May 17, 2019
Backing Out Slowly ...
Back to Kunming
Bingzhongluo is a dead end and getting out, unless I wanted to tackle a 100 km snow bound 4,000 metre pass to the next river valley (I did not), would require retracing my steps back down the Nujiang River valley to Liuku. The distance is about 250 km, not all that far...
I caught the morning bus back to Gongshan and pedalled down the hill through the morning rain and mud to the bus station. It was deserted, not a good sign. Asking around, no one could tell when or if there was a bus back to Liuku. So I pedalled back up the hill and took a hotel room for the night, with the intent of pedalling back down in the morning to a hopefully not abandoned bus station to try and get a ticket on the morning's bus down the river. Good plan - the only option, actually.
Next morning at 0600, down to the bus station again .... Still abandoned, but plenty of potential passengers also looking for the bus.
Time passes, hope withers.
Around 0830, a girl opens the station and tells me "sorry, no bus today, but there will be a 0700 bus to Liuku tomorrow. Come back at 1400 and I will sell you a ticket." She doesn't actually tell me this directly, it's all done through our respective translation apps.
Another trip up and down the hill, another muddy wet day waiting in Gongshan...
Next morning, back down to the now open and busy bus station, and we leave more or less at 0700, sad mud encrusted bike strapped down on the roof rack. I assumed it would be a two day ride, with a break at Fugong, as on the ride up the valley....
Wrong assumption.
We did it on one very long painful 20 hr marathon. It took us 10 hrs from Gongshan to Fugong, about 100 km. We had to get off and walk twice when the bus got stuck on muddy pitches. A quick 15 minute meal stop in Fugong and the final 150 km were done in the dark, bouncing and thrashing along at the breakneck speed of 15 kmph. That included a +2 hr wait queued up on the track waiting for the ambulance to arrive and the road to be cleared after some poor soul went over the edge. The bus arrived in Liuku at 3 am. I settled into the upmarket Chinese hotel across the road from the station for two nights and purchased another overnight bus ticket back to Kunming on tonight's bus.
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The shoes ponged so terribly the locals wouldn't sit near me on the bus. The pants split up the crotch and have been replaced with a pair of 3/4 length lightweight Chinese hipster pants.
I'll do one more entry into this journal in a few days time to tidy it up. I'll also do a slight tweak to the journal subtitle to reflect the lack of actual riding completed.
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5 years ago