The Great Ride of China - 4 months through every province in China
 

Hello Horizons Unlimited members!

I just wanted to take the opportunity to share a little about a trip my girlfriend Amy and I have just recently set out on a little over a week ago that we are calling The Great Ride of China.

On July 19th, we left from Beijing on a CFMOTO 650TR to travel in a counter-clockwise direction around China, up towards Harbin, across through inner mongolia, towards Xinjiang, into Tibet, up north towards Qinghai (the east of Tibet is closed to foreigners) and then down and around the southern provinces. We're looking covering around 25k-30k kilometers on the trip and it should take us a little over 4 months.

At the moment, we've covered about 2000km and gone through 5 provinces as we arrived in Harbin yesterday, our eastern most point on the trip. Tomorrow we'll be turning north west towards Inner Mongolia and the Russian border before moving west. Really looking forward to the grass plains of inner mongolia!

One of the highlights so far was riding through certain sections of Liaoning province. The roads there are probably the nicest I've seen in China so far and rank highly for me in all roads I've ridden on. Much of the time they were lined with sunflowers which made the air extremely fresh smelling! (A nice change from the smog in Beijing where we live). Two routes I would recommend in particular are the G305 that cuts across the Dalian peninsula and then the 319 east out of Dalian which winds around the Yalu river and borders North Korea for a good bit of time. It eventually meets up the G201 which parallels the expressway and is really spectacular riding including some great mountain twisties.

I'll be trying to post updates here, but time is scarce of course, so it'll probably be closer to every 2 weeks. We do try and post pretty regularly on our social accounts (Our weibo, the Chinese twitter is @骑行中国爱心之旅, where we post most often. You can also follow me on instagram @bukco13）and we also have a website The Great Ride of China. We are having some page load issues at the moment so please excuse any lag while we get that figured out! On the site though we have pictures updated regularly, a GPS track that we update daily as well as trip stats such as mileage, days, provinces, etc.

Finally, if there are any riders out there who we may happen to cross paths with, would be great to try and meet up on the road!

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I'll be interested in see how the cfmoto performs ,as they are now sold in Australia,it is modeled on on Honda's st1300.will follow with interest.Noel

Glad you're following along! So far the 650TR is a lot of fun to ride. Definitely will let you know how it holds up along the way :)

Great Ride of China Updates- 6k km and 8 Provinces Down
 

Hi All,

Just wanted to give some updates on the ride so far!

We've now covered over 6,000km and gone through 8 provinces. We reached the northernmost point of our journey at the Russian border in Inner Mongolia and returned back to central China, visiting ancient cities and temples making it to the historical capital of China in Xi'an.

Here are some of the highlights of what's happened since our last update in Harbin:

Our first accident and navigating around some back country roads

20km of non-stop construction in Inner Mongolia

Russian Border and spectacular roads through the IM grass plains

Fording Rivers

Getting back into central China and visiting ancient sights

We've also put together a neat little feature on our website that we call "The Command Center" where we update stats and maps as regularly as we can to help track the progress of our trip. Check it out here.

Nice pix...was it easy to get permission to ride a motor cycle in China...any good travel agency...??

Sent from my GT-I9082 using Tapatalk 4

Hi there aditya,

Glad you like the photos! We've been posting a lot more on our site through our Flickr group too if you want to see more.

As for riding in China, you don't really need to "get permission" so much as just make sure you have the right documentation just like riding in any other country. China doesn't accept any international license so you have to convert to a local license by taking the written test. I've heard they have a temporary one you can get too that lasts for 6 months. Other than that, once you get a bike, just make sure you have all the proper paperwork, which the place you buy from can help you sort out (license, registration, insurance, etc.). Now of course, that's all assuming you want to ride fully legally. Lots of people who ride in China pick up cheap second hand bikes and just ride. If you're foreign (and even Chinese) a lot of time you won't get bothered.

As for travel agencies, I believe there are a few that operate in China though I haven't used any myself. A quick Google search should be able to help you out though! :thumbup1:

Thnx...n good luck..n we shall connect with travel agencies as we plan to ride with our royal Enfield into china from india thru nepal...cheers..

Aditya RTW!

Great ride, great pics, keep us updated. I've added you on instagram (olli_wood)

Passed 10k km on the ride so far and 11 provinces!
 

Well, it's been quite a while now since the last update on our ride here on mychinamoto but a lot has happened since the last update which left us at Xi'an.

We've now ridden through 11 provinces (1/3 of the way done!) and have passed 10,000km.

We are currently in Xinjiang province, at our most western point in Kashgar.

We visited the western end of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan

Hiked the sand dunes in Dunhuang and visited the ancient Buddha grottoes (Some beautiful desert roads on the approach to the city)

We went to one of the lowest points in earth in the Turpan Depression getting stuck in a massive sandstorm while visiting the monument at Aiding Lake

Went up a gorgeous mountain climb south of Urumqi but required 100km of riding on unpaved road climbing up to 4,600m (highest point of the trip so far).

Taking some days off now in Kashgar while we wait for our Tibet tour guide and permits. Had to go on a pretty eventful visa run to Kyrgyzstan though while we waited!

Really pumped for the next leg of the journey which will take us 20-25 days through Tibet including a visit to Everest base camp!

Here are some pics from the days above but there are lot more on our site, our flickr group, and instagram of course (thanks Olli for following! :thumbup1: )

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I do enjoy fishing too But...
:eek3: while riding a moto surely is not recommended? :smiliex: !!!!!
Catch anything?
Nice pictures!

olá amigo.muito boa viagem.ótimas fotos.parabéns e boas aventuras.jefferson luna Brasil!!!: Aplauso:: Aplauso:: Aplauso:

olá amigo.muito boa viagem.ótimas fotos.parabéns e boas aventuras.jefferson luna Brasil!!!: Aplauso:: Aplauso:: Aplauso: