South along the X113
Daxushen, to the west of Guilin
Once my bike is wheeled across the marble floor of the hotel lobby, the rain starts coming down. Sod that.
Robert the manager takes me up to the restaurant and get me a coffee. Then another. His broken English allows us to chat for an hour - about my trip, the cost of hotels and nothing too complex, punctuated by us walking over to the window and looking for telltale ripples in a puddles below. The rain stops at around 10 and we shake hands and I'm on my way, down the wide X113 which was right out front.
It's obviously grey and I opt for a day for black and white snaps, but for the first time the wind is behind me. I'm riding south and my speed is decent. Karst peaks appear after about 20km – a range of pointed hills over to my left, quite a few kilometers away.
The X113 is nothing to get excited about. It has more cars than I thought it would - the X routes are supposed to be basic country lanes. But this is a decent road, one used by people getting to/from Guilin, with expanded villages dotted along it, mostly consisting of fairly modern dwellings built in the recent decade and definitely not the sort of buildings that make it in to architectural or interior design magazines, but now and again there are older houses, hidden among the bathroom-tiled dross. After a while I decide to check one out. Time is on my side.
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A small lane weaves a path through the hamlet. The homes are well kept and a few older people come outside to check me out as I take a snap with my tripod taking up almost half the lane. It only lasts about 100m, but the detour perks me up as the X113 has become a bit boring. A change is as good as a rest, as they say.
A brown sign points east to some attractions and it seems like a good idea to see what they are. After a few minutes’ cycling along a concrete lane, some people are standing in a circle in a field, gathered around a burning paper model of a house, which stands around a metre tall. These effigies are burned as an offering to ancestors, and there must be 20 family members here. The house soon disappears in flames that shoot up well over few metres, while the men, women and teenagers wave long twigs up and down in the air and a man blows a trumpet-like instrument in prolonged discordant blasts, without any melody. It all strikes me pagan and ancient.
After that, I ride for a few kilometres more, but decide to turn back because the sign said it was only one. It’s not as though I know what I'm actually looking for.
Spots of rain start to dot the road when I’d ridden 50km. I take shelter in a bus stop and eat some kumquat I bought yesterday before while on the little shopping spree. It soon blows over.
My wheels roll into a small town enveloping the X113 around lunchtime and I get a bottle of isotonic drink from a shop and some chicken on a stick from one of the market vendors before continuing south on the more or less flat road.
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When a sign says it's 20km to Guilin my watch tells me I’ll be there before 4:00pm. But then immediately after another one of those brown tourist signs points east with a short list of scenic attractions. They are at least 6km away, but temptation gets the better of me. There's an hour or two to spare before it gets dark.
A marker tells me the road is the X068. I no longer have a map, so just hope it doesn’t get too complicated. The karst peaks that appeared earlier soon get a lot closer.
This X road traces a wide river - the Lijiang - and for a short while there's a winding path that workers are in the process of building. It's near completion, but I have to get off after 100 metres as it ends, but kep on riding roughly west in the hope of either finding a hotel, or preferably someone who will take me and the bike down the scenic karst-lined river to Guilin - in one of the small motorized boats that are clearly for hire. I ask around, but there's no-one running the craft right now. One owner is too engrossed in the a TV show to be bothered to ferry me south.
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A street cleaner sitting in his parked little electric cab says there is one hotel about 10km away, and I wonder about it for a minute or so, then decide to go for it. Then the road starts to climb and it seems it's taking me towards nowhere.
Within a matter of minutes there's a resort that has some kind of jungle and water theme, with a hotel attached. Built on a hillside, the whole place looks run down and deserted and when I get quoted 360rmb for a room, it makes me laugh, and the reduced rate of 300 only gets me shaking my head. I decide to head back the way I’ve come. It' now nearly five and my legs and hands are feel the damp chill in the air.
There's nowhere to sleep back along the narrow X068, not even a guesthouse, but once I cycle down the X113 for kilometer or two, a string of four or five basic hotels line the left side of the road, their illuminated signs being a welcome sight. I brake at the first and for 60rmb get a heated room.
It's a bit less than 20km to Guilin, so tomorrow promises to be easy. Hopefully it'll stay dry. It'll certainly be a shorter ride then today, as my computer now read over 100km.
Today's ride: 100 km (62 miles)
Total: 1,292 km (802 miles)
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