Wudangzhao Lamasery

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

Departing Baotou going South towards Ordos with a quick stop at a touristy desert section (Xiangshawan) of the so called Kubuqi desert = Singing Sand Ravine, Resonant Sand Bay or Resonant Sand Gorge. You will notice that all the names have to do with sound – that’s because of a unique natural phenomenon where the sand at Xiangshawan Desert makes interesting echoes which varies according to weather and how you walk on the sand e.g. when sliding down from the 90-meter-high, 45-degree sand dunes of Xiangshawan Desert, one can supposedly hear the sound of car and aircraft engines! It is also said that the sand also produces a light “shhhh” sound as you walk on it. However, it is very difficult to hear such sounds today as Xiangshawan Desert has become quite crowded and noisy with tourists (like a zoo following the standard of most popular attractions in Mainland China). Nobody can explain this strange phenomenon – not even scientists and researchers studying this sound. There have been quite a number of folk stories on this sound – some say that a Tibetan lamasery was located here and it was suddenly buried in sand (together with all the lama monks who were chanting when that happened) by a sandstorm so it was thought that the sound was produced by the lingering spirits of the lamas who are still chanting! Xiangshawan is approx. 45 kilometres from the city of Baotou...

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

Another Khan Run 2014 overnight stop = Ordos.....

Ordos is one of the twelve major subdivisions of Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China. It is within the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River. Although mainly rural, Ordos is administered as aprefecture-level city. The administrative seat is at Dongsheng which had a population of 582,544 inhabitants at the 2010 census. Another Banner is being urbanized quickly around the city of Ejin Horo with about 251,894 inhabitants at the 2010 census which is the seat of Ordos Airport.
Built for over a million people, the city of Ordos was designed to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. Doomed to incompletion however, this futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only 2 percent of its buildings were ever filled; the rest has largely been left to decay, abandoned mid-construction, earning Ordos the title of China’s Ghost City......

Spirited laps around the Ordos International Circuit, built in 2010, is a motorsport facility located in Kangbashi New Area, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China. It hosted a round of the China Touring Car Championship, Scirocco Cup China and Superleague Formula in 2010. The circuit is 3.751 km long with 18 corners.... http://www.oic2010.cn

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

When I was a kid, read a lot about Genghis Khan and a visit to the Genghis Khan mausoleum was planned for a long time....

Pretty impressed while in the actual tomb (altar room) one of the rather large Mongolian tomb guards handed me a blue Mongolian scarf to carry along while continuing my Khan Run 2014 journey.....

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

Get your kicks on route G109 from Ordos (Nei Mongolia) to Datong (Shanxi) over 550k's and 14hr. riding, everyone warned me about that dangerous stretch of road but had to see it for myself once in my life. If you never go ~ you will never know....

Thousands of overloaded coal truck stuck in traffic jams or fighting for every road space and possible spot available speeding along. They are overloaded and leave nasty grooves in the asphalt and quite dangerous to ride between the grooves due to spillage of motor oil and diesel, feels like riding on ice....

Lets name this post "daily life on China highway G109" and pics say more than a thousand words.....

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

China National Highway G109….

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

China National Highway G109….

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

G109 National China Highway.... dusty ~ dirty ~ dangerous but there is only one way to get out of this - I know what is behind and don't ever want to do that again, so up and onwards I rode along the groovy highway.....

__________________
Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

China National Highway G109….

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

China National Highway G109….

__________________
Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

As many know, TIC = This Is China and The Middle Kingdom called China works in mysterious ways and the "safety rules & regulations" in some provinces (Inner Mongolia / Shanxi) require re-filling a motorcycle out of tin buckets (flimsy leaking tin cans most of the times of all sizes and shapes).
Remember the slogan "Safety First" please as the petrol station attendant fills up the flimsy and filthy tin cans with petrol and one has to fill up 10-20m away from the petrol pumps.
Not an easy task as its quite difficult to fill the petrol tank that sits high on import bikes like a Ducati-MTS and BMW-GS12 with full and heavy leaking tin cans.

Well ~ while strolling through a Chinese style supermarket the other day in Baotou found a great device to protect the paint work from scratching and some petrol spillage.... TOILET SEAT MATS and they had them in fashionable pink colour, bought a bunch of them and made some locals happy and smiling along the route....

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

Datong (Shanxi), two night stop over to catch up with work projects and a bit of a decent clean up and sightseeing....
Don’t let first appearances deceive you – gritty, polluted and unattractive it may be, but Datong is the main jumping-off point for two of northern China’s most spectacular sights.
The phenomenal Yungang Caves and the gravity-defying Hanging Temple can both be chalked off in a single day,...

Here we are at the famous Hanging Temple out at the mountains.... The Hanging Temple, also Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple is a temple built into a cliff (75m above the ground) near Mount Heng in Hunyuan County, Datong City, Shanxi province, China.
The closest city is Datong, 65 kilometers to the northwest. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.
The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock.
The monastery is located in the small canyon basin, and the body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight. Coupled with the repair of the dynasties, the color tattoo in the temple is relatively well preserved.
December 2010, it was listed in the “Time” magazine as the world's top ten most odd dangerous buildings.

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

The Hanging Temple, also Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple....

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

West of Datong, the monumental Yungang Caves, a set of Buddhist grottoes carved into the side of a sandstone cliff, are a must. Built around 400 AD at a time of Buddhist revival, the caves were the first and grandest of the three major Buddhist grottoes, the other two being the Longmen Caves in Luoyang and the Mogao Caves in Gansu.
These are the best preserved, but prepare to be disappointed by their surroundings – the atmosphere has for years been blighted by nearby coal mines, and the benefits afforded by the recent addition of parkland have been eroded by a huge and even more recently built shopping mall. However, it’s still well worth the trip.

Arranged in three clusters (east, central and west) and numbered east to west from 1 to 51, the caves originally spread across an area more than 15km long, though today just a kilometre-long fragment survives.
If it’s spectacle you’re after, just wander at will, but to get an idea of the changes of style and the accumulation of influences, you need to move sequentially between the three clusters.
The earliest group is caves 16–20, followed by 7, 8, 9 and 10, then 5, 6 and 11 – the last to be completed before the court moved to Luoyang. Then followed 4, 13, 14 and 15, with the caves at the eastern end – 1, 2 and 3 – and cave 21 in the west, carved last. Caves 22–50 are smaller and less interesting.

__________________
Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR

Yungang Caves....

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Somewhere down the road in China since '89 ~ along the route I've learned the hard way that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everybody off is a piece of cake....TBR