From the Library

[Biggles]

There were highlights to the day, the main one for me being the sense of peace I had when we stopped for lunch and watched a Uyghur man rolling out the dough to make naan bread in an oven. Another was talking about motorcycles to some Uyghur men in a small village. And another was riding up towards the clouds until we reached a high pass through the mountains, 3300 meters above sea level, where I looked around me at the incredible view with an almost poetic sense of accomplishment.
On the downside, we had a lot of problems with dogs that day. We'd be riding through an apparently completely deserted landscape when they'd suddenly come running at us, snapping and snarling at our heels and chasing our motorcycles as they tried to bite our legs. Once when it happened, Colin almost got caught: I don't even want to imagine what those dogs would have done if he'd fallen. I knew it was a problem that would get worse as we headed into Tibet, because I'd seen it there before, and that really bothered me.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p150-151

[Biggles]

There's a vast world beyond the tiny fragment that each of us inhabits, and going out into it is the only way to understand other people, their cultures and religions: you can't travel and have the sorts of experiences we're having without learning something from the interactions involved. We'd travelled 8000 km from Shanghai on a journey that was exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, rewarding, scary, fascinating, and, most of all, a privilege to be taking part in.
The Middle Kingdom Ride  Colin & Ryan Pyle  p158-159