Day 129 – 130 (Gannan – Langmusi)

After the rain comes the sun, and we left Gannan in a completely different wheather condition than we arrived in a day earlier. Sunshine and and no wind was a welcome change from the previous three days. 

The area we are in now is on the border between Gansu and Sichuan provinces and tibetans make up if not a majority, then a large minority of the population. Apart from tibetans there are also a large proportion of muslims, so it is fair to say that it is a multi ethnical area.

To travel into Tibet province requires a special permit and that we join a guided group which is expensive and takes away a bit of the freedom of going wherever we would like to. Staying in this area means that we can enjoy a bit of tibetan culture and landscape without really going there. 

Our first encounter with tibetan buddhism was when we came speeding down a hill and saw a shrine at the side of the road. It looked really exotic to us and we stopped to have a close look at it. Not familiar with the tibetan traditions we didn’t really understand why the shrine was put at that place and what the purpose was.

An hour or two later we speeded down yet another downhill section and arrived into a small village. Even if the village was small it still had a large temple complex. We had made a late start from Gannan and didn’t really have time for any stops, but our curiosity was great and we turned around and went in on the temple yard. A monk came out and invited us to tea in his room which had almost nothing but the most necessary items such as a table, a stove, a book shelf and a mattress to sleep on. Above the monk’s bed there was a large photo of Dalai Lama which surprised me since I thought portraits of him are banned.

The monk spoke only tibetan and chinese but we managed to communicate somehow. He clearly liked that Wej is from a buddhist country and after having had a few cups of tea he wanted to show us the main hall in the temple. We stepped in and found a large buddha statue in the center of the building that was decorated in bright colours. The basics is the same as in a thai temple but the art work and the decorations is very different from what can be seen in Thailand.

As we started late from Gannan we didn’t get very far that day. The aim was to get to the town of Luqu where we knew there would be hotels, but 5 km outside we found a spot for our tent that was too good to miss. We pitched the tent, went to the nearby stream to wash ourselves, cooked our food and went to bed. 5 minutes after closing the tent door it started to rain – that was a perfect timing…. 

It rained through the night and when we woke up it was still raining. Our motivation to get out of our warm and cosy sleeping beds and get out into the rain was low so we decided to sleep another 45 minutes. When we woke up a second time there rain had stopped – good timing again….

The rest of the day offered us two surprises – no more rain and no flat tyres. What else can a long distance cyclist ask for…. ????

In the evening we arrived to the tiny town of Langmusi which is a tibetan alpine looking town squeezed in between tall mountains. Appearantly the town is going to focus even more on tourism since there were constructions of new hotels going on at a lot of places in the center. We found a guesthouse and since it is low season we got an entire dormitory with 8 beds to ourselves.

The tourists who come here are mainly internal chinese tourists and the main attractions are the outdoors. The attractions here are trekking, riding, fishing and all kind of outdoor activities. Most of the buildings are decorated in traditional tibetan way and the town had a very pleasant atmosphere so we decided to stay a day here to rest. 

When we had our breakfast at a restaurant the following morning we saw a sign that offered horseback riding in the mountains. When in Kashgar in the far west of China Wej wanted to join a camel riding tour in the desert but since we didn’t know if we had time for it we decided to not do it. Now when we know we have time, we decided to go for the riding trip.

Two hours later we were presented to our guide and our horses. After half an hour of instruction we led our horses out of town. We were told that since these horses only walk on grass they don’t need any shoes which means that they can’t be ridden on the road so we had to lead them for a kilometer out of town.

I can’t remember ever having ridden a horse on my own before but it worked just fine. The guide rode behind us and told us when to turn right or left, but most of the time the horses turned before he told us to tell the horses to turn. I guess it depends on these horses do this tour a hundred times a year….

It was anyway a fascinating feeling to ride a horse surrounded by the tall mountains. It was a wonderful weather with a blue sky, no wind and pleasant temperatures. We went along a small creek that we had to cross over a couple of times and I must say that horseback riding was really exciting and I consider to once I am back in Sweden take lessons to learn to ride properly. The distance we covered with these horses was a lot longer than we would have done if we had walked ourselves – the idea of learning to ride and then travel to Kyrgyzstan or Mongolia to do a longer horse trek has got stuck in my brain.

I know I completely lack the technique of riding properly and I noticed that after a day of horseback riding my body was aching pretty much everywhere. It is funny that I can sit on a bicycle day after day and feel nothing but a few hours of riding a horse made my knees and bottom hurt a lot.

Before going to bed we decided to stay another day in Langmusi and do nothing but sleep and rest. It was a bit cloudy in the morning but in the afternoon the sky got clear again. We felt that it was a pity to not cycle when the conditions were so favourable, but it was very nice to just hang around doing nothing.

After two days of rest in Langmusi it was time to start cycling again, but when we woke up at 6.30 we could hear it was raining outside. Why does it have to be good weather when we stop and bad when we need to cycle??? 

When I finally went up from my warm and cousy bed I took a quick look out of the window. A black car was parked on the opposite side of the road, but it was something strange with it because it had a white roof. I then realised that it was SNOW….. Well, we are in a mountain region where it can snow anytime and I guessed that this car had come down from higher altitudes where it had snowed during the night. Then I saw that there was snow on the roof of the building next door…..

Apparently it had snowed during the night and the rainfall we could hear from our room was snow mixed rain and this didn’t make us very excited about the idea of getting up on our bikes again. Those of you who have followd this blog from the start know that we have cycled through a lot harsher winter conditions than this when we passed through central Europe in March, but we still felt it was too short between the last snowfall in Bucharest in April and China in September. After a very short discussion we decided to stay another day and hope that the weather will improve tomorrow…..

Day 131-135 (Langmusi – Chengdu)

Day 131 Langmusi – Zoige
Day 132 Zoige – Songpan
Day 133 Songpan – Taipingxiang
Day 134 Taipingxiang – Maoxian
Day 135 Duhiangyan – Chengdu

I have got a new and interesting experience….. For the first time since we left Sweden I have got a writer’s block and I have kept pushing the writing of this blog post forward day after day. This post will probably not be a literarary work that will get any awards, which has never been the purpose anyway. I write to tell you reader & follower about what we do along the way, how we feel and about meetings we have had. The purpose is to keep you informed about our whereabouts but also to help me remember what we actually did once this trip is concluded. 

So here comes the story….

Langmusi is a small mountain town that sits at 3300 meters altitude. It has a very scenic locaction as it is squeezed between tall mountains and has two major tibetan temples and lots of other traditional buildings. When staying in Langmusi we had one day of sunshine, one cloudy day and one day with both snow and rain, but the common factor for all days was that it was cold, even when the sun was shining. 

When it was time to leave it was still cold, but our aim was to only ride the 80 km to the next town (Zoige) which would take us across a plateu on 3500 meters altitude. Since the distance was short we could allow ourselves to pay a visit at one of the tibetan temples in town before our late departure from Langmusi.

The plateu was interesting. We have climbed up and down a lot of mountains the last weeks and all of sudden one climb didn’t end at a pass with a nice downhill ride on the other side. The climb just faded and a we could see how the road went across a very large plain encircled by tall mountains.

We were going to spend two days and around 200 km to cross this plain and our legs really liked to not have to put in so much effort as when climbing. A light tailwind helped to make it to an easy ride. Even if the cycling was easy it was still only between 5-8 degrees during the day and a cloudy sky.

The plateu is home to tibetan nomads. Herds of yaks and sheep could be seen everywhere and several times we cycled past camps with traditional tibetan symbols in the middle and a number of party tents with traditional decorations surrounding the camp. We think the tibetans living in this harsh environment would use better tents then party tents when taking their yaks to the summer pastures so we never understood what this was. There were many such camps and there were lots of activity at some of them. When we later saw tourist buses parked outside some of the camps we started to believe that all theses camps were some sort of activity centers set up for the upcoming holiday week.

It has happened many times that we believe a dot on the map is a small town, but when we arrive it turn out to be a big city. When we came to Zoige we expected a small city, but it turned out to be a rather small town in the middle of the plateu. We didn’t find any ordinary hotel which need license to host foreign tourists. Instead we found a small and cheap local hotel and those usually don’t care about registrations or licenses – they simply want to earn some money. 

Before agreeing to the room we asked if there was heating and hot water and the answer was yes. This was true, but not at the time of our arrival (5 PM). The heaters and the hot water would be turned on at 8 PM and the only source of heating was the electrically heated mattress in our room…. 

The sky was clear the next morning. It feels like the higher altitude amplifies the weather conditions. When the weather is nasty, it gets really ugly, but when the sky is clear it can be amazingly beatiful with a very deep blue sky. We could enjoy this clear sky for a few hours before the clouds were back again.

Zoige is located at 3500 meter and the following 100 km would slowly take us up to 3850 meters before the start of a long descent towards the lowlands below. Our plan was to camp after about 80-100 km but since we had a steady tailwind we arrived early to the highest point and with the wind on our backs we couldn’t resist to continue doing the remaining 60 km downhill to the town of Songpan. 

Just like Langmusi, Songpan is a center for various outdoor activities and everywhere we found chinese tourists dressed in outdoor clothes who had come to enjoy mountaineering, horseback riding, trekking or white water rafting. 

The downhill continued the following day but now the wind had changed direction. The valley was deep and the wind got compressed created a strong headwind and we couldn’t roll down without pedalling  Why does it always feel like the wind is stronger when it is against us…. 
We met lots of chinese cyclists on the way up towards the mountains and it looked like they were traveling faster uphill than we did downhill…

In Songpan we heard about long and scary tunnels further on and when we stopped and talked to the chinese cyclists we got different messages. Some said the tunnels were unlit, while others said they were lit. One group told us that there were road works going on and the traffic in both directions would go in one tunnel while the other was being repaired. The diverging info was probably due to the language barrier but it still made us very concerned. 

We only cycled 70 km out of Songpan before we thought it was time to camp. Being to lazy to cook ourselves we stopped outside an restaurant in a village to have dinner before finding somehwere to camp. Soon we understood that this wasn’t only a restaurant but also a hotel. After a bit of haggling about the price we checked in to a very cheap but nice looking room and went down to have dinner.

With a menu only in chinese and after a moment of total confusion the waiter called someone and 3 minutes later a young lady came over. She spoke good English and helped us to order the food. It turned out that she was the english teacher at the a boarding school for kids from the mountains that was located next door to the restaurant. While we waited for the food she took us over to the school to visit a class with 35 curious kids.

After a good nights sleep in the hotel room above the restaurant we continued downhill. The road was still in a very deep valley and kept following the meandering river. The intensity of the traffic had increased significantly since it was the day before the official start of the ”Golden Week” when China takes a week off to celebrate its national day.

An endless number of buses drove up towards the mountains, and in between them there were trucks and cars and everyone was overtaking everyone else even at sharp turns of the road. We have passed through countries and regions where the traffic standard is far from good but this was probably the worst so far and we didn’t feel completely safe. 

In the city of Maoxian we had to make a decision. We knew there would be 10 tunnels with a length of between 2-7 km and crazy traffic. Safety is always the most important aspect to consider and we didn’t have to think long to decide to get past the tunnels by bus. The decision was made easier by getting back to the purpose of this journey – to discover what is between Göteborg and Bangkok and who the people who live there are. There is nothing to discover inside a tunnel and there certainly ain’t any people living there…..

Sitting on the bus we could conclude that we had made the right decision. Most of the tunnels were twin tunnels with one tube going in each direction, but some of them were under renovation and the traffic in both directions had to share one tunnel. And there were plenty of other buses and trucks in the tunnels too.

The tunnels were also long, veeery loooong. The longest was 7 km and it would have taken us around 25 very stressing minutes to pass so we were happy to be onboard a bus.

When we arrived to the bus terminal in the city of Dujiangyan we found a cheap hotel on top of the terminal building, but unfortunately it had no license to host foreigners. We ended up at the much more expensive hotel next to the bus station. Preparations for a wedding with lots of dressed up people were going on as we stepped in to the lobby dressed in our very dirty outdoor clothes…..

The next day into Chengdu would be the first day of the holiday and we expected the worst in terms of traffic. We decided to go on the small local road the 70 km into Chengdu. That small local road turned out to be a three lane highway with a separate lane for cyclists and scooters. It was slightly downhill all the way and there were hardly any cars at all – they were probably already up in the mountains.

Chengdu with its suburbs has around 10 million people and could sound like a hard city to enter by bike. This couldn’t be more wrong since all roads in chinese cities have a very wide lane for cyclists and electric scooters which is even protected by a little fence. I wish we could have this kind of infrastructure back in Göteborg, not to mention Bamgkok.

Since it is a holiday time in China we have prebooked a room at a guesthouse. There are lots of mainly young chinese who spend their vacation week to visit Chengdu. Some of them are cyclists too….. 

The day after we arrived to Chengdu we got accompanied by our polish friend Bartek, who made an navigational error and had to take another road. It was great to meet again and share stories. We don’t cycle together but since he is going to Singapore we expect to meet again and again in Kunming and Laos and hopefully in Bangkok.

France vs Sweden 4-1, massage and electronics

Chengdu is nicknamed the City of Hibiscus but is maybe more known for being the home to lots of cute pandas. Being one of China’s biggest cities Chengdu has a lot to offer for a visiting cycle tourist.

Our first day was spent by riding 10 km through the center of the city to a bicycle shop where we hoped to get our drive trains cleansed and my rear wheel trued. Since it was holiday time, the staff in the shop were very busy and only had time to assist in trueing the wheel, which is something we hardly can do successfully by ourselves. 

The second day we didn’t do anything but sleeping.

The third day we made an excursion to the shopping areas south of the city. We need to buy a mosquito net to use during our trip through Laos and Thailand and we firmly believed that this could be found at Decathlon which is a French sports and outdoor retail chain with stores all over the world. Opposite to Decathlon there is an Ikea store and although legally Dutch its products, appearance and feel still is 150% Swedish and best of all it sells Swedish sweets and other foodstuff to the joy of a bypassing cycle tourist. 

Visiting Ikea a rainy Saturday after payday in Sweden is a bad idea if you want to be alone. The same goes for visiting an Ikea store in China during the ”golden week”, i.e. the week long break during the autumn – you will never be on your own and there will be waiting lines to everything. 

We had a cup of Swedish style coffee and some cakes at the restaurant, but didn’t bother to go in to the store itself. Decathlon was slightly less crowded and we spent about two hours walking around and checking sportswear, cycle components and outdoor equipment. Unfortunately we never found any mosquito net, but we ended up with a bungy strap and a mirror for my bicycle. 

We then walked back to Ikea to make a few important purchases and left the shop with Norrlands Guld (Swedish beer), Blueberry jam, Swedish crisp bread and some candy.

In Sweden the national language is Swedish and English is the first second language we learn. Swedes often get compliments for speaking good English while the opposite usually is said about the French. When looking for mosquito nets at Decathlon we had to ask the staff and all four people we talked to spoke good English. When shopping at Ikea we talked to three people who didn’t know a word of English until a fourth person arrived and helped us with our queries. 

Hmmmm – it doesn’t feel good to be beaten by 4-1 in English as a second language by the French… Maybe it is because Ikea is owned by a Dutch foundation, but then again, the Dutch are supposedly better at English as a second language than the Swedes are…..  

Anyway, the beer tasted wonderfully and some Swedish travelers at the guesthouse got very jealous when they saw us having crisp bread with blueberry jam…. so thank you Ikea…. 

We bring a GoPro video camera along this trip and once we stop cycling in Thailand we will sit down and edit the material and make some short films about this journey. The GoPro comes with lots of mounts that can be used to attach it to almost anything. In a small shop in Russe in Bulgaria we bought some more mounts and now we wanted to buy a head strap or a helmet mount. Off we went to Chengdu’s center for electronics which is two large buildings with seven floors each packed with small and large electronic shops.

We walked around for two hours and to our surprise we found nothing. Nobody even seemed to know about GoPro, which is the leading brand in the market for action cameras.

I still contemplate what is worst, a Swedish company being beaten by a French when it comes to knowledge of English, or two chinese skyscrapers filled with electronics being beaten by a small shop in an unknown galleria in a town in Bulgaria…..

It has been nice for our bodies to get almost a week off the saddle and rest from the cycling. Yesterday we thought we should give them a special treat and went to get some massage. I wasn’t very impressed by the massage, but when the masseur towards the end of the session showed me a glass cup and indicated if I wanted it I thought that a cup of tea could be a good way to end a mediocre massage session. 

The masseur then set fire to a piece of cotton at the end of a long stick and held it in the cup for a few seconds. I thought it was strange, but in a country where many people wear face masks in the streets to protect themselves from germs, I thought it was yet another way of making sure that the tea cup was clean. One second later I got a surprise when she put the cup upside down on my naked back. I could feel how the cup got stuck and then it suck my flesh into it as it cooled down. I thought it was a very strange way to serve tea and soon I had a dozen such cups on my back.

Back at the guesthouse I had to google what I had been through and found out that cup therapy is a classic treatment in China that is supposed to cure all sorts of ailments. I can’t say that I feel any better now than before I was turned into a kitchen shelf, but one thing is for sure and that is that getting a massage in the city of Pandas made me look like a leopard.

Short update

We are now in the town of Yinjam which is a place we didn’t know existed until just before noon today. The town is located in a deep river valley and the reason why we are in this narrow valley and not up in the mountains where we planned to go is a navigational mistake…. 

Both of us are too tired to make any blog update now, but since it is a while since the last update we thought it could be a good idea to make a short statement that we are well and have no problems (apart from the lost navigation skills…)

We have about 500-600 km left to Kunming which is the capital city of Yunnan. Hopefully we will be able to update the blog before we arrive Kunming with the story from our unexpected trip on a very bad road through China’s mountainous backyard. Meanwhile, please enjoy these photos as a teaser…. 

Another short update

We are now in the city of Huize some 200 km north of Kunming where we plan to arrive on Saturday.

The cycling from Leshan, where we extended our visas, to this city has been very interesting but also complicated with very cold and rainy weather and some technical breakdowns that has caused delays.

We have been to proper hotels a few times with access to the internet, but then there has been no time to update this blog. Instead we have had to get out of the time bubble we have lived in the last 7 months to use the few available hours after the daily cycling to plan our entry to Thailand. It is very pleasant to live a life that is “here and now” and once we have got out of that bubble in order to start planning for the future, a bit of the adventure seems to be lost in the process.

Most things are now set for our arrival and we will try to do our best to get back into the bubble for a few more weeks.

If the weather and the hills permit we will be in Kunming on Saturday and then there will be stories and photos on the blog on Sunday. We hope you can cope for another few days….