Tough Rides: China

- Season 1

(2013)

Colin and Ryan Pyle take off from Shanghai on their two well-kitted out BMW bikes for an epic adventure. They will cover 18,000 kilometres over 60 days in a circuit of China that has never been attempted before. Within minutes of setting off, Colin is nearly clipped by a giant bus and that's just the first in a series of unexpected obstacles that lie in wait for the Pyle duo. Crazy drivers, 40 degree plus heat, massive landslides, floods, inhospitable towns and dangerous falls will hamper their progress as they wind north from Shanghai, cross the Yangtze River and on ...

Ryan and Colin Pyle bike to Inner Mongolia, bunking down for a night in a yurt village before visiting one of China's largest wind farms. Heading away from the idyllic grassland and rolling green hills they strike the world's largest traffic jam, where some trucks are stuck for 20 days. Forging slowly forward the Pyle brothers hit a nasty sand storm in Xinjiang province, before striking camp at the lowest landsite in China, 150 meters below sea level.

Ryan and Colin Pyle leave their moon-scape camping ground at Turpan and head across the salt flats to Xinjiang, China's Wild West. In a few hours they travel from 150m below sea level to 3300m above sea level in freezing temperatures. In the ancient Muslim city of Kashgar, they celebrate the end of Ramadan before venturing into the far western borderlands riding on the Karakoram Highway, the world's highest border crossing at 5200m above sea level, towards the border of China and Pakistan. However, at this point disaster strikes when Ryan takes a serious fall.

After Ryan has recovered from the worst motorcycle fall he's ever had, the Pyle brothers aim for Tibet on the G219 highway, passing mountains and lakes including one of the most holy places in Asia, Lake Manasarovar. Their ultimate goal is Mount Everest Base Camp, but it's not going to come easy. They end up camping on a desolate road 4000m above sea level. As Ryan attempts to celebrate his 32nd birthday, his bike's clutch burns out and the brothers are stranded in Zhongba, their fate in the hands of a local bike mechanic and facing the very real possibility that ...

A local Zhongba motorcycle repairman comes to the Pyle brother's rescue, managing to get the BMW bike clutch back in working order. But further disaster strikes when Colin's bike blows a tyre. The journey is now in real jeopardy, with both bikes off the road and no clutch parts available in all of China. When the bike part finally arrives from Toronto, and Ryan and Colin make it to Mount Everest Base Camp, 12,500km from Shanghai. Their sense of achievement is fleeting; on their way back to Lhasa, they discover the road into Eastern Tibet has been indefinitely closed.

The closure of the Eastern Tibetan border forces the Pyle brothers to travel by plane reconnecting with their bikes in Shangri-La. From here they head to Guizhou province, but the improvement of the road tarmac and heavy rain make the road travel incredibly dangerous and Colin smashes his bike into a tree. Back on the road with new street tyres, Ryan and Colin make their way through the mystical karst landscape of Guilin and on to the manufacturing heartland of China before striking out for Shanghai, via Putoushan island and the Yangshan Port, the biggest and busiest ...