1st in the Trilogy of Troubles on Heros Travels.

“Gawd! If I’d known I was going to work on this Turkey again I’d have brought my own pipe-wrenches: howdya expect me to get at these bolts”: Don Saunders, retired Partner of Bayliner Boats Seattle, was full of energy and relishing to get his hands on our Bentley Continentals intestines,  again!

It was the 15th of August 1992 that we had left London bound for Saigon and passing over Lhasa for good measure! This journey of 64 days and 11500 miles was all that we motorists could ever have hoped for: fast roads across Germany & Poland, massive and endless roads across the USSR, serious mountain roads up and into Tibet, and then China: its deserts and its teeming with people. Finally Vietnam driving the entire lenght Highway 1 along the coast to the rigours of storms blowing in from the Gulf of Tonkin, the “Mother of all Typhoons”.

We had driven to Peking two years earlier in Hero and had no intention to use the car again in Asia as we had bought the car of our dreams: a 1925 Lanchester 40hp Tourer which had not been run since 1938!

Although it had covered only 28000 miles it needed a complete rebuild, twice! It, disappointingly, was far from ready: this story though is about a journey not a car.

There were wonderful attractions on the selected route: Moscow, the Aral Sea, Kashgar, that ancient southern Silk Road sandwiched between the Kunlun mountains and the Takla-Makan desert, which name translates, “sand buried houses”: testimony to ancient cities and vast lush prairies: until the climate changed!

All very exotic indeed, but there was more: China of the west such as Kashgar & Sinkiang, China of the south Guilin & Pinxiang where we would enter Vietnam passing through wonderful Hanoi with its minature steam engines, Vihn, the city “bombed back to the Stoneage” by gen. Curtis LeMay and rebuilt to a maximum of Soviet ugliness and incipient dilapidation to then finish in Saigon: a city of eastern exotica and charm.

These journeys, we were finding, required development of the production car: a Bentley is very well put together but these Asian roads were destructive  on the weakest part of most cars: the shock absorbers. We had made a big improvement for this journey on the lever-arm originals by fitting the telescopic gas filled type in addition: resulting in very little maintenance so far.

Leaving Kashgar we were warned the road would become very difficult after  Hotan due to massive storms which had rolled down from the mighty Kunluns washing away almost all evidence of a road!

But we were happy, the sun was shining and hot in the daytime and the journeys, though long up to 450 miles a day, were offering wonderful desert vistas bordered by mountainscapes: this encouraged frequent stopping to make tea, take photos and explore small isolated settlements or just sit talking with our chums: inevitably, on account of the road conditions, we were always in after dark!

This area of the rally was of special interest to me as I read the excellent books by Sven Hedin: explorer, scientist, archaeologist, cartographer and linguist: he along with Aurel Stein had found buried cities and ancient texts dating 5000 years!

The road was in part a river bed which had been improved to road status in parts until those heavy rains occurred. Though technically a desert this was more like a demolition site with large boulders, small ravines and giant potholes! This was very wearing on our nerves hearing boulders rasping away under the car or suddenly having both front wheels flopping into a huge crack in the road. 

Just as we were thinking we would never see sand, vast panoramas of a sand sea and huge dunes presented as we emerged from a tight twisting canyon. 

We now would adopt a new style of driving: 2nd gear full throttle and holding the wheel straight charging the dune until on the crest but keeping the power on, so as not to get stuck, and charging down the other side: great fun!

Now the road was all sand, carved for long stretches into 2 distinct deep channels by those powerful water-bowser lorries each pulling 2 tankers of water. These Russian vehicles had powerful V16 2-stroke diesel engines and were equipped with massively spudded tyres on all wheels including the trailers. We saw them in action sending black smoke enough to compete with a battleship! These engines had been designed for locomotives and were ideal for this purpose on deserts.

We soon got the hang of keeping one side of the Bentleys wheels on a high ridge avoiding  bellying-out on the hump in the centre: this driving gave more great fun.

There is a feeling of ecstasy to be driving in a classic Bentley in the heat of the desert with the windows closed, the Webasto sunroof wide open, the refrigeration at max and listening to BBC World Service on our All Wave Radiomobile valve radio reprising a classic story like Dick Barton Special Agent, perhaps, or the latest  repetitive News which we had come away to escape from but now listened with renewed interest!
Being miles from civilisation was our pleasure and with plenty of drinking water and tea making equipment on board it was freedom: ecstasy indeed.

Thus we found ourselves on the sand road between Hotan and Qiemu storming the drifts: this is the Takla-Makan desert!

Sometimes it was like a contest storming drifts 20ft high with our little party parked waiting in turn to take a choice from several tracks: each of which always looked better than the one you had chosen. When our turn came it was the usual drill: floor the accelerator in 1st, change smartly to 2nd pushing the car through a sea of sand which often came up and over the bonnet!
The relief on the other side was palpable and the Bentley never complained: this sort of driving prevailed almost all afternoon, it was the 8th of Sept.

Somewhere in the later afternoon there was the smell of burning rubber and then the cessation of that alpine cool jet stream of air issuing from the beautiful mahogany dashboard, worse, now the little red lamp indicating “battery not charging” was glowing brightly! We had to traverse another huge drift, which fortunately was the last one of the day, and then after a suitable distance stopped to examine the cause of that red lamp, if nothing else.

My mood suddenly was dark, tense and panicky: inspection under the bonnet revealed that although the engine was ticking-over nicely the fan was not turning, which meant that the water pump was also not turning! That was a serious problem in a desert.

On turning off the engine the problem was obvious: all of the 6 pulley belts had jumped over each other and got twisted together: sand coming through the radiator had got under the belts in the
 “V”-grooves of the pulley and pushed them off, actually they must have needed tightening! The result was no radiator fan, no waterpump, no alternator, no power-steering and no air conditioning, just chaos! But mercifully no damage had been done and amongst my vast range of spares I had a full set of new belts.

We were stuck, and with all kinds of daylight left, as a Ranger in the Petrified Forest Arizona had once told us at 17:00hrs, Susie started making afternoon tea.

By now Don & Crispin(Classical Greece student) followed by Jonathan(city banker and car connoisseur)  & Malcolm(author on historic wars) pulled in, cups at the ready: Malcolm had a big bag of delicious date biscuits bought in the Kashgar market, a welcome change from our Digestives: Don though was already looking into the open bonnet and diving so deep that his feet were off the ground.

By the time i got back to him from the kettle arrangements he had diagnosed the problem: “leave it to me, Peader”!

It was now that Don uttered that memorable phrase quoted at the opening of this story: but not until after burning himself fairly badly on those very hot Bentley innards which he loved so much: mind you it was an American York refrigeration unit that Bentley had originally fitted!!

Don, a great admirer of Hero had helped me a some years earlier in Bokhara when the PAS pump bearing had failed. He had a large collection of cars, boats & a Bell Ranger helicopter but preferred the simple life behind the wheel of one of his Packards: top quality engineering and simplicity of design: fixable on the roadside.

We removed some of the old belts by cutting them and managed to refit three, one to the waterpump: essential; one to the alternator also essential and lastly one to the PAS: needed.
The light was now falling: that twilight hour which signals a warning to the desert traveller.

We had only 50 miles to Qiemu, comfortable if the Bentleys engine were not revved excessively in case the already worn belts popped off again: we hadnt been able to get the correct tension as the engine remained too hot to access the adjusting bolts.  So no more charging sand dunes if there were any!

We now devised a train: Jonathon leading in the G’wagon, because he had superior lights, followed by us with Don coming up behind. We were all linked by tow-ropes so that in any eventuality one car could act as tug in either direction: it was going to be a long night!

Tied together like a train the sun finally went down leaving us on a moonless treacherous  desert road more like a track in a forgotten wilderness. That sundown seemed to happen without our noticing yet our “train” was working well in the gloom and we had the telegraph poles as a reference: but every dip in the sand could have been, and often was, a a large crack across the road or a pot-hole: the responsibility carried by the lead car was not enviable. 

We continued like this for several hours and once came upon a fork: stopping for a debate we took the left as the tracks looked most recent: just as well as it turned out to have been a diversion from a bridge over a wadi which had been shattered in those storms.

The sandy track was sometimes difficult for Jonathon leading: we watched his 4 wheel drive jeep spinning and squirming until he was bellied out and stuck fast: another stop for a  pow-wow and we all engaged reverse pulling the G’wagen clear.

We now adandoned the train and undid the ropes: we were all feeling the strain of concentration not to bump each other or cause drag, we needed the freedom, particularly so did the lead car, to rush a sandy stretch  or swing away from a rock or other danger.

Later the G’wagen stopped ahead announcing a deep trough of about 15ft which would need to be charged from the bottom as the climb on the opposite side was very steep. Jonathon charged down and shot up the other side, easy & exhilarating! My turn: in 2nd I kept the revs steady at 1500 letting the engines great torque power up the bank opposite: a little slipping and some serious nervous revving at the top edge and we were on the flat. I now apprehensively checked the belts by torch light which were still in place, phew!

It seems we had done with sand and were back on the “demolition site” terrain with only 20 miles to our hotel: we travelled anxiously and cautiously under an indigo sky with the brightest stars ever seen.

Sometime after midnight we could see hazard flashers on the desert ahead: we first thought it was the Chinese police looking for us, then thought it was another competitor conked-out: but when we came up it was Peter & Heather in Dettol their silver Range Rover!

They had been worrying for us and after dinner came out to act as “lighthouse” to guide us in: they promised cold Tsingtao beer, cold showers, steamed rice & spinach and hard beds in a draughty dormitory: it all sounded excellent. 

It was such a relief, we had made it and now we had a pilot: the last part of a gruelling journey is often when you do get lost and can least accomodate it.

Though we arrived late we heard that others were actually stranded somewhere out on that merciless desert including Nan & Stewart in the M B 420 saloon and several 4-wheel drives together with the back-up wagon: they spent a cold night, lit a fire from Tamarisk brushwood and drank a foul Chinese brandy to keep warm: sounded like an adventure!

The following morning after the maintenance van, a box bodied twin wheeled Land Rover 130, arrived. Andy, our mechanic, ex-SAS and capable of repairing any vehicle with baling wire, a bean can and Araldite, fitted my spare belts set to the correct tension and welded the exhaust pipe which had fractured.

Last night was only a pleasant memory now: we refuelled from a petrol bowser brought to the accommodation, I wont say hotel, and were ready for Ronyang, Golmud, Lhasa and all points East.

Yesterday we had clocked 409 miles which followed 340 miles from Kashgar to Hotan: a gentle 228 mile journey to Ronyang, through winding mountain roads, was our easy next target. We were to find though that the fuel we had just taken on, 25 galls, contained about 25% water causing a stripdown of our petrol pumps, carbs and filters 19 times: that though is another story.