CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 260 km round trip from Xi’an - roughly 4 h 10 in the saddle. On the way it passes Xingjiaosi Pagodas, Great Wild Goose Pagoda, Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an and Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
This part of the ride is 31 km of Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of → Xingjiaosi Pagodas.
At its height in the seventh and eighth centuries, Chang'an, the Tang capital, was probably the biggest city in the world, with a population of around a million and a street plan so precise that Japan copied it for Kyoto and Nara. At the north of the city, on a plateau above the rest, stood the Daming Palace, the imperial residence from the 630s, with a great audience hall, the Hanyuan Hall, set on a raised platform, from which the emperor looked out over the city. It was the political heart of the empire, and a place of ceremony, intrigue and banquets, receiving envoys from Persia, Japan, Korea and Central Asia.
Read the complete Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of is where the day begins. Next is Xingjiaosi Pagodas.
When the monk Xuanzang returned to Chang'an in the seventh century after sixteen years of travel to India, he brought back hundreds of Buddhist scriptures, which he spent the rest of his life translating, and his journey later inspired the classic novel Journey to the West, with its Monkey King. After his death in 664, his remains were buried at Xingjiao Temple, on the slopes south of the city, and a five-storey brick pagoda was built over them in 669. Next to it stand two smaller pagodas for two of his disciples. The three pagodas, in a peaceful temple setting, are part of the Silk Roads World Heritage site, a tribute to one of the most famous travellers along that route.
Read the complete Xingjiaosi Pagodas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Xingjiaosi Pagodas comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Great Wild Goose Pagoda.
The Great Wild Goose Pagoda rises seven storeys above the southern part of Xi'an, a plain, tapered tower of grey brick that has been leaning slightly for centuries. It was built in 652, in the Tang dynasty, to store the Buddhist scriptures that the monk Xuanzang brought back from India after a journey of seventeen years, returning to the capital Chang'an in 645. His travels, over deserts, mountains and kingdoms, inspired the famous sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West, with its Monkey King, one of the best-loved stories in Chinese literature. In the temple of Da Ci'en that surrounds the pagoda, Xuanzang worked with a team of translators for the rest of his life.
Read the complete Great Wild Goose Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 55 km into the recorded legs you reach Great Wild Goose Pagoda. Next is Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an.
Chang'an, now Xi'an, was the eastern end of the Silk Road, and in the Tang dynasty it was probably the biggest city in the world, a grid of walled wards with a million people, Persian merchants, Sogdian horse traders, Japanese students and Buddhist pilgrims from India. This point is south of the modern city, at the Xingjiao Temple, where two small brick pagodas stand on a bluff over the Fan river. They hold the remains of Xuanzang, the monk who walked to India in the seventh century and came back after sixteen years with hundreds of scriptures, and of two of his disciples. His journey inspired the later novel Journey to the West, with its Monkey King, and the temple has a quiet, scholarly atmosphere.
Read the complete Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an, about halfway. Next is Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor.
Beneath a large, tree-covered mound at the foot of Mount Li, east of Xi'an, lies the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who unified China in 221 BC and became its first emperor. He ruled for only eleven years more, dying in 210 BC, but in that time he standardised weights, measures, writing and the axle width of carts, linked the northern walls into an early Great Wall, and conscripted hundreds of thousands of labourers for his projects. The tomb mound, which still rises about fifty metres, has never been opened. The ancient historian Sima Qian wrote that the burial chamber held a model of the empire with rivers of mercury, and modern soil tests have found high levels of mercury around the mound.
Read the complete Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor sits at 122 km, about halfway. Next is back through Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an comes up about 180 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Great Wild Goose Pagoda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Great Wild Goose Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 204 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Great Wild Goose Pagoda. Next is back through Xingjiaosi Pagodas.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Xingjiaosi Pagodas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Xingjiaosi Pagodas, late in the day. Next is Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 260 km.
Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of → Xingjiaosi Pagodas is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Xingjiaosi Pagodas → Great Wild Goose Pagoda is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Great Wild Goose Pagoda → Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an → Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor → back through Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an → back through Great Wild Goose Pagoda is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Great Wild Goose Pagoda → back through Xingjiaosi Pagodas is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Xingjiaosi Pagodas → Site of Daming Palace in Chang’an City of is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.