Report of the end of trip in China
Assessment of the conditions of the trip
Relevance of this trip by camping-car

Thanks:

-- My brother and my sister-in-law, without their devotion this trip and the project of the journey round the world could not have been done.

-- My friends:
---- Yves Polge for his assistance at the time of the study of the trip in China with a Chinese agency,
---- Michel Wehrlé and Patrice Rozier for their support and the sending of spare parts,
---- Henriette and Roland Perrin for their encouragement at the time of the tensions with the other team of the group.

Arrived at Katmandu, it is time to write the report of the trip in China and to present suggestions. The goal is neither to be exhaustive nor objective. It is a question to tell my impression, of what I felt and sometimes undergone involuntarily. It is about a “bulletin of mood”, reflections intended for the candidate travellers in the motor home bound for this remote country. Let us take guard not to let carry by the myth of the Silk Road or the journey of Marco Polo. There are no Adventure, but difficulties of all kinds, tiredness, irritations and tensions in the group.
That it to me is not made a lawsuit of intention if I omitted certain aspects or if my remarks can displease. I leave to the other members of the group the care to supplement my gaps and to announce their lived.

 
GPS tracklog of the trip in China

I Teams:
The group was composed of three teams, a 4x4 Toyota arranged for two people, a Unimog truck for two people and a MAN truck with myself in solo, the Webmaster.

1.1 People:
Very quickly it appeared that the motivations and the preparation of the journey were unequal. China like Mongolia and with less degree the Ukraine and Russia require the possession of guide books, maps and the preliminary reading of art book and report of trips by serious authors. Such was not the case. Unpreparedness was manifest. Personally, I had studied and published as of October 2005, note, reflection and road plan that called with a dialog which never took place.
This type of trip is addressed to people who wish to go to meet other civilizations, other cultures and consequently other religions. It implies many visits, monuments, temples, monasteries and museums. The cost of these visits is not negligible. For myself only who did everything, it arises at 400 euros.
This journey is not intended to the “wheelers” and to other “franchiseurs of dunes”. Very often the judgment of General de Gaulle related to French returned to me in memory.
The aspect health and the physical condition must also be approached. I will have the occasion to return there, this trip implies much kilometres under extreme climatic conditions for the organisms of the people from the moderate countries. From Beijing the diurnal temperature was equal or higher than 36°C and the night temperature seldom went down in lower part from 30°C. Organism and psychism of the people driving in a vehicle not air-conditioned were put at hard test. Sometimes for having to drive several hours, it was necessary to visit monuments or to go in a park or to climb a mountain with hundreds of steps. the non participation in these activities created tensions in the group. Sometimes I visited alone monuments.
These remarks are made to draw the attention of future the travellers on the pressing need for setting up a group of homogeneous people, if not in the course of road it will be necessary to find compromises in the majority implying an alignment on with the lowest offer cultural.
1.2 Vehicles:
Several aspects must be evoked.
It is important that the group is composed of the same type of vehicles, traditional motor homes or arranged 4x4 vehicles or trucks. They are three groups of different vehicles which it is not desirable to mix its. They do not drive at the same speed and not the same constraints of traffic. Admittedly the presence of a small 4x4 vehicle in a group of truck allows, from its agility, to easily seek carparks, bivouacs in the cities or the countryside and to open the road in the event of difficulties. Participation of the traditional motor homes in such a trip, I leave the care to the members of the group of Pierre Michel to speak about it.
The homogeneity of the vehicles in sanitary conveniences is a pledge of serenity to find bivouacs. Lastly, I said it previously, the air-conditioning of vehicles, without being a need, is also a guarantee of serenity of the group in the difficult moments. During such a long trip, there is quantity of exogenous facts to the group which create tensions in the group. It is of primary importance, at the time of the constitution of the group and the preparation of the trip to make the dispositions to avoid the tensions induced by endogenous facts with the group. Far from me the idea to show elitism, but this trip involves an important investment. Each team must be able to satisfy his expressed and latent desires.

II The journey:
The trip attracts the following remarks.
2.1 the tour:
It was developed by the members of the association of the Roads of Silk and the World at the time of the trip in 2000 and 2002. It was modified to visit the monasteries of Labrang and Kumbum located in Eastern Tibet. Moreover the southern part was changed by removing the visit of Nanning and KunMing to the profit of carved cliff of Dazu and the Great Buddha of Leshan. It represents a very important mileage, 18,400 kilometres on a road network with a not very dense traffic but on highways and roads with the often degraded roadways together with a Chinese driving if not erratic at least disconcerting for Europeans.
2.2 The road network:
I did not make statistics, but I think that the majority of mileage was made on highway, then on trunk road and finally very little on secondary road, finally there were tracks in Xingjian and Tibet. The use of the highways made it possible to make long distances with a less tiredness, but the other side of the coin is the little of contacts with the Chinese hinterland. Moreover assigned time did not allow it.
The highways of north are recent at the European standards with service areas equipped with a supermarket, toilets and of a correct hotel for our guides. We often practiced its. The highways of the south are older, the roadway is often degraded, the service areas in bad condition and when there is a hotel, the rooms are dormitories with several beds that our guides refused to use.
The trunk roads and provincial are in general in good condition. They are very with tolls, certainly the cost is less than the highways, but the toll gates are frequent. The infrastructures are also with toll.
The secondary roads used are with narrow roadway and ask for a great vigilance of driving both in the countryside and in the villages.
Tolls, Toll Gates, constitute an important expenditure, for my vehicle it arises with 660 euros. There are categories of vehicle according to tonnage. Our guides made so that the trucks are of category 2 have regard to the fact that the identifying card of the vehicle, at the recto of the card of the code country, did not comprise tonnage. However certain toll gates of the highways in the south weigh the vehicles automatically, the cost for the trucks became important.
The surface of the highways is very abrasive, moreover the temperature on the ground is certainly very largely higher than 50°C consequently the tires with tender gum wear quickly. We advise to leave with a set of tires in excellent state.
Speed is limited and controls radar exist.
2.3 Chinese drivers:
I had the occasion to describe in the pages of this Internet site some practice Chinese drivers as well on highways, driving with misinterpretation, as on roads in the event of work with one way in alternated direction, creation of traffic jam which we call Chinese traffic jam. But most dangerous are the bus and taxi drivers in downtown which practice with excess the slalom with fish tail. With my truck with very high cabin over engine, often a taxi or a bus passed in front of me by seeing its only at the last second; by chance, I, each time, avoided the accident. Angrily I sometimes treated these drivers of all the names of birds even in the presence of the Chinese guide in my cabin.
2.4 The insurance of the vehicle:
The contract of the tour operator included an insurance and an option to increase the guarantee of the civil liability. With the statements of the guides, in the event of accident, police takes pictures, we had the occasion to see it many times, and shares the responsibilities between the parts if they are not arranged as a preliminary by amicable agreement. We attended by far these discussions between protagonists.
2.5 Various facts:
There is often work on the trunk roads and secondary roads which are announced to the last moment. It was given to me to be in the alternate direction and to hustle a skittle of indication owing to the fact that a truck had engaged whereas I was there already. For an unexplained or not translated pretext, workmen blocked traffic to extort me money, it cost me 100 CNY, approximately 10 euros.
By leaving HuangShan to Jingdezhen, I saw a lying motorcylcist in the ditch on the right-hand side. I was the first of the convoy with the guide, he given me the order to continue by saying to me that it was about a civil case not concerning the foreigners. Alas I have not time to inform the other teams that stopped to carry help to the casualty. The guide gave the order to the convoy to take again the progression after a motorist had telephoned the appropriate authority. With the statements of the guide, we could have been implied in this accident have regard to the mentality of Chinese always to seek to obtain money of whoever.

III bivouacs:
The looking for bivouac is the focal point of all divergences of the people and all differences of the vehicles. Its history would be worth the writing of a humorous tale. It was gives me to undergo in Mongolia two hours to seek of a bivouac being appropriate to the women, neither too sloping, neither too windy, neither too ugly, nor too… for finally taking worst at the fallen night. Of course we discovered the following day the ideal bivouac with a few kilometres beyond, it is always thus. One of the leitmotivs of the men of the two other teams consisted in saying:“… were women to decide…” What a capitulation! I lived under the matriarchal law during more than five months. The direction of my life had fallen out of stopper rod. Admittedly the life in group requires concessions.
In China the wild bivouac in the countryside is impossible, more precisely we could not practice it. There are several reasons with that, the absence of short cut leading to a thicket, at the edge of a river or at any favourable place, the use far from frequent of the secondary roads and especially the need to find a hotel for our guide. Indeed as opposed to what the person in charge for the tour operator affirmed, the guides do not sleep at the inhabitant, do not have a tent. Moreover they wish air-conditioned rooms being originating in Xingjian or they know only dry warm and not a heat with a water content of more than 80%.
We practiced any kind of carpark, at hotels, guarded or not, courtyard of factory… The cost is also to take into account in the budget, it arises to 200 euros for my truck.

IV Supplies of food:
China is well equipped in food gravers, in supermarkets either locals or great distributors of the world such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart. Carrefour sell some French products but the main products makes up of products adapted to the Chinese taste and manufactured locally. The supply local fruit and vegetables is abundant. Only the bread caused us preoccupations with a purchase. At midday the group lunched with the guide in small restaurants either service areas or villages.
The organisms were put at hard test by pigmented food. The guide took care of the absence of pigment in the preparation of our dishes.

V Fluids:
The price of diesel slightly varied during the stay except in the province of Guizhou where the Sinopec distributor rationed to 200 CNY per vehicle, the other Petrochina distributor benefited from it to increase its price. The supply does not pose any problem, roads and highways are well equipped in service areas. At the statement of the guides, the price of diesel to the pump is fixed by the government once per annum. Consequently, one has to expect a significant increase at the beginning of 2007.
With regard to oil changing of the engine oil and the change of the filters, each team had his own solution, the Toyota made a maintenance at Toyota in Ürümqi, Unimog had carried the quantity of oil and filters for the complete trip, the MAN was serviced by MAN with Beijing.
The water supplyr does not raise more difficulty. Service areas have a water station with an all-in price by vehicle of 10 CNY. All the carpark at hotel which we used had a water pipe. Of course this water is not drinkable, it must be treated. The water consumption is not negligible. It is pleasant the days of strong warm, temperature higher than 30°C and water content exceeding 70%, to take a shower in the evening before to go to bed.
The supply gas was not either a difficulty for the team of Toy.

VI Money:
This topic is seldom approached. I gave, with the current publication of pages of this Internet site, the evolution of the main expenditures, tolls of roads/highways, the cost of carpark, the cost of visits, the cost of litre of diesel. The future participants must be conscious that the final cost of the jpurney can be largely higher than the double of the price paid at “China Comfort Travel” not included the possible cost of spare parts sent from France nor the cost of the trip of approach of China and the return to France. I did not give the food cost because it is not representative.
Except in Kashgar where there was no ATM, all the cities have a “Bank of China” with a ATM's accepting the Visa card. The withdrawal is limited either to 2,000 or to 2,500 CNY according to the city. To obtain the desired amount it is enough to as many make withdrawals as necessary within the limit of the weekly amount of the held card. The exchange of euros, dollars or travellers does not pose any problem, sometimes there is a limit of the amount for the travellers. The banks are open Saturdays and Sunday.
Over the duration of the trip, the average level-headed exchange rate included commission is  9.65 yuans to euro.

VII guides:
The role and the missions of the guide are defined in a vague way by the contract, perhaps voluntarily. At minima, he is an interpreter and a facilitator making possible our trip. Without generalizing with our four guides, they were not lecturers ready to explain the civilisationnel facts of their country. Moreover some guides, the second and the third, from the area of Ürümqi, visited sites or museums while joining Chinese group to listen to comments of the lecturer in vernacular language.
Lived is business of relational between our guide and the group, more precisely between the guide and a certain team. Our guide travelled alternatively in the cabin of the one of the trucks. The discomfort of the noisy and not air-conditioned cabin of one of the trucks involved tensions with the concerned team. Moreover the obligation to find every evening a hotel accepted by our guide did not support the serenity of the contacts .
During the trip we had four guides whose last was English-speaking whereas the contract stipulated that the guides speak French. After the intervention near the French tour operator, an interpreter, Stéphanie, came to join Liu for the end of the voyage from Lhasa to Kathmandu.
All our guides did not have the driving license. The contract must mention that the guides have the driving license, it is very important to advise us and explain us the traffic signs met on the road network.

VIII Extension of the visa and other documents:
The contract of the travel agency is based on a 100 days stay to take account of the risks of the trip. However the Chinese visa is 90 days to the maximum, it was thus necessary to proceed a 10-day extension in China. After many explanations of the one of our guides, Yang the third, CITS, the Chinese subcontractor of China Comfort Travel, it appeared that it is a new thirty-day visa which we could obtain only in one capital of province.  Thus it was necessary to wait September. After discussion of the group, the choice of the cities was fixed either Guiyang or Chongqing. Guiyang was preferred, because located at approximately 1,100 meters high, the temperature was pleasant there. Moreover we had to intervene with the director of China Comfort Travel so that the subcontractor take responsibility for its the cost, certainly tiny, of the new visa.
We had to wait four days in Guiyang, that is to say an equivalent delay within road plan, two days were caught up with later on. The new visa is valid from the 12/09/06 to the 10/10/06. The decision to carry out the extension of the visa was made for security reasons at case or we would have delay on the move to Lhasa have regard to the experiment of the groups in 2000 and 2002.
The English-speaking guide from Lhasa, Liu, Yang substitute in Xichang taught us that we must leave China at the latest on October 02 and not on October 07 as the contract envisaged it. Moreover other Chinese documents, driving license, validity until the 02/10, automobile license of the vehicle, validity until the 02/10 and traffic taxes, validity until the 30/09, are coherent. In addition, Tursum, our first guide had us if not badly informed at least he had hidden us the reality or the truth: All the Chinese documents including those emitted by the military authority of Tibet forced to us to leave at the latest the 02/10/2006. Indeed it had told us a strange story concerning the national festival of China involving the closing of the border with Nepal! he advised us to leave before the 01/10/06 so that we held of it account in our road plan. Is this duplicity of the Chinese character? Obviously, we were not clear-sighted at the time we received documents in Kashgar. We would have to see us if not of an anomaly at least of the coherence of the Chinese documents on the date of exit of China at the latest the 02/10/2006.
It appeared whereas the decision to take the new visa in Guiyang was not relevant. Moreover infrastructure works on the strategic road 318 from Chengdu to Lhasa makes traffic less random, less breakable. The problems of the extension of the visa and other documents remain whole: At which time is it judicious to make it? Is it useful to extend the stay to 100 days?
At all events China Comfort Travel is indebted for us five days of stay in China/Tibet. In fact the days missed to us to peacefully visit Lhasa and the monasteries on the move towards the Nepalese border.

IX The Chinese:
The behaviour of Chinese does not leave surprise the European traveller.
They are noisy, they speak very loud even they shout. Is this a problem of Chinese language? At the time of my preceding journeys I had been surprised by spittle's which they throw out constantly and in any place. This practice always has course. I saw it and understood it by a museum attendant in three-piece suit and white gloves. The scraping of the throat then the jet in a metal spittoon were sound in a quiet environment. In cybercafés made up of hundreds of stations, they smoke, they spit on ground, they shout while playing with warlike games.
Looking Chinese to eat with the rods is a amazing and unforgettable spectacle some is the restaurant, a cheap restaurant or top-end restaurant. They put in mouth food from the bowl noisily, they charge food in their mouth. They very often eat in group, family or of businesses. Then the dishes are common, they fill their bowl with the rods they use. At the end of the meal the table, often round, is strewn with waste of any nature. The ground around the guests is indescribable. Of course, they smoke while eating.
In Beijing, I was invited in top-end restaurants, certainly food was excellent relative with cheap restaurant. But that it is allowed to me to say that the Chinese gastronomy cannot be of great quality since it is necessary to eat with rods. Meat is very cooked to be able to be jagged with rods. Fish, when it is not cut out of piece bathing in an abundant sauce, is presented in entirety. The spectacle after the guests were useful themselves with rods is confusing. Some it is the restaurant is of use to carry the remainder of the dishes.
The Chinese toilets would deserve a long development that the propriety prohibits to me….They are with the image of the table and the ground after the meal of the guests.
All our stops they approached our vehicles to observe them noisily and discuss loudly between them. Some required to visit, others entered without authorization in the cabin and the cell.
It is difficult to believe that Chinese people belong to the one of largest and of most exquisite civilizations and undoubtedly to perennial. Obviously there is a fracture between the well-read men and the people.

X My appreciation:
This trip enabled me to see new aspects of Chinese civilization and to re-examine some monuments I had discovered at the time my preceding travels, 1981 and 1988 and at Tibet, 1990 and 1991. I fixed forever in my memory the beauty of thousand-year-old sites. In spite of my former readings and levelling made before my departure. I recognize humbly that Chinese civilization in all its philosophical, cultural and pertaining to worship aspects is of a difficult apprehension. Moreover like previously, the dialog with the autochthones is always impossible for one not sinicizing. Our guides were not of any help in the civilisationnel approach have regard with the filter of the trough of our guide and educational and political conditioning. I tried, at the time of the presence of the guide in my cabin, to tackle significant subjects, Taiwan, Tibet, the North Korea, demography, democracy, humans right, etc… the dialog was difficult sometimes impossible with some of them, but always agreed.
The evolution of China after the political turn of the “Band of the Four” then the economic turn at the end of the XXth century was for me a real shock. I tried to say it in the preceding pages of this Internet site. The fracture between the new rich person, the middle-class of cities and the farming community of the campaigns is a reality that the government of this country has to manage. Economic takeoff, demography, policy of restoration of the social housing and construction of modern infrastructure involved a boom in the building and public works visible in all agglomerations, sometimes with even secular antiquated means. It was one of the engines of the Chinese growth.
It was a trip certainly enriching, but too fast taking into account the time assigned by the legislation and especially with too many hours of driving to go from one city to the other. It was cultural Stakhanovism. But great disappointment is the little of time devoted to visit Tibet.

XI Relevance of this voyage by motor home:
The preceding paragraphs presented briefly some negative aspects, more shouting, much kilometres on highway, bivouacs in carpark of hotels, few contacts with the population, little vision of hinterland, not cultural accompaniment. Could it be made differently?
I would like to take up the idea put forward by Stephen S. of our Association of the Roads of Silk and the World, which answered the one of my emails of request for information: “… a good plan would be to arrive at Tibet, to visit it, to leave vehicles there then visit China with a package tour, finally to take again the vehicles in Tibet…”.
--For the camp-car driver the entry Tibet is possible by Kashgar, Kathmandu and Chengdu.
----Kashgar: The arrival in Kashgar can be done is by the pass of Torugart coming from Kyrgyzstan or the pass of Kunjerab coming from Pakistan by the KKH. It would be beneficial  to be Xinjiang to do the Road of Silk until Lanzhou and to enter Tibet by the road making it possible to visit the monasteries of Labrang and Kumbum, then the provinces of Kham and Amdo before going to Lhasa.
----Kathmandu: It is the traditional road to Lhassa.
----Chengdu: For the teams held by time and or not wishing to go on a long journey of approach, it is possible to send the vehicles to Hong Kong by boat then to go to Chengdu via Canton by highway. This way at advantage to enter Tibet by the road of the conquest of the west Tibetan by the Chinese, road 318. Chengdu is at Chinese what St Louis was at American, the Gate to the West.
--Catalogues of the French great tour operators can be used as a basis of reflection to visit China having left the vehicles to Lhasa. Moreover the tour operator to which the circuit will have been entrusted to Tibet could be in charge of the visit of China on an package tour if the number of people is sufficient. Of my experiment China Comfort Travel is not the best for the trip both to China and to Tibet have regard to the fact that it withdrawn to a Chinese agency, for us it was CITS in Ürümqi and for the other group it was Swan. It would be preferable to treat directly with a Chinese agency. I had personally started this step before the defection of the candidates of the truck group.
The choice of the tour, the type of trip is business of personal judgment, of objectives of each one and the composition of the group of travellers.

XII The return journey to France:
Return in France I would not tell anything. As of the study of the trip in October 2005, I had announced that I left for a round the world and that consequently I did not return to France. The two other teams left France together and must return there together. Tensions accumulated during the trip, advertisement many reiterated in the moments of strong tensions should involve the bursting of the tandem in Kathmandu.