am the next morning. Why so late I asked one of the airport staff? If I could leave at 7am I would much prefer getting out earlier, as I could still make it to Kashgar and have an afternoon worth of work. But the reason was so that they could maintain their same landing slot from the previous day, fair enough. I asked the same woman again if this happened often. She replied in the winter it happens several times a month.
The essential problem is that Urumqi is basically a horrible place to have an airport. Mountains to the south and west cause a buildup of fog and cloud that surrounds the harsh provincial capital. The geographic conditions cause incredible wind speeds in the summer and often-intense fog and cloud in the dark and depressing winter. This wasn’t entirely a surprise to me. I’d been to Xinjiang in the winter before and noticed the fog and the harsh weather conditions, but it had never impeded travel before; I was less lucky this time. I was mid-way through a bit of a nightmare journey.
So after a night in Korle’s finest 1-star hotel we all loaded back up on the airport bus and headed back to the airport where we sat for another three hours. Then finally there was action and movement. We boarded our plane and headed for Urumqi. We were all saved. I’d make it Kashgar only one day late and still get a chance to shoot. But things got significantly stickier upon landing in Urumqi.
The flight from Korle to Urumqi is one of my all time favorite flights in China as the one-hour flight takes you straight over a fairly meaty section of the Tian Shan mountain range. Glued to the window for the entire flight I was memorized, as I often am, by the jagged peaks and harsh landscapes. In 2001 I had traveled by bus from Urumqi to Korle on the old mountain road that was cut straight through the Tian Shan range. As we winded our way to Korle on that fourteen-hour journey the stunning landscape and the un-believable amount of switchbacks along the route enchanted me; it was truly one of China’s great road journeys. I promised myself if I ever owned a motorcycle I would revisit that route. Nowadays the government has since built a suave new four-lane expressway that goes around the mountains and south to Korle cutting the travel time to about 7-8hrs. Sadly the mountain road is rarely used anymore.
After a dangerously bumpy landing in Urumqi, the fog was no joke; I collected my checked baggage and ran upstairs to check on my flight to Kashgar. The woman at the China Southern desk looked at my hopelessly. My flight was delayed but more importantly that there were about 8 planes worth of people that needed to get to Kashgar before me. So even if the weather were perfectly clear, I wouldn’t get a chance to fly until the following day. But the weather was horrible and after my flight landed from Korle they cancelled the rest of the flights for the day. Fuck!
The Urumqi airport was a complete mess. At the entrance to the airport and the surrounding check in areas there were people sitting, sleeping and camping out. Instant noodle containers were adrift everywhere. I was in the middle of what was a sea of stranded people. I couldn’t manage to stay there much longer and needed some space to think. I hailed a cab and headed in to town where I knew some people who might be able to help. Not knowing how long the fog would last I talked to a train ticket agent I knew from a previous trip. I asked if he had a and sleeper births available to Kashgar, he laughed so hard on his end of the phone I had to pull the phone away from my hear in much the same way you do when you accidentally dial someone’s fax number. Clearly the 24hr train journey from Urumqi to Kashgar wouldn’t be an option, tickets had disappeared. My next call was to a driver that I’d used a few times in the past, was he available and how long was the drive to Kashgar? He turned out to be in Korle, a few Chinese oil men had hired him to drive them from Urumqi to Korle the day before and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and he said the drive to Kashgar in this weather would take about 18-20 hours. Fuck! Fuck!
So I checked in to a hotel in Urumqi and found a bit to eat. By this time my nerves were shattered. I’d been traveling for two days straight. I hadn’t eaten well and it was looking more and more like I wasn’t going to make it to Kashgar. My mood was bitter. With no Internet in the region I was bored out of my skull. I tried to write but my mind was too frayed. I tried to read but I couldn’t focus. Instead I watched six straight hours of Entourage, the entire season 6, that I had on disk with me. A savior. It was exactly what I needed, a few cheap laughs and a good nights rest.
I was up at 630am the next morning. I had rebooked a flight that was supposed to be leaving at 9am and I called the airport and they told me that flights were leaving, but not on time. Okay, we had small progress. After a breakfast of Congee and fried bread sticks I was back at the airport. It was clear after passing through the airport doors at 730am that several hundred people had spent the night there on the floor. People were still passed out all over the cheap marble floor and the chaos from the previous day had seemed to intensify. Now there were flights leaving but who would be allowed to go first, the masses made their claims via several shooting matches. Made me thank god I wasn’t an airline staffer, I’d have lost my nerve and slapped someone.
Since I had canceled my flight from the previous day I was able to re-book and check in rather smoothly. My flight was delayed 4 hours but flights were leaving. It appeared that all I required was a bit of patience. And my patience paid off. Sure enough my flight left 4 hours late and I was in the air, bound for Kashgar. A small dose of victory in an ocean of chaos, but I had lost 48 hours of shooting time.
My fixer picked me up at the airport and got me over to my hotel. Within 10 minutes of checking in I was out in the town shooting. I needed to make up for lost time. It was the day before the big festival and everyone was selling sheep, which would be slaughtered the following day, in the streets. The scenes were fantastic. It was as though the famous Sunday animal market had moved right in to the city center. Tradesmen who bargain for a living pushed each other back and forth, shaking of the hands seals the deal. I managed to get close to several sheep sellers and watch them ply their trade; echoing mannerisms and skill of their forefathers, the generations of Silk Road traders and herdsmen who had come before. The atmosphere was electric.
My first half-day on the ground was positive. The TriX was moving fast and furious and that night I was giddy with anticipation of what might transpire the following day for the festival. My first good nights sleep in days yielded some quality rest. The next day would be long and intense.
Being up and out of the hotel before 930am, before the sun had risen, was not too big a problem, less the bitter cold. It was winter and while Kashgar is an oasis and at a lower altitude than Urumqi, it was still chilly; and the smell of burnt coal hung in the air from a night of staying warm in the mud brick homes of the old town and the surrounding farming communities. But fighting the bitter cold would be well worth it. For at 930am the action started has hundreds of people began filling in to the Id Kah Square, in front of the main mosque, for Morning Prayer. The scene was set alight by a rising sun from 10am to 1030am. Needless to say it was a Kodak moment.
Following Morning Prayer I headed in to the old town to watch the traditional process of slaughtering sheep in the small laneways of the old town, a majestic scene by any account. The rest of the day was followed by bouncing back and forth between the old town for the slaughtering of the sheep and the Id Kah Square for traditional music and singing and dancing. The morning cold had passed giving way to clear blue skies and a glaring sun that left this photographer fairy sunburned. Day two and day three were much the same as the festival tapered off and I focused back on speaking with old town residents and shooting portraits and architecture.
And in the blink of an eye I was back in Urumqi, fogged in waiting for my flight to Shanghai. I’d eaten something funky during the festival and was feeling most uncomfortable. My flight was delayed and I had come full circle. My six-day trip, only three days of shooing, and three days of being stranded and traveling, had taken their toll. I curled up on a few seats at the Urumqi Airport trying not to wretch.
Some trips take more out of you than others. After being stranded, delayed, knee deep in sheep blood and then delayed again I was a broken man. The food poisonings was a bonus. When I finally strolled in to my home in Shanghai at 2am my wife looked at me with the classic “WTF look”. Is it worth all this trouble she asks? Absolutely, I just prayed my pictures did the festival justice. But that wasn’t the right time for professional reflection; it was the moment for stomach medicine and a good 16 hours in bed. I would live to fight another day; hell, I was leaving for Lhasa in just five days. I needed to sort this out in a hurry. The journey continues.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
Monday, April 20, 2009
Ryan Pyle Blog: A Road Less Traveled
Hello,
I often don't write in detail about assignments that I work on, but in this particular case I'll have to break all the rules and open up to you about a recent ridiculous trip while working on my book in Xinjiang, China's mainly Muslim northwestern frontier region.
My project is basically on the region of Xinjiang and the idea is to bring in to light it's incredible history and cultural diversity. In an effort to move away from low hanging fruit in easily accessible oasis towns like Kashgar, Khotan, Aksu, Kuche, Korle, Yining and Urumqi; this trip I opted to push it a bit and go deep in to the Tian Shan Mountain range. With very mixed results. My story is below:
I had been in the region for about four days shooting already, with mixed results as bad weather hampered efforts, when I decided to try driving from one small village in Northwestern Xinjiang to a large city in Southwestern Xinjiang, straight through the Tian Shan mountain range. It took my fixer and I a few hours to find a driver with the gonads to take us; the weather was bad (-10C and snow flurries) and the two 4500m passes might be blocked by snow and ice. We decided to chance it and our driver was motivated by the chance at earning a fee when other drivers were sitting idle.
After looking over the sport utility vehicle I decided that it was fit to take us, I know absolutely nothing about cars, on this 350km journey along a road that barely existed, through the remote Mongolian villages on high plateau of the Tian Shan range.
Upon getting picked up at 8am the next morning (6am Xinjiang time) we set off on our journey in good spirits with tea and fresh nan bread to keep us warm on what was an unseasonably chilly, raining, snow flurried day. That was the first warning we missed.
Not 20km in to our journey I was rummaging through my bag when I looked up and noticed, about 3 seconds too late, that my driver was attempted to drive across a rather angry looking river. Now it's an often occurrence in this part of the world that roads get washed out and SUV's just push right through low/slow rivers. It is something I've become used to over the years, sometimes water seeps in their the doors but usually the interior of the car stays dry and most four wheel drive SUV's can make it across rivers with water below the middle of the car door. On this particular occasion when I looked up and noticed that this river crossing was not a smart move, we were already stuck in the middle of a fast flowing river, after an entire night of rain. My driver noticing there was a problem quickly whipped off his shoes, took off his pants and climbed through his window out on to the hood of the SUV in nothing but his blue underwear, it was a sight for sore eyes. With a wrench in hand he was trying to turn the knob on the wheels, that were now well submerged below icy water, that turned on the four wheel drive option.
Hold it there. Yes, we attempted a horrific river crossing without having the four wheel drive operational.
Once the four wheel drive was "switched on" he hoped back in to the car, shivering from 2C river water, but by now the engine was submerged and the engine was flooded and the battery was dead. We were stuck. I was shocked. Normally on river crossing we stop on the shore, assess the situation, map out the best place to cross and then go for it. This driver, while my attention was elsewhere, just decided to try and barrel through a blistering river without any assessment or consultation. A shocker I know.
So, wondering what I could possibly do to help improve our dire situation I asked our driver what next? Could I help? He shot back with a no, and jumped out of the window virtually naked and waded through waist high ice water to the shore were he flagged down a passing jeep to tow us out. To make a long and painful story short, that didn't work and nether did several of the other options that were tired.
What was I doing during all this? Well I was bailing ice water out of the car as the floors were filling up. We had to cut the tops off our water bottles to make bailers. I also packed up all my camera equipment in preparation for a great escape, and I tried to stay calm. This was by no means a life and death situation, but I didn't want to loose any camera equipment, or film or succumb to frozen testicles; which I have a limited tolerance for. I have done a lot of hiking in China/Tibet and crossing glacial rivers is always a dreaded experience for me, my kryptonite perhaps.
My guide and I, while the driver had disappeared desperately looking for something to pull us out of the river, decided that we had the bailing fairly under control and the water, both inside and outside the car, was no longer rising. So we sat. Made jokes and continued to bail. We laughed about how if we were English explorers in the 1800s we consider this a perfect time for tea; and shared stories about other difficult times we had been in.
All in all we were in a dead, frozen SUV for three hours. Much of the time not knowing exactly what was going on to assist in our rescue. On several occasions we decided to strip and make a dash for it just to end the waiting game, but opted not to risk it in the end because the tide and water level where fairly stable. I basically made the decision that if we weren't taking on water, there was no reason to panic so we just sat there.
Sitting in a car, with a dead battery, in an icy river is actually an incredibly cold experience. I was amazed as how after about 30 minutes I felt like I was sitting in a refrigerator. As I bailed water I realized that the water was near freezing and the outside air temperature was -10C. How long could we last like this? Our answer would come soon enough.
Shortly after we resorted to peeing in juice bottles, and betting on who was doing to have to shit out the window first, a massive bull dozer appeared in the horizon. We were saved. The great thing about China is that you're never more than 5km for a construction site, no matter where in the country you might be. So our driver had paid US$60 to have the bull dozer come over, and pull us out with a steel cable. After just about three hours in the drink, we were saved. What a way to start a journey.
I consider myself to be a fairly tough minded individual, and in fact I am very much in favor of self preservation, but I was a little shaken by our experience in the river; mainly because we had dangerous roads ahead and I had serious questions of our drivers competence, and health, after he spent several long stretches wadding in the frozen river. I was assuming that we would unload our car, switch to another less water logged SUV and head back to town; a day behind schedule. Perhaps have a shower and a hot meal and rethink our route. But my driver wasn't having any of it.
Within ten minutes he had the SUV, that just spent three hours in the icy water, humming away and although he was visably shivering and shacken by the experience he insisted that the show must go on. And so it did.
After our ordeal in the river it took another three hours to arrive in the nasty one street town of Bayan Bulak. For those of you thinking this is a Mongolian oasis please be warned, it's a tourist trap and one of the rusted buildings and bad food variety. With one massive pass behind us, almost an hour of hair raising switch backs, the weather turned evil and shortly we found ourselves driving across the high plateau in the central Tian Shan range in virtual white out conditions. We were clocking a mere 20km per hour.
The next 170km from the town of Bayan Bulak to a remote lake, that I have always wanted to visit, in the mountains took me along the most dangerous road I've ever been on, coupled with the most dangerous weather conditions I've ever seen. White outs, six inches of fresh powder and steep cliff drops on the entire route. Hair raising is not a strong enough term, death defying is perhaps more suitable. And don't forget this was after I'd already spent 3hrs in an icy river. My nerves were shattered, by body exhausted and my moral low. But still we pushed on.
With night beginning to fall we reached the remote lake region where I was able to shoot for a while at dusk. We had planned to sleep there for the night but the blustery winter conditions in mid-April left the guest house operators suggesting we push on for fear of freezing temperatures throughout the night. So with night falling we mounted our trusty SUV, my driver was looking more chipper, he had somehow beaten hypothermia using a combination of car heaters, a Chinese military jacket and a pair of North Face socks I had given him.
There were about 120km between the lake region and the town of Kuche, an oasis town in Xinjiang. Weather there was warm and they had a decent hotel. But our driver indicated that it would take about three hours to make the 140km trip, and that the roads would get worse, but there were no more high passes. Night had fallen and with a glimmer of hope in my drivers eye he suggested we try to make Kuche for a proper nights sleep. I wearily agreed, too exhausted to fight.
For years in China I've tried to avoid, at all costs, driving at night. If my driver is not lacking knowledge of basic safety then surely the trucks and cars that pass us are. Basically it's a crap shoot and the odds are you'll get in an accident. I was in a bad accident in 2005 in a remote region of Anhui province. We were driving at dusk while trying to make it back to the capital city of Hefei; the driver was going too fast and a bicycle swerved out in front of us in a farming district. We zigged and zagged and flew off the road in to a brick house. Luckly no one was hurt and the house was sturdy, the car was a write off. My then writing partner, Howard W. French, suffered a fractured wrist as he braced himself for impact. I ducked and ended up bouncing around in the back seat on impact, I escaped uninjured. Needless to say we were shaken and massive amounts of whisky were needed that night to calm the nerves from a real near miss.
With that story playing over and over again in my mind we headed out in to darkness. Even 40km per hour felt way to fast on dark mountain roads on a route that would have yeilded some stunning views had it not been pitch black. Impossible to sleep I stared out the window in a daze as my body bounced and swayed with the bumps in the road. My back, having been sore most of the day with the rough roads, was now completely numb. I was beyond exhaustion and I had no idea how my driver could continue to concertrate and deliver us to our destination. Very tough man indeed.
Staring out the window as the world passes by you is a strange thing, and even stranger in China where you are liable to pass just about anything out of the ordinary en route. On one pass, two road construction workers were squatting (going to the bathroom) in full view of the road, and our headlights, while seemingly carrying on a rather heated conversation; and at 30km per hour you end up seeing a bit too much detail. As the blackness of the night deepened we had a few near misses of just random people walking along the road, neither road workers nor local tribesman, walking through the complete darkness - and freezing weather. There was a strangeness in the air that night for sure. We had encountered so much that day that I was essentially ready for anything. But I wasn't ready for what happened next.
My breaking point came with about 50km to go to Kuche. After enduring a three hour river drama, bad roads and worse weather, we were about an hour outside of Kuche when we reached a police barricade. Our driver pulled over and received information that we would have to spend the night in our cars as there was a severe sand storm in the valley below and it wasn't safe for car/truck travel. Naturally I wanted to get out of the car and plead with the police officers, I was a mere 50km away from a hot shower and a bit of rest, but alas I had to hide in the back seat of the car with my hat and scarf on; because the road we took through the mountains is closed to foreign travelers we had to be careful of attracting too much attention. Sitting in the back seat I felt as though all the air had been let out of me, as though I was left limp and rendered completely ineffective to everything around me. I was physically and mentally shattered. How was my driver still going strong? Why are us western folks so comparatively weak? I was amazed at his strength, even though I didn't completely agree with all of his decision making; the river crossing standing out as a particular error in judgement.
Just spitting distance from Kuche we were haulted in our most epic journey. Instead of sleeping in our cars, we'd already been in the car 16hrs that day, I opted to put us all up in a little truck stop hotel about 5km back up the mountain. When we organized the rooms and finally put down that night around 1am. Our rooms smelled horrifically and was of the variety that had smashed bugs all over the walls from previous guests who had tired of the mosquitos and other nasties living in the rooms. My pillow and bed sheet smelled of at least 4 distinctly different people, I have a sensitive nose - a real liability in China - leading me to the fact that washing is done just seasonally, if at all.
Nevertheless at one in the morning I could have slept on a bed of nails. We had been on the road since 8am. We spent three hours stuck in an icy river, and the rest of the day drifting from near death experience to near death experience on the worst road I've ever been on. Now when I say that it's important to remember that I've been traveling in China almost exclusively since 2001. I've traveled through Tibet, all of Central Asia and Iran and I've never come across a day of traveling like this; hence my motivation to share it with you in this blog.
Week in and week out things don't always end up like this and in fact every now and then work become a little repetitive or routine like; which is why having a personal project to pursue helps shake things up a bit. Well, I have been shaken, not stirred. And I managed to live to tell the tale.
The next morning we woke up and made the rest of the journey down the valley to the oasis town of Kuche, where I then hoped on a flight to Urumqi, where I am writing this from now. In two hours I fly back home to Shanghai, where my other life picks up again. I reckon I'm living dual lives and I have several personalties going all at the same time. Trying to keep it all together. Never an easy task. I'm headed back to the region in August. More reports coming soon.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
I often don't write in detail about assignments that I work on, but in this particular case I'll have to break all the rules and open up to you about a recent ridiculous trip while working on my book in Xinjiang, China's mainly Muslim northwestern frontier region.
My project is basically on the region of Xinjiang and the idea is to bring in to light it's incredible history and cultural diversity. In an effort to move away from low hanging fruit in easily accessible oasis towns like Kashgar, Khotan, Aksu, Kuche, Korle, Yining and Urumqi; this trip I opted to push it a bit and go deep in to the Tian Shan Mountain range. With very mixed results. My story is below:
I had been in the region for about four days shooting already, with mixed results as bad weather hampered efforts, when I decided to try driving from one small village in Northwestern Xinjiang to a large city in Southwestern Xinjiang, straight through the Tian Shan mountain range. It took my fixer and I a few hours to find a driver with the gonads to take us; the weather was bad (-10C and snow flurries) and the two 4500m passes might be blocked by snow and ice. We decided to chance it and our driver was motivated by the chance at earning a fee when other drivers were sitting idle.
After looking over the sport utility vehicle I decided that it was fit to take us, I know absolutely nothing about cars, on this 350km journey along a road that barely existed, through the remote Mongolian villages on high plateau of the Tian Shan range.
Upon getting picked up at 8am the next morning (6am Xinjiang time) we set off on our journey in good spirits with tea and fresh nan bread to keep us warm on what was an unseasonably chilly, raining, snow flurried day. That was the first warning we missed.
Not 20km in to our journey I was rummaging through my bag when I looked up and noticed, about 3 seconds too late, that my driver was attempted to drive across a rather angry looking river. Now it's an often occurrence in this part of the world that roads get washed out and SUV's just push right through low/slow rivers. It is something I've become used to over the years, sometimes water seeps in their the doors but usually the interior of the car stays dry and most four wheel drive SUV's can make it across rivers with water below the middle of the car door. On this particular occasion when I looked up and noticed that this river crossing was not a smart move, we were already stuck in the middle of a fast flowing river, after an entire night of rain. My driver noticing there was a problem quickly whipped off his shoes, took off his pants and climbed through his window out on to the hood of the SUV in nothing but his blue underwear, it was a sight for sore eyes. With a wrench in hand he was trying to turn the knob on the wheels, that were now well submerged below icy water, that turned on the four wheel drive option.
Hold it there. Yes, we attempted a horrific river crossing without having the four wheel drive operational.
Once the four wheel drive was "switched on" he hoped back in to the car, shivering from 2C river water, but by now the engine was submerged and the engine was flooded and the battery was dead. We were stuck. I was shocked. Normally on river crossing we stop on the shore, assess the situation, map out the best place to cross and then go for it. This driver, while my attention was elsewhere, just decided to try and barrel through a blistering river without any assessment or consultation. A shocker I know.
So, wondering what I could possibly do to help improve our dire situation I asked our driver what next? Could I help? He shot back with a no, and jumped out of the window virtually naked and waded through waist high ice water to the shore were he flagged down a passing jeep to tow us out. To make a long and painful story short, that didn't work and nether did several of the other options that were tired.
What was I doing during all this? Well I was bailing ice water out of the car as the floors were filling up. We had to cut the tops off our water bottles to make bailers. I also packed up all my camera equipment in preparation for a great escape, and I tried to stay calm. This was by no means a life and death situation, but I didn't want to loose any camera equipment, or film or succumb to frozen testicles; which I have a limited tolerance for. I have done a lot of hiking in China/Tibet and crossing glacial rivers is always a dreaded experience for me, my kryptonite perhaps.
My guide and I, while the driver had disappeared desperately looking for something to pull us out of the river, decided that we had the bailing fairly under control and the water, both inside and outside the car, was no longer rising. So we sat. Made jokes and continued to bail. We laughed about how if we were English explorers in the 1800s we consider this a perfect time for tea; and shared stories about other difficult times we had been in.
All in all we were in a dead, frozen SUV for three hours. Much of the time not knowing exactly what was going on to assist in our rescue. On several occasions we decided to strip and make a dash for it just to end the waiting game, but opted not to risk it in the end because the tide and water level where fairly stable. I basically made the decision that if we weren't taking on water, there was no reason to panic so we just sat there.
Sitting in a car, with a dead battery, in an icy river is actually an incredibly cold experience. I was amazed as how after about 30 minutes I felt like I was sitting in a refrigerator. As I bailed water I realized that the water was near freezing and the outside air temperature was -10C. How long could we last like this? Our answer would come soon enough.
Shortly after we resorted to peeing in juice bottles, and betting on who was doing to have to shit out the window first, a massive bull dozer appeared in the horizon. We were saved. The great thing about China is that you're never more than 5km for a construction site, no matter where in the country you might be. So our driver had paid US$60 to have the bull dozer come over, and pull us out with a steel cable. After just about three hours in the drink, we were saved. What a way to start a journey.
I consider myself to be a fairly tough minded individual, and in fact I am very much in favor of self preservation, but I was a little shaken by our experience in the river; mainly because we had dangerous roads ahead and I had serious questions of our drivers competence, and health, after he spent several long stretches wadding in the frozen river. I was assuming that we would unload our car, switch to another less water logged SUV and head back to town; a day behind schedule. Perhaps have a shower and a hot meal and rethink our route. But my driver wasn't having any of it.
Within ten minutes he had the SUV, that just spent three hours in the icy water, humming away and although he was visably shivering and shacken by the experience he insisted that the show must go on. And so it did.
After our ordeal in the river it took another three hours to arrive in the nasty one street town of Bayan Bulak. For those of you thinking this is a Mongolian oasis please be warned, it's a tourist trap and one of the rusted buildings and bad food variety. With one massive pass behind us, almost an hour of hair raising switch backs, the weather turned evil and shortly we found ourselves driving across the high plateau in the central Tian Shan range in virtual white out conditions. We were clocking a mere 20km per hour.
The next 170km from the town of Bayan Bulak to a remote lake, that I have always wanted to visit, in the mountains took me along the most dangerous road I've ever been on, coupled with the most dangerous weather conditions I've ever seen. White outs, six inches of fresh powder and steep cliff drops on the entire route. Hair raising is not a strong enough term, death defying is perhaps more suitable. And don't forget this was after I'd already spent 3hrs in an icy river. My nerves were shattered, by body exhausted and my moral low. But still we pushed on.
With night beginning to fall we reached the remote lake region where I was able to shoot for a while at dusk. We had planned to sleep there for the night but the blustery winter conditions in mid-April left the guest house operators suggesting we push on for fear of freezing temperatures throughout the night. So with night falling we mounted our trusty SUV, my driver was looking more chipper, he had somehow beaten hypothermia using a combination of car heaters, a Chinese military jacket and a pair of North Face socks I had given him.
There were about 120km between the lake region and the town of Kuche, an oasis town in Xinjiang. Weather there was warm and they had a decent hotel. But our driver indicated that it would take about three hours to make the 140km trip, and that the roads would get worse, but there were no more high passes. Night had fallen and with a glimmer of hope in my drivers eye he suggested we try to make Kuche for a proper nights sleep. I wearily agreed, too exhausted to fight.
For years in China I've tried to avoid, at all costs, driving at night. If my driver is not lacking knowledge of basic safety then surely the trucks and cars that pass us are. Basically it's a crap shoot and the odds are you'll get in an accident. I was in a bad accident in 2005 in a remote region of Anhui province. We were driving at dusk while trying to make it back to the capital city of Hefei; the driver was going too fast and a bicycle swerved out in front of us in a farming district. We zigged and zagged and flew off the road in to a brick house. Luckly no one was hurt and the house was sturdy, the car was a write off. My then writing partner, Howard W. French, suffered a fractured wrist as he braced himself for impact. I ducked and ended up bouncing around in the back seat on impact, I escaped uninjured. Needless to say we were shaken and massive amounts of whisky were needed that night to calm the nerves from a real near miss.
With that story playing over and over again in my mind we headed out in to darkness. Even 40km per hour felt way to fast on dark mountain roads on a route that would have yeilded some stunning views had it not been pitch black. Impossible to sleep I stared out the window in a daze as my body bounced and swayed with the bumps in the road. My back, having been sore most of the day with the rough roads, was now completely numb. I was beyond exhaustion and I had no idea how my driver could continue to concertrate and deliver us to our destination. Very tough man indeed.
Staring out the window as the world passes by you is a strange thing, and even stranger in China where you are liable to pass just about anything out of the ordinary en route. On one pass, two road construction workers were squatting (going to the bathroom) in full view of the road, and our headlights, while seemingly carrying on a rather heated conversation; and at 30km per hour you end up seeing a bit too much detail. As the blackness of the night deepened we had a few near misses of just random people walking along the road, neither road workers nor local tribesman, walking through the complete darkness - and freezing weather. There was a strangeness in the air that night for sure. We had encountered so much that day that I was essentially ready for anything. But I wasn't ready for what happened next.
My breaking point came with about 50km to go to Kuche. After enduring a three hour river drama, bad roads and worse weather, we were about an hour outside of Kuche when we reached a police barricade. Our driver pulled over and received information that we would have to spend the night in our cars as there was a severe sand storm in the valley below and it wasn't safe for car/truck travel. Naturally I wanted to get out of the car and plead with the police officers, I was a mere 50km away from a hot shower and a bit of rest, but alas I had to hide in the back seat of the car with my hat and scarf on; because the road we took through the mountains is closed to foreign travelers we had to be careful of attracting too much attention. Sitting in the back seat I felt as though all the air had been let out of me, as though I was left limp and rendered completely ineffective to everything around me. I was physically and mentally shattered. How was my driver still going strong? Why are us western folks so comparatively weak? I was amazed at his strength, even though I didn't completely agree with all of his decision making; the river crossing standing out as a particular error in judgement.
Just spitting distance from Kuche we were haulted in our most epic journey. Instead of sleeping in our cars, we'd already been in the car 16hrs that day, I opted to put us all up in a little truck stop hotel about 5km back up the mountain. When we organized the rooms and finally put down that night around 1am. Our rooms smelled horrifically and was of the variety that had smashed bugs all over the walls from previous guests who had tired of the mosquitos and other nasties living in the rooms. My pillow and bed sheet smelled of at least 4 distinctly different people, I have a sensitive nose - a real liability in China - leading me to the fact that washing is done just seasonally, if at all.
Nevertheless at one in the morning I could have slept on a bed of nails. We had been on the road since 8am. We spent three hours stuck in an icy river, and the rest of the day drifting from near death experience to near death experience on the worst road I've ever been on. Now when I say that it's important to remember that I've been traveling in China almost exclusively since 2001. I've traveled through Tibet, all of Central Asia and Iran and I've never come across a day of traveling like this; hence my motivation to share it with you in this blog.
Week in and week out things don't always end up like this and in fact every now and then work become a little repetitive or routine like; which is why having a personal project to pursue helps shake things up a bit. Well, I have been shaken, not stirred. And I managed to live to tell the tale.
The next morning we woke up and made the rest of the journey down the valley to the oasis town of Kuche, where I then hoped on a flight to Urumqi, where I am writing this from now. In two hours I fly back home to Shanghai, where my other life picks up again. I reckon I'm living dual lives and I have several personalties going all at the same time. Trying to keep it all together. Never an easy task. I'm headed back to the region in August. More reports coming soon.
--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________
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