ATV Choice: Middle Kingdom Ride – Episode Three

Inspired by Charlie Sheen’s character in the 1987 movie Wall Street, brothers Ryan and Colin Pyle (pictured) have decide to leave the rat race behind to ride their motorbikes around China. There adventures are followed by a film crew for the Travel Channel in The Middle Kingdom Ride.

As we reported earlier this month the six part series sees Colin and Ryan Pyle travel from Shanghai to the Korean Border, Inner Mongolia to Xinjiang Province, China’s Wild West, Tibet, Mount Everest and Lhasa and finally Shangri La to Shanghai on two well kitted-out BMW bikes.

They will attempt cover 18,000 kilometres over 60 days in a circuit of China that has never been attempted before.

Ryan is a pretty much a local of Shanghai having lived there for 10 years, but, for Colin, China will be a real eye opener. 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 strive to claim a Guinness world record for the longest continuous journey by a motorcycle within a single country. It’s a quest to go where no one has gone before.

In this, the third epsiode – China’s Wild West – Ryan and Colin 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 theancient 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.

The Middle Kingdom Ride, tomorrow, April the 17th, at 8pm on the Travel Channel. (Sky Sky 251 and 252)