Danube to Beijing

Grab your tweezers and your face mask and join us on a trip through the heart of a dragon.After horrendous road conditions in Kazakhstan where some of their secondary roads resembled bad forestry roads,we were salivating at the sight of smooth tarmac roads at the start of China.The roads did not disappoint with smooth tarmac highways  crossing most of China.But what I was not encountering on was the huge amount of truck traffic we would see.On some of the secondary roads we would encounter up  to 85-90 percent heavy trucks compared to light traffic making some of these highways the busiest in the world for heavy traffic.It shows what great road builders the Chinese people have become with very little potholes to be seen.What we were not expecting was the huge amount of punctures we would both get in China.Now what happens is that because of the huge amount of truck traffic on the roads we were getting a huge amount of punctures from blown out truck tyres.Quite often we would see tyres worn down to the extent that wire would be visible to the eye.Now when a truck tyre explodes it sends out hundreds if not thousands of tiny filament like wires which are barely visible to the eye but which a cycle tyre is very vulnerable to.In Western China we started to see the odd lorry truck passing us totally fill with tomatoes.One lorry truck turned into 3-4 which then turned into queues of trucks of 2-3km long all waiting to get into the processing plants.With China 2nd only to Italy as the worlds largest tomato paste exporter it begs the question why New Zealand is importing in there produce.With their trucks and factories belching out toxic fumes and no cover at all over the tomatoes I for one will keeping a lookout on where my tomato sauce comes from in future