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 131 km round trip from Chang’an - roughly 2 h 17 in the saddle. On the way it passes Small Wild Goose Pagoda, Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and back through Small Wild Goose Pagoda. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Small Wild Goose Pagoda.
Xi'an was Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty and the eastern end of the Silk Road, and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda is one of the survivors from that golden age. It was built between about 707 and 709 to house Buddhist scriptures brought back from India by the monk Yijing, who travelled by sea and returned with hundreds of texts. It stands in the grounds of the Jianfu Temple, in a quiet garden just south of the city walls, a slim, tapering tower of brick with fifteen tiers of narrow eaves.
Read the complete Small Wild Goose Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Small Wild Goose Pagoda comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. Next is back through Small Wild Goose Pagoda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Small Wild Goose Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Small Wild Goose Pagoda, late in the day. Next is 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 at Xingjiaosi Pagodas. That is the ride.
Xingjiaosi Pagodas → Small Wild Goose Pagoda is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Small Wild Goose Pagoda → Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor → back through Small Wild Goose Pagoda is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Small Wild Goose Pagoda → Xingjiaosi Pagodas is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.