September 18, 2015 Dunhuang to Golmund

Today we spent 536km (335 miles) in beautiful desert scenery.  The miles melted away quickly because we spent the entire day racing down the G30 freeway. 

We left The Silk Road Dunhuang Hotel early due to the length of the ride.

It didn’t take long to say goodbye to the grapevines and head into the desert.

The train tracks were with us most of the day.   It’s amazing how high in the air it was built.

We were waved through the morning police check station.

Then headed up to a couple of passes, one as high as 3600 meters (12,000 feet).

It’s surreal to see snow covered mountains adjacent to sand dunes.

The roads were fast and seemed to go on forever.

At one point we saw some horses,

And then later a camel herd.

Our lunch town appeared out of no where.  Suddenly, there’s a town large enough to have restaurants.  The group opted to snack beside the road and continue on with minimal delay.

A quick illegal U-turn and we were back on the freeway headed east again.

Large herds of sheep were spotted.

This area of China is known for its salt production.  We passed several large salt flats in the afternoon. 

Some of them didn’t look so appetizing.

A salt processing plant was next to the road, piles of salt in front.

David really wanted to see how fast the motorcycle could go.  The road and sight distance were good.  So we left the group behind as he cranked the motorcycle up to 205 kmh (127 mph).  Dave was disappointed.  The R1200 is supposed to be capable of 250 kph.  However, he consoled himself with the fact that our bike has a large windshield, large panniers, and a passenger that slowed us down.

Since we had the GPS route, and there was less than 20 miles to the hotel, we decided to continue on to the hotel ahead of the group

Up until this afternoon, we haven’t had to pay many tolls.  But when Dave and I tried to bypass the gate, we were waved over and told that we had to pay a toll.  The girl tried to make us understand in her best English that “motorcycles not allowed to use road, so have to pay toll”.  Ummmm.  Something got lost in translation.

Not to worry, the rest of group had caught up by that time.  Yingchu paid the tolls and we continued on.

The city of Golmund has the best city circle statue we’ve seen to date.  Dave and I both like this one a lot - probably because it’s not modern in style.

We arrived at our hotel, Zhonghao New Century Hotel in early afternoon.  We were absolutely delighted to get into our rooms at 3 in the afternoon, instead of the evening arrivals we’ve experienced on the last few riding days.

We also had another Tesla spotting – sort of.  The hotel has a destination charger in the parking garage.  Where there is a charger, there must be a Tesla!