In 2012, I ended up on what I was told is referred to as a "second class expressway" pretty much the whole way from Yebao to Tianshui. At one point, I think in Zhongtan, I got off the expressway for lunch, but, yeah, whole way on a mostly limited access expressway that, no matter what the people at the toll booth said about it being okay, really should not have had bicycles on it.

Since there wasn't so much as a median strip to keep the cars on their own side of the road, the speed of the expressway was limited somewhat and it wasn't actively dangerous for me to be there, it just also wasn't somewhere I belonged. However, once I got on that expressway, I basically had no choice to go anywhere else.

The provincial road that the expressway was 'replacing' as a flatter north/south corridor is as much as 20 kilometers away to the east. 

The 'old road' which served this area before the expressway went in was both a rutted mess of dirt and it wasn't showing up on the electronic maps I had available to me at the time. I know this cause I actually stopped on one of the bridges and looked wistfully at the more interesting road that clearly didn't have tunnels, photographed it, and stayed on the flat straight thing with trucks.

This time around, after initially planning to take the Provincial Road, I decided to take the 'old road' most of the way and only do the Provincial Road for the last little bit coming over the mountain into Tianshui so I wouldn't have to go through the nasty scary Tunnel of Doom.

It's hard to say if it's any better or any worse than it was then since I've only got the one photo from then. It's paved, in places. And when it's paved, the pavement is pretty alright. It's just that it's mostly not paved. And also, in a number of locations, being used as an access road for the giant pieces of construction equipment that are building the new expressway. No tunnels though. And really pretty.

By now, I've stopped the altitude sickness medicine. I'm almost always below 1500m and, on the rare occasion I go back up above, it's only for an hour or so. I've been over 1000m now for, I think, a month. I'm doing fine. My heart rate remains a little on the fast side but, most days, my oxygen saturation is practically what you'd expect from sea level. Six years ago, notwithstanding the then very recent episode of turning blue, I was 'ok' but I sure as fuck wasn't 'doing fine' so it's probably a good thing that I was on the straight flat shoulder of a choiceless road.

Just before Zhongtan Town, where I had lunch six years ago, I turn off the 'old road' towards Shifo Township. Actually, if you believe the route numbers, I stay on the 'old road'. It's just that I switch from being on a narrow dirt road to a wide paved one with generous shoulders and artfully planted wildflowers.

I had two options which would take me from the 'old road' to the Provincial Road over the mountain. I picked this one because it seemed likely to be the quickest to get me to lunch and breakfast, which hadn't been very large to start with, was beginning to feel like it was three hours of mountain biking ago.

The other road, which the electronic maps currently call the X445 becomes the X681 on the other side of the Provincial Road. This isn't true anymore and hasn't been true for over a year but even the Chinese maps, which at least have mostly gotten updated enough to admit the existence of wider roads and viaducts and tunnels, still say it is. In actuality, the old Provincial Road has been downgraded and this is now the Provincial Road.

It adds at least 20 kilometers to my day. Except when I jump on to the original road to avoid one of the tunnels, it's flat the whole way. The trade off in distance versus climbing is totally worth it when the distance is done at the bottom of dramatic gorges with at least as much beautiful mountain scenery as what I'd be getting if I were crossing over the tops of the mountains.