The new 500 watt Bosch batteries and increasing truck traffic

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

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Although we like it here very much and I still have many stories to write, we decide to continue. The reason is the weather forecast, which we stick to as far as possible. It is not expected to rain for the next few days. The roads, covered in coal dust, become slippery and slippery when wet. With the extremely heavy traffic that has been plaguing us for several hundred kilometers, this is an important prerequisite for reaching the day’s destination safely.
We are now used to the crowds of people on the street during packing and loading. Here, however, the frenzy of spectators increases to such an extent that the ever-growing crowd can no longer find room on the sidewalk and begins to obstruct traffic. The police send a patrol to see what’s going on. “Everything’s okay!” the hotel manager calls out to them.

Under blue skies and at around 9 °C, we let the pedals spin. Shanyin quickly becomes smaller in the rear-view mirror. “Great! No trucks!” I say happily as our route joins the S305 trunk road at the end of town. From this point onwards, a never-ending stream of heavy goods traffic rushes past us. “Tuuuhhhhht! Tuuuhhhhht! Tuuuhhhhht!”, greet or warn us the countless Hummers. Their honking is sometimes so loud that it almost blows us out of the saddle. Highly concentrated, we pedal our horses along the narrow shoulder, the right-hand side of which is once again bordered by a steep precipice. “Wooouuuhhh!” the 38-ton trucks, heavily laden with coal, hiss incessantly as they transport their million-ton black load from the coal mines to the cities. “I thought we were on a secondary route?” asks Tanja, as the road we are now using looks rather inconspicuous on the map and also winds along the Great Wall of China. We would never have expected to come across such a needless convoy of trucks here. “Oh no! Ajachi has destroyed the safety net,” exclaims Tanja as she takes a look at his trailer while driving past. We stop immediately to inspect the damage. Just yesterday I put a wire net on Ajachi’s trailer so that he can no longer stick his paws out while driving. Ajachi had already slashed the lightweight mosquito net supplied by the manufacturer with his paws in the first few hours. Tanja was therefore soon busy sewing every day. To prevent him from getting his paws on my rear tire or, in the worst case, under the trailer while driving, we put him in the other way around so that he could see out the back while driving. This in turn meant that too much load was placed on the drawbar, causing it to bend. The grid finally promised a remedy. “Man Ajachi, you’re totally stupid,” I scold him. His embarrassed look reveals that he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “We’ll have to install a barrier made of plastic or wood at the next opportunity,” I say, removing the torn net.

“Will it stay that way?” asks Tanja. “What remains?” “Well, the terrible truck traffic?” “Nothing lasts forever,” I reply, hoping that the land of superlatives won’t convince us otherwise. After loosening our legs a little, we continue our increasingly difficult and dangerous ride. We pass stinking power stations whose heavy smoke covers the land. But the Great Wall also stretches in fragments to the right and left of the road to the west. We stop at particularly interesting, preserved sections to photograph them, fortify ourselves with a few almonds and raisins or change the battery. The new 500 watt batteries have made our previous energy problems disappear into thin air. When my energy collector was empty, Tanja still had reserves for 5 to 7 kilometers. Now it’s the other way around. When Tanja’s 400 watt battery runs out, my 500 watt battery still has enough power for a good 5 km. Now that each of us has charged 6 batteries in our luggage, we have the luxury of driving in the highest energy mode, i.e. turbo. That’s why we’ve become faster, use less energy, don’t have to go to a roadside restaurant at lunchtime to recharge and arrive earlier in the evening. Above all, our radius of action has doubled, which means that we probably have a range of 150 km to 200 km, depending on the terrain and wind situation. This is a dreamlike luxury. But it is not just a luxury, it gives us security and, above all, great joy. At this moment, the S305 winds its way over a 1,500-meter-high pass with a strong headwind. Just yesterday, after 80 kilometers a day, we would have been worried about breaking down, as we have so often been in recent months. Only by working our way up the mountains in eco or tour mode were we usually able to reach our daily goals. Now, on the other hand, our bikes are whirring up the steeply ascending road at around 12 km/h. Of course, we still have to pedal and our heart pumps the necessary blood through our veins, but we are amazingly fast and are able to change a few sets during the ascent. On our way from Europe to Mongolia, we were even forced to push our heavy bikes for hours on such mountains. “A dream!” Tanja exclaims with a laugh after 94 kilometers. “A dream,” I reply, also happy about the new situation…

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