O' Faithfull Old Honey Pot

After sunning ourselves on the beautiful sandy beaches of the Yangtze, we jumped over the ridge and descended down into the Mekong valley. From there we followed the Mekong to Deqing, rising slowly at first and then an abrupt1600m climb into the city. We have developed a new style of riding, one much more suited to the weather here-up at 6ish, ride until noon, then take our so called siesta in the coolest shadiest spot we can find, and resuming riding around 4ish until dusk. Wondering why it took so long to figure this out, the midday sun must have addled our brains or something.

The ride over the ridge between the Yangtze and the Mekong proved to be more than just a hop step and a jump. After 5 hours of climbing with only a pack of ramen and the better part of a jar of honey in our bellies we made it to the top of the pass. From there, bonked out of our minds, we made the 1500m decent over potholed dirt roads until we reached the first town, and in search of food we ran into a wise old sage so impressed with our endeavour that he cooked us an unreal lunch, singing and whistling the whole time. From the pictures on his wall it seemed as though he must have down a lot of singing, and didn't smoke, which is unusual for men in these parts and further leads me to believe that he had made a career out of singing. After eating as much as we could stomach we traded contact info and said goodbye. My only wish is that we could speak better Chinese, if only to thank people, I guess that gives us all the more reason to study up and come back.

From there we continued down to the Mekong, a river seemingly far more wild than the Yangtze. And as we continued northwards following the river, the country only got more and more wild- big mountains, and countless giant gorges feeding the river. It has also been wild to see the change in culture, about 100km out of Deqing we crossed into the TAR and immediately the shift towards Tibetan culture was evident, with prayer flags across gorges, monasteries in the hills, and monks on motorcycles. We knew that we had about 200km to climb 1600m or so along the Mekong into Deqing, not bad at all...until we realized that all the up is in the last 40 km or so.

Shortly after beginning the climb we ran into commune with a group of men practicing archery, we stopped and while watching were invited to dinner. Yet another unbelievable show of hospitality, this time ending in us playing basketball and being called down to the police station by an officer in his early twenties. His English was impressive and he had "drink beers" and "passport" down pat. After following him on his motorcycle to the police station, he proceeded to laugh at our passport photos (Ben does look like a pre-pubescent 12 year old in his) and watch Chinese basketball league over a couple of beers. After a short time he offered us a place to stay, though for unknown reasons (perhaps just wary of police stations in general) we turned him down insisting that we had to ride to Deqing that night. So off we set, feeling a little tipsy into the already setting sun. We made it about 4km that night. Ended up setting up camp about a meter from the road on some pointy rocks and wondering why on Earth we had chosen not to sleep in a nice comfy cell.

From there, we climbed the remaining 1200m this morning. Yet another wild bonk that had us crawling into town and eating yoghurt and Chinese redbull while sitting on the curb looking and smelling like a bunch of bums, whatever. It seems as though we aer either living like kings with more food than we can eat, or struggling to make the next town with only a couple of peanuts and our faithful jar of honey to fuel us. Though really should figure out the big pass deal, it would be unfortunate to crash and burn up every one. From here, we look at our newly acquired Chinese atlas book and find out if the lines are roads and if the triangles are mountains. Its going to get wild from here though, that's for sure.

Jumping Tigers

Yunnan is the shit. Each day we ride in beautiful weather through valleys and over passes that just keep getting sweeter. The rolling hills are quickly turning into what would be called mountains in the States, the villages are thinning out and so is the air. Each night we go to sleep in a place very different from where we woke up. Each morning we look at our cheap map (that we cant read) and pick out roads that might work. Life is good. My only complaint is that the beer is terrible and the rice wine even worse. The language barrier is interesting and leads to many hilarious/ awkward interactions (like when we mistook a brothel for a restaurant).

From Dali we took a right and headed north. Going out of town we stumbled upon the spring festival with horse racing/ shooting, music, food and tourist madness, we even saw a couple laowai (the first in a week or so). We couldn't stomach the crowds or the $20 fee for the Three Pagodas so we just rode by and headed for Lijang.

Today we decided to take a day off and run through Tiger Leaping Gorge. Its a little touristy but outside of peak season we only saw a couple other groups. Its a fairly impressive gorge but Im skeptical a tiger could actually jump it. It felt good to change it up and stretch the legs a bit. Prior to this trip we were fresh of ski season and hadnt been on bikes for 5 or so months. Our bodies have been holding up surprisingly well, a couple sore spots but hopefully nothing that will stop us from procreating.

Tomorrow we will continue to head north, picking up the Jinsha (Yangtze) river at its bend and following it for a while. After a couple days we are going to try to jump the ridge west on back roads into the Lacang (Mekong) River drainage at the heart of the Three Parallel Rivers. UNESCO site. If the little gray squiggly line on our map is a road we will follow it up river all the way to Deqin on the Tibetan boarder. We will see what happens then.

Boot and Rally

So here we are, caked with dirt and smelling accordingly but somehow putting our feet up in a 4 star hotel in the center of Dali. Not exactly what we had in mind when planning our trip. The events that led up to this seem to be almost typical during our stay in China- we bumble around with very little idea of what's going on, mispronounce most of the Chinese words we know, are sure we’re headed for disaster, then miraculously everything has a way of working out. This is usually due to some Chinese person putting in a huge effort to help us out. Today it was the man at the printer shop we stumbled into while looking for an internet café. Not only did he let us use his computers but he negotiated a wildly cheap price for a hotel and took us out to dinner. So far it seems as though this kindness and generosity characterizes just about every Chinese person we have come in contact with, unbelievable really.

Our trip essentially started in the industrial Eastern city of Changzhou. We had planned on trying to get out of the east as soon as possible but with problems with transporting bikes, broken down buses, and certain train routes that didn't exist, we ended up spending near to a week in Changzhou. It was lucky we did because it gave us the opportunity to poke around and get a perspective on how quickly certain things happen in China. From anywhere in the city at least 3 or 4 cranes were visible and buildings were being thrown up everywhere. We took a couple of rides out of the city, but both times we failed to fully escape the factory sprawl and were exposed to new smells coming out of the factories. Most would put Rumford to shame and had a sulfurous or acrid tinge to them, and in the short time I was riding through them I could feel my lungs burn. By the end of the week we were dying to head west.

We were prepared for the worst when we finally boarded a bus out of Changzhou. For some reason we were under the impression that the route to Chongqing was to take 30 hours, pretty brutal by most standards. The bus was unlike any I have seen in the US. It was a so called sleeper bus, filled with pod like beds stacked two high and three wide. What space was left was taken up by our bikes, someone's satellite dish, and numerous buckets of concrete. The pods might have been long enough for the average Chinese person to stretch out in, but were far from long enough for me and Ben. The beds were also all different sizes, I lucked out with a longish one while Ben managed to score a 4 foot long torture bed. The ride was like most things in China- rushed, bumpy, and completely unpredictable. By the time we arrived in Chongqing, 41 hours had passed, the driver hadn't taken a break longer than an hour, the bus had broken down twice, driven off the road once, and the lady slightly ahead had thrown up well over 10 times. Despite all this, it was probably the most enjoyable bus ride I have ever been on and definitely the most exciting.

Another 15 hours in a bus and we had made it to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. We had planned on continuing westwards by bus at least to Dali. However, a combination of disgruntled drivers along with being sick of busses led us to decide to ride directly from the center of Kunming. From there we've just been riding, when we get hungry we cook something up, when it gets dark or we get tired we find a place to camp, and when we feel like riding we ride, pretty basic really. The ride so far has been dominated by passing through small scale agriculture on some of the steepest terrain I have ever seen farmed. The farmers here work from the crack of dawn until the sun sets. The terrain has slowly gotten more and more abrupt. What started out as rolling hills in Kunming have become hour long climbs, and looking north from Dali it seems as though the hills only get larger. There really have been too many events to go into detail right now, from food poisoning to fireworks. Hopefully we can get to them in another post, but for now we're headed northwards to the city of Lijang.