It was a rainy morning and I was tossing up whether to do 33kms to Changji or 70 to Hutubi. I simply couldn’t decide, so I packed and left. By the time I’d left, I was thinking of taking the Hutubi option.
I hadn’t factored in the amount of road construction in and around Urumqi. It’s amazing, and the maps simply don’t keep up.
I found this out after a few hundred metres. There was a freeway that had been built right across my road. There was no way around it and no underpasses except for a pedestrian subway which I found. Over the next ten kms, this scenario was repeated over and over.
It culminated with a major diversion which added about ten kms to my route. Again it was a freeway that didn’t have the over and underpasses. They were still building that. After lots of back and forth, I backtracked about 5kms and found a pedestrian underpass. After that, I wheeled the bike through turnstiles to make my escape – well that’s what it felt like. The relief of finally passing the barrier made by the freeway was immense. I could finally get back to making progress.
It was all to do with the roads around the airport. And the airport looks massive. That’s no surprise – everything here seems to be built on a scale that blows my mind. The high speed railway stations are massive, the freeways, the number of highrise buildings, the number of EVs, the people, the size of a wind farm I saw (it must have been at least 20kms long), …
Finally, I was able to join the service road beside the G312 and made it to Changji where I thought I’d sit down and decide what I’d do in the afternoon.
A mother and her son were cycling along the bike lane near me, and at a set of lights, we chatted. His mum sounded like a teacher, prompting him to speak english to me. They were both very nice.
They turned off and I went to look for a restaurant down an alley. What I found was a sewing shop. I needed some elastic to replace that in my strap for the rear rack. It’s a great strap but if I forget to attach one side, it gets sliced up by the rear cog. That’s happened a few times over the last four years.
The ladies in the shop were great. We went through many different types of elastic until we found the right one. Right one ? It’s the best I’ll find in these parts before the damaged ones break. For $2, I can’t go wrong. It’s not often that a sewing shop gets mentioned in a cycle travel blog.
I didn’t go much further and found some lunch which is when I decided to call it a day. It was about 2pm and I just didn’t feel like another 40kms of riding.
I went straight to the hotel and checked in. The process took quite a while and all of my bags were scanned. It was initially strange, and the first time I’d seen this, butlets see if it usual for this region over the next week or so.
The hotel was over the road from an interesting “Eat Street” area, with some old style buildings. The rest of the town was nice too, with wide boulevards and good shops. There was an air of quality about the place.
Peppered beef noodles was the chosen fare for dinner and they were definitely peppered.
