Day 45

Tracy woke up this morning saying she'd had the best night's sleep since the tour begin -  which surprised a few people, but we have been eating late, and up fairly early.

Today was a travelling day with the intention to get to Lanzhou at least.  Lanzhou is apparently famous for it's noodles so when we arrived there around 2:30, several of the group went to test them out.

As it was still relatively early in the day we pushed on further to Dingxi by about 5:30pm, then a split decision went in the minority's favour to stop rather than get past the only bit of poor road we are expecting to see in the next couple of days.

China'a vehicles are quite a mixed bag.  We have seen far fewer bicycles than I had expected, but still way more than you would see in England.  There are quite a lot of small motorbikes around, in the 100 to 150cc range, but very few larger than that.  Out of the towns, tricycles are everywhere, the front end of a motorbike of around 125cc with a load carrying area above a 2 wheeled rear axle. Also in this class are 3 wheeled pick-up trucks which sound like they have a single cylinder diesel engine.

Next up the food chain would be the 3 wheeled taxis that seem very popular in some towns, but non-existent in others.  Then the standard car size vehicles are split between home grown makes I've never heard of, and east Asian makes from Japan, Korea etc.  The real surprise in this sector is the VW Santana, which is everywhere.  Popular as taxis and private cars, I think it must be built in China under licence, as there is a new model Santana here I have never seen in Europe.

In the lorry range, they are predominantly Chinese makes, with a small number of Mercs, Scanias and Volvos.  They seem to try to get as much onto their lorries as is physucally possible and how they transport cars is an excellent example.  In the UK, vehicle designers have worked out convoluted ways to squeeze 10 then 11, and occasionally 12 cars within the constraints of the regulations.  Not so here.  They seem to have started with a simple double deck car transporter, then when they decided 8 cars wasn't enough they made it longer to hold 10, then 12 cars.  Not content with that, they decided they could carry 50% more by having two rows of cars side by side on the top deck.  The construction and use regulations would make interesting reading.

Tomorrow evening we expect to be in Xian, home of the terracotta army, and the highlight of China for me.

Lat 35 35.05 N
Long 104 37.41 E
Town Dingxi

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