The nine members of the international crew of the 28th XWORLD stage from Hong Kong to Chengdu in China passed through places, which up to now had not been recorded with GPS. The inaccurate and contradictory distances and daily stages stated in the travel guides and maps made it completely impossible to calculate the daily travelling distances and times, but also made this stage especially interesting. How this XWORLD stage reached its destination on schedule in spite of all these difficulties is described in the tour report by one of the participants.

“On 22 March 2009 we meet our travelling companions for the next 14 days in the Langham Palace Hotel in Mongkok. Our tour guides Peter Weil and Anna Westebbe give us a warm welcome and take us to the spectacular lightshow in Hong Kong harbour. This is followed by our first dinner together in a Mongolian restaurant in the Kowloon district. At the start and finish, a few of us stop off in the popular red light district on Hong Kong Island. It is therefore a good thing that we have a free morning the next day. We have one last long lie-in, then visit the market and museums before meeting for a midday snack together and attending the tour briefing in the hotel, during which the route is not only planned, but also changed once again.

As part of a sightseeing tour of the city, we take a boat trip to Hong Kong Island. During this tour we discover that our Swiss participant (whose job at home is as an engine driver for an ancient narrow-gauge railway) loves to ride on anything with wheels, or which can be ridden on in any way. Simply to humour him we take him up the world’s longest escalator to visit the Man-Ho Temple, ride on a double-decker tram and then take the Peak Tram to the summit in order to get a glimpse of the metropolis. We search in vain for a glimpse of Hong Kong skyline, which is invisible in the dense fog, and then eat an opulent meal high above the city even though we cannot see the view.

After the pleasant end to the day we leave Hong Kong and travel by train towards Shenzhen in order to enter China. The imported spare parts in our tour guide’s travel bag cause quite a stir at the border crossing. From there, we travel by bus to the local driving license office, where we take a somewhat bizarre eye test, which one of our candidates would probably not have passed if we hadn’t told him the answers.

After this exciting experience (we weren’t caught cheating), we have our first Chinese lunch in a typical Chinese restaurant. The dishes are served on a large rotating glass plate in the centre of the table, from which everyone helps themselves – if they have mastered the skill of eating with chopsticks and are quick enough to take the food before it turns past them again.

Then at last we collect the cars from the Toyota workshop and quickly load them. We are given a short introduction to driving them and then off we go. The Swiss love cars even more than the Germans and assert their interest in the “Himalaya” completely undiplomatically (probably to avoid becoming homesick for the Swiss mountains). Our first destination is Yunfu – through 270 kilometres of motorised and urbanised industrial area past countless factories and high rise buildings without any recognisable city boundaries.

We make our first acquaintance with one of the many toll stations, which will slow our progress during the days to come. On the motorway we practice easy-going convoy driving (with a maximum speed limit of 110 km/h) until we arrive at our hotel in the centre of Yunfu. Here we make our first contact with exotic foods, such as boiled chicken heads and claws, frog meat and other unknown meats, which are like vegetables to one of our guides.

In the early morning we leave the grey-white city and set off into the pouring monsoon-like rain. We face the king of the motorway and toll stages, which will provide us with experiences such as collective refuelling of six vehicles at two petrol pumps and driving on two to five-lane roads.

After countless toll points, we drive through Guangxi Province in southern China, which appears almost tropical. Towards midday we discover the first gravel track while (to the amusement of the local inhabitants) we are looking for a suitable picnic site.

In modern southern China, everything is either comparative or superlative - higher, faster and further. In the evening we become aware of this as we reach the provincial capital Nanning – an impressive industrial city with over seven million inhabitants. Even for our Chinese guide this is one of the larger cities worth mentioning – in comparison those with only less than a million inhabitants, which he only considers to be small towns. In such a large city even a supermarket has entirely different dimensions and we soon get lost in the countless aisles and take a long time to find the exit.

In a first-class restaurant with modern design and a fusion of Eurasian cuisine, we bring the day to a close and learn our first, and most important Chinese word: Gampé‘‘ („Cheers“) People call this out in China before gulping down the entire glass of rice liquor or beer in one go and then showing the empty glass to the person opposite as proof. In the days to come, this custom will prove to be a highly effective method of creating understanding between nations without using many words.

<i/>On the fifth day our destination is Bian-Gioc, the largest waterfall in Asia, which separates China from Vietnam. We travel across a rainy but wonderful hilly landscape, wind our way through chains of sandstone mountains and past terraces of rice fields. Finally we arrive at a place which has already been discovered by Chinese tourists, pass several restaurants and souvenir stalls until only a few metres in front of us, the water leaps directly over the rocks.

Here too – to the delight of our Swiss engine driver – there is a miniature railway. It is now pouring down with rain and we are increasingly looking forward to the muddy rutted roads which will lead us to our next adventure (camping in the open air). On the way we meet many bony water buffaloes. They trot placidly and with determination in the middle of the road. If they cross the road it is a good idea to give way to them. When travelling with a vehicle in China it is vital to know that water buffaloes, trucks and buses should always be given right of way. A show of strength is never worthwhile for us – only cyclists and pedestrians are lower in the hierarchy, and they seem to be immune even to our unpractised hooting. More haste, less speed… even in the following days our time frames for the daily stages do not become any more realistic.

Shortly before we reach the beautifully located campsite, the rain stops and the sun comes out from behind the clouds. In the nearest village we load enough wood into the cars to finish the day with a cosy camp fire even in this more barren mountainous landscape. After a classical Italian evening meal, prepared by our senior chef and guide, as we share out and enjoy the (unfortunately too few) bottles of red wine which we have bought and the local Tsingtao Pijiu - probably the best known Chinese beer - which is brewed according to a good old German recipe.

In spite of this, early next morning we are ready for the onward journey into the Chinese “wild west”. The landscape becomes less densely populated, but there are still the same number of electricity pylons, which seem to have been deliberately placed at random in the varied spectacular landscape in order to ruin panoramic photos. After a midday meal of Asia noodle snacks, which we eat in the midst of rice fields and entirely without chopsticks, the sun also decides to come out again today.

We pass through a few mountain villages where the people live very simple rustic lives, and in the evening we arrive at the traditional hotel in the small old centre of Jianshui. This is located in a very well preserved Confucian temple built in 1285. Lost amongst old pagoda roofs and a labyrinth of cloisters, we look for an exit from the hotel in order to find one of the many well-hidden family restaurants. These folk kitchens are very widespread in China and are usually very difficult to recognise as such from the outside – but we are successful. Across the road there is an entertainment program for Chinese tourists, into which some of us also dare to venture.

<i/>On the seventh day we set out at the crack of dawn, because ahead of us lies the longest stretch up to now – at least in terms of distance. We expect a large part of our route to be on motorways, but as we later find out, this was a miscalculation because the roads marked on the map do not exist.

Before this, our adventurous group faces a completely different problem: In China, not only the exchange of large sums of money but also the exchange of foreign currency in general is a problem. The State Bank of China does consider itself to be responsible for "small towns" (up to a million inhabitants). There are no ATMs for our plastic cards and even 5-star Chinese hotels do not accept our hard Euro currency (or even Swiss francs) – the Yuan is harder. With our fuel supply rapidly diminishing, we finally reach the petrified forest of Shilin. This detour takes between 120 to 240 kilometres – with regard to this, the distances in the travel guides vary (and of course no-one looked at the milometer).

While our group strolls through the park – accompanied and photographed by countless Asian tourists – our guides search in vain for an opportunity to exchange currency. The tension increases even further when we discover a completely blocked motorway, which causes us not only an hour in a traffic jam, but also further driving experience: overtaking as a convoy and placing our complete trust in the radios. Several hours later than planned we are once again stuck in a traffic jam in the Kumming rush hour. Our nerves are frayed, we are tired, and the temptation to spend the night in the Moloch of Kumming is almost irresistible.

However, while our tour guide is in the process of guiding us through the darkness to his favourite Kentucky Fried Chicken in order to replenish our energy reserves, we stumble on an ATM with the magic “American Express” logo.

Shortly after midnight we reach Dali and enjoy the beer which we brought with us on the hotel car park because even here the bar of this Chinese luxury hotel had closed long ago.

The next day we look around the beautiful and vibrant old town of Dali. Here things are a little more touristic. We visit an impressive Buddhist temple nearby, which spreads up the mountain behind the town.

In the afternoon we break the 2500 metre barrier for the first time and feel ourselves excitingly close to the Himalayas. At the same time, the first problems start: The vehicles begin to cause problems with starting – at 2500 metres four cars had to be push started or towed. With two of the Land Cruisers the problem resolved itself as soon as we fell below the 1500 metre mark.

We wind our way up to a high plateau through mountain chains towards Lijang. Once we have checked in to a comfortable Chinese hotel at the edge of the beautiful old town of Lijang, our group confidently heads for a further highlight of our tour: eating with chopsticks in public in China! Somehow, we all can now handle these sticks without any further loss of face. In a cosy restaurant we take a chance on the Hot-Pot-Sichuan - a speciality of the region, whose heat makes us look like blushing Michelin men. As well as this, we call out our Gampé to the group of Chinese tourists sitting at the next table, and drink to their health.

From Lijang, we undertake a day trip into the mountains on the next day of the stage. In the far distance we get a glimpse of the snow-covered summit of our first 5,000 metre mountain. We stay at 2,500 metres and pass a little Buddhist temple, where for a small donation HANSA-FLEX Klaus has his name engraved for eternity on stone number 143, while Matthias has himself blessed by a monk. Further into the mountains we search for the well-advertised Tiger-leap Gorge. Here, two provinces are separated by the very small River Jangtse, which shimmers green rather than yellow. For the very first time our enthusiastic Swiss rider does not ride on a vehicle - he leaves out the rickshaws waiting at the side of the road.

Back in Lijang, all of us spend our free time by getting lost in the labyrinth of alleyways and finding our own way back to the hotel. With our guide Peter Tien some of us visit the house of Mu, while another member of the group discovers the market and is promptly thrust into the middle of everyday Chinese life, of which we can often only scratch the surface. On this note, the evening comes to a pleasant end.

In the early morning we cross several high passes, past farmers and several mountain people, past tiny villages of wooden huts, which are only visible in the rust-brown landscape because of their shiny white satellite dishes. We travel onwards into a region which is characterised by mining and stop at a coal mine. It does not take much for our Swiss driving enthusiast to take the train below ground. Later we buy enough wood for the evening from a very enterprising farmer and set out to look for a suitable camp site. This time we set up camp on a parched meadow amongst pine trees at an altitude of 2500 metres. Still below the local tree and snow line (in the Alps this begins at 1,800 metres) we celebrate Antonio’s birthday with a gigantic neon-yellow cream cake and this time drink to his health with enough red wine and Pijiu, and camp in the open air.

The first of April brings us everything which we have not had during the past ten days: various high passes up to 3,000 metres in altitude - today a total of 12,700 metres on hairpin bends both on and off-road, motorways which have never been finished, roads which have slid away in landslides, endless traffic jams due to even more endless roadworks, snow storms, downpours and fog, which slows us down to a crawl. As a precaution we switch off the fog lights, because we can see almost one metre further just with sidelights. Then there is a further traffic jam, caused by a vehicle which two hours later (it seems more like ten) suddenly moves on for no apparent reason and without any repair. Because of an accident within our convoy, we are spared any further annoyance in the form of a further 200 kilometres of motorway, and have to give up. Weary and exhausted we finally arrive in Yaan – at half-past two in the morning.

The next morning we have a visit from the local police. The dented Toyota at the foot of the mountain, which we left overnight, has attracted the attention of the local authorities. They also help us to tow the “Tiger” to the nearest Toyota workshop 200 kilometres away. There are now only four days before the start of the next stage – including a weekend and a Chinese public holiday – and a few vital spare parts are missing, which will have to be sent from Germany because they are not available in China.

In the meantime, the remaining group drives from Yaan to Leshan to visit the world’s largest sitting Buddah statue “Dafo”, which is 71 metres high and carved into solid rock. After some 20,000 metres of height difference we all reach our destination for this stage: Chengdu. Once we have checked into the Kempinski Hotel, we assemble in the Paulaner Bar in order to start a joint German-Chinese evening, which will end in one of the many karaoke bars.

On the penultimate day of our stage we travel by bus to the panda rearing station, where panda bears, which are threatened by extinction, are bred in order for them to be released into the wild. This evening we demonstrate our skill in eating rice with chopsticks for the last time as well as (once again) our talent for karaoke.

Actually, we don’t really want to go home, and we almost had a good reason to stay: neither the passengers or the flight can be found in the computer at Chengdu airport. Tension increases. However, eventually “we” are found. As a parting gift we are given a Chinese waving cat.

It was nice to be with you, and we look forward to the next HANSA-FLEX meeting in the near future … and shi-shi (Thank you) to you all.