2024-12-22
Time traveling with ZL (Part 3) — Want to go biking around Qinghai Lake together?
In the summer of 2021, a few weeks before ZL left for school, we agreed to bike around Qinghai Lake. The trip lasted six days and five nights, with the actual circumnavigation taking exactly four days: a total of 360 kilometers, averaging 90 kilometers per day. For a week after returning, even after resuming a normal diet, I still lost 5 pounds.
I had been wanting to repeat this kind of crazy travel plan ever since I first tried it during the summer before college in 2014. Over the years I kept urging and calling on every friend around me. ZL was the only one who showed great interest and actively responded.
We set off from a bike rental shop in Haiyan County (I brought my own bike; ZL rented a touring bike) and cycled clockwise around the lake.
The sky and sea merged into one line under an endless clear sky. Looking ahead, only the road stretched to the horizon. Beneath the vast blue sky was an even bluer sea, next to which were large fields of rapeseed flowers. On the road beside the fields, there were only the two of us.
Over the four days, the world shrank down to a rhythmic pedaling left and right. Heaven and earth contained only us two. Our tired bodies supported endlessly active minds. We didn’t even bother listening to music; our conversations were hard to end.
In the past seven years, Qinghai Lake has been expanding. A statue that stood by the shore in 2014 was half submerged in water by 2021. I wondered whether, within my lifetime, Qinghai Lake might reconnect with rivers and gradually become a freshwater lake. And if that happened, would we come again? Not daring to hope for another circumnavigation, but at least sitting in a tent drinking a big pot of milk tea, then boast about how much fun it was.
Only the severe migraines caused by altitude sickness that lasted almost half the ride, several continuous 30-kilometer uphill sections, occasional rainstorms, poor accommodation, and the particular awkwardness of a twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old artsy youth could add just a hint of bitterness to this journey.
Worth mentioning: The last day’s ride was accompanied by relentless rain and endless uphills. Out of our 24 Snickers bars, only 6 were left, and we were sick of drinking Red Bull. In the afternoon, I vaguely felt a chill at the back of my tongue and realized it was a bad sign. When we rested 20 km from the finish line, ZL’s sense of humor was still going strong, producing the legendary “C1 peeing photo.” Fortunately, a Tibetan truck driver asked if we needed help. The moment I sat down in the warm, dry cab with the AC on, I realized just how cold it had been. I shivered for another ten minutes on the road.
After returning to Xining, we ate a huge portion of hand-pulled lamb. That was the last time I saw ZL before this autumn.
We met a Hong Kong uncle with a flat tire. After helping him pump it up, he took this super cool photo of us.
I took a revenge photo of ZL peeing.
The hand-pulled lamb was incredibly delicious.
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