Music in the mountain
This is the ride I’ve been looking forward to the most in China, the ride to Shangri-La. Confusingly Shangri-La is a county, a city, an old town and appears not only in Yunnan, but also Sichuan so it’s a little confusing to know where to head to. The city of Zhongdian (or to give it [...]
You must see “The Governor”
I just met with Xuan Ke again, the larger than life character from Lijiang who was instrumental in the name change of Zhongdian to Shangri-La back in the late 1990s after reading a copy of Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Xuan is half Tibetan and half Naxi (pronounced Na-Khi) and is something of a local [...]
Sichuan – the best way to see it, is to ride it.
Check out the state of my front disk brake pads. Two massive descents on the way to Daocheng at 3750 m altitude did this. Amazingly the pads just kept on going, and going for three agonising days right up until my approach to the town of Daocheng. I couldn’t believe it, it [...]
You got rocks on your head
All is not quiet in one monastery hidden from view high up in the forested mountains of Yunnan. The sound of cracking can be heard as spines are stretched, legs & arms are contorted and the constant hum of chanting above the patter of monsoon rains send me adrift. There is no electricity here, my [...]
“You won’t find Shambhala on any map”
And so I set off to find more clues on my quest to learn more about Shambhala. I ride north west from Lijiang and make my way to the beautiful Lugu lake before crossing over to Sichuan province. After two days riding in heavy rain I find a sign which says “Welcome to Shangri-La”! I [...]
Arrived in Lijiang – time to go!
It seems that no sooner I have arrived, it’s time to go again – that’s life on the road I guess.
Lijiang is a total shock to the senses. Busy alley ways, hoards of Chinese tourists buying everything from cowboy hats to Yak meat and all manner of trinkets. Just finding my way through the old [...]
A hidden valley – but for how long?
It’s not often I feel sad to leave a place when riding my bike. Usually I’m super excited to get cracking but last week I left a beautiful tea horse road node village and felt, well, sad.
I intend to go back in 5 weeks and will write more about it then. I was lucky enough [...]
Beat Heim in Australian Mountain Bike magazine
For anyone who is thinking of packing their bike up in a box and heading off on holiday with their pride & joy, check out my Beat Heim interview in this month’s AMB magazine, on the shelves now!
The guys did a great job (nice work Jordan) on the layout as always. Hopefully some of Beat’s [...]
How do we get across those mountains then?
Tim was worried that if we were left out here for the night, we would surely perish, Andy was pretty quiet and I began to really feel the cold. 45 minutes went by and still nothing. I was starting to shiver now and I was beginning to come around to Tim’s thinking.
Nu Jiang Shan pass on You Tube
Facebook and You Tube are blocked on main land China and the proxy service is painfully slow so I waited to get to Hong Kong before I updated. I’ll pop some stills and a short back ground on the trip so far later on today but here is a short clip I uploaded yesterday.
All packed!
Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it’s all come around so quickly. I’ve had a mad week finishing immunisations, bike preps, packing and re-packing. Singapore Airways have been awesome, allowing me an additional 10KG but I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be over that!
Thanks to Brad & Ingrid at Gear Corp for all their great [...]
Grub gets a front end face lift
Big thanks to the guys at Favourite Cycles in Manly for helping me get ready for the big ride. Favourite Cycles have long been a supporter of my trips and their knowledge on all things bikes is astounding! Leighton took me through replacing a bottom bracket after hours last night, as well as using the [...]
Australian Geographic sponsor Search for Shambhala
I’m proud to announce that the Australian Geographic Society have come on board for the Search for Shambhala solo mountain bike expedition this year! The Australian Geographic Society support community, research and adventure projects throughout Australia and overseas and is an invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration.
I applied for a grant from AG late last [...]
Mushypea talk at the Apple Store, Sydney
I’ll be giving a short talk at the Apple store in George Street, Sydney tomorrow evening from 5 pm. The theme of the talk will be “Made on a mac” and will feature some of my photos and video that, funnily enough, have been made on my mac.
Should be great fun, I’ll bring in my [...]
Testing testing 123…
My flights are booked for 29th May to China to begin my year long search for Shambhala by mountain bike. So that gives me about two weeks to finish up research and gear testing before I pack up my bike once again for the big unknown.
While testing my new bike in Queensland this week, I [...]
Where can I get one of these cuties?
This week I was lucky enough to give an informal talk on compact adventure photography at Balmain Photography club in Sydney’s inner west.
We covered topics including:
Camera selection and accessories
Demonstration of the Ricoh GX200 and attachments
3″ wonders – mini pods
JPG rocks
How to power you batteries with PowerTraveller
Equipment protection using cases rather than gadget bags
Covering up basic [...]
Gulf2Gulf screened at the Mont24 film festival
Mushypea’s Gulf2Gulf was lucky enough to have been selected to be shown at the Mont24 mountain bike race film festival at Sparrow Hill forest, Canberra. It was great to see her on the big screen last Saturday evening during the night racing. With team mates out on the course racing around the 19km circuit, Fergal and I [...]
Erden Eruc of ‘Around n Over’ cycles in to Sydney
Noel McFarlane of Gemini Bicycles (distributors of BOB trailers in Australia) invited me along to photograph Erden Eruc as he arrived in Sydney this week on the Australian leg (the second leg) of his Six Summits Project. Erden is raising awareness for human powered travel around the world.
Noel and I managed to pin down Erden for a [...]
Mushypea interview on EscapeTheCity.Org
The good guys at Escape the city in the UK are doing some great work inspiring young professionals (and the not so young in my case!) to bite the bullet and “Escape the corporate mainstream and Do Something Different”.
I was thrilled to be interviewed for their site a couple of weeks ago. At first I [...]
A cycling legend visits Sydney
It’s great meeting a hero, someone you’ve followed and been inspired by for years. Swiss born Beat Heim visited Sydney two weeks ago on the last part of his Asian Odyssey bicycle trip, a two year long, 50000 km epic that started in Mongolia in 2008.
Mushypea enters the Mont24 movie festival
Thanks to some great feedback on the full length Gulf2Gulf DVD, I thought I’d enter a shortened version in to the Mont24 film festival to see how she goes. It’s the first time I’ve entered a film competition so I’m sure it will be a great learning curve for me. I’m not sure when I’ll [...]
The Dirty Nomad e-magazines
Over the next few weeks I’ll be popping some of my published and unpublished features on this site for any cyclists out there who might be interested in planning their own long distance off road mountain biking adventure. Some of the e-zines will be straight out of the magazines and I hope to find some [...]
Gulf2Gulf goes full length
After almost a year the final cut of the Gulf2Gulf DVD came hot off the mac production line last night. If anyone is thinking of doing this trip (I know there a few) then let me know and I’d be happy to pop a copy in the post.
The DVD is split into two parts, [...]
DP&D publish ‘Traveling Light’
Packing a photographic punch, without packing the kitchen sink
Digital Photography & Design publish ‘Traveling Light’, a short guide to taking photographs on (or should I say ‘off‘) the road with a compact camera.
Here’s what’s covered:
Profiling
Using the Interval Mode
MiniPods – 3″ lifesavers!
Don’t give up on JPG; it’s a lot less messy than RAW
Camera & Battery storage [...]
