November 2, 2014
A long day: Slow
Early the next morning I packed up my tent, having spent the night camping by the river that I was now following downhill, but I didn't feel cold as I was already at much lower altitude. Having finally learned my lesson this year I planned to head south for the winter and I was almost certainly now through the worst of the cold weather. And the morning scenery was a pleasant mixture of the seasons, with autumnal colours beside the river gradually giving way to a light sprinkling of snow higher on the surrounding peaks.
I was soon stopped by a young man on a motorcycle, a furniture maker from Beijing named Aji who was traveling around the country. He was very friendly and it was a pleasure to stop and exchange stories with him. I didn't really have any time to spare, so I ate a packet of biscuits at the same time in an extraordinary act of multi-tasking. Aji's English wasn't great so before too long we resorted to communication via his I-phone translator, which was always guaranteed good entertainment value in China. Understanding that I was in a hurry, he passed me the phone and it read; 'Would you like a draw? It seemed a little early in the morning for me, and I wasn't sure that would actually help all that much, but then Aji indicated that what he meant was would I like to be towed along by his motorbike. I weighed up the pros and cons of this kind offer. Pro - I'd get there quicker and make up time. Con - Technically it would be cheating and my trip would be ruined. Pro - It would be the most exciting thing I'd ever do. Con - It would be the last thing I'd ever do. Pro - I can't think of any more pros. Con - We would get beeped at A LOT. "No thank you Aji, I'm okay."
Next Aji invited me to come and have lunch with him in a nearby restaurant. It was nine in the morning and I'd just eaten a whole packet of biscuits, so it seemed like the ideal time for lunch and I agreed. Of course I didn't really have time but opportunities to socialise with the Chinese had been frustratingly infrequent and I didn't want to blow through the entire country without spending any time with anyone. Besides it was all downhill and I was confident I would still make my target of 120 kilometres even if I took a half hour off now. It turned out to be a bit longer than that as the food took a long time to arrive, almost as long as it took to explain what a vegetarian was in fact, but I thoroughly enjoyed my I-phone conversation with Aji. He was very excited that I was from England, and told me it was his dream to visit someday. I looked at him puzzled and asked why. He typed his response into the phone and handed it to me: 'I have seen Mel Gibson's Braveheart.'
The scenery continued to be lovely as I continued on under my own steam, and when the river opened up into a big lake it only got better. The road was quite high on the cliffside now and there were a few look-out points where some cars stopped to take photographs of the view over the lake (and I think I noticed one of them actually look at the view briefly once as well.) And there were some yaks here too, saddled up and ready to offer rides to the tourists. But these weren't like the yaks I'd seen out on the plains, these were the finest of yaks, they were looking like models with smooth white hair neatly combed. I imagined the talent scouts going out, searching the countryside for these model yaks, and bringing the very best back with them. In fact here is the winner of 'China's next top model yak' now:
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Beyond the yaks came the tunnels. The first was 500 metres long and had no lighting, and no shoulder. With the road still being busy I opted for walking through on the footpath which was raised up from the roadway. The path wasn't particularly good with cracked and loose paving slabs, but it was at least devoid of fast-moving vehicles. All was going well until about halfway through when I came to what appeared to be a fridge-freezer in the middle of the path completely blocking my way. I considered this to be a pain. My only real choice was to take off all the bags and jump down into the roadway to carry them around the obstruction and then jump back on the path on the other side and reassemble the bike to continue. This took a long time, because I had to wait for a break in traffic before I could make each dash around the fridge-freezer, and each time there was a break in traffic the tunnel became pitch black, and I couldn't see what I was doing. Eventually I got everything around and back together and pushed the bike the rest of the way through the noisy tunnel. As I emerged back out into the daylight I felt reborn, and hoped I'd never have to do such a horrible thing again. Five minutes later I came to another tunnel, this one a whole two kilometres long.
Fortunately there appeared to be an alternative road going around the edge of the cliff that would mean I could bypass this next tunnel, and so I took that. It was really very nice too, because there was absolutely no traffic on it whatsoever, and the views over the lake were magnificent. The road itself wasn't in the best of shape, with a lot of landslides and rockfall littering it. Also littering it was litter. At some point after the tunnel was built half of this road had been turned into a rubbish tip, and it was certainly an interesting contrast - the peace and quiet of a glorious cliffside bicycle ride offset by the foul stench of human trash.
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After a while the trash stopped but with the complete absence of other traffic I began to worry whether this road was going to be passable. There was really a lot of rockfall debris and I imagined it was quite likely that I was going to find that my way was blocked or that the road had fallen into the lake, but I continued anyway because I wanted to remain eternally optimistic. Then I came to this:
But I managed to find a way through between the rocks and carried on, continuing to be eternally optimistic. Then I came to this:
Continuing to be eternally optimistic I took off the bags once again, and carried them over the landslide two by two. There was a sort-of track over the top where other people had walked, but there was a really, really, really big drop down to the lake and as I scrambled over the loose scree I realised that this was one of those 'slip and you die' moments. But the alternative of going all the way back along the road and through the two kilometre tunnel was worse, so I took my chances, and the fact that you are reading this should be your first clue that my eternally optimistic ass didn't slip and die.
It wasn't long then before I came to a village and was able to rejoin the main road. The village had been destroyed by the 2008 earthquake and had since been completely rebuilt. It was like a tourist attraction. It was all a little sad. And the road seemed to have got twice as busy in the tunnel and was absolutely not a place I wanted to be on a bicycle. There was a big downhill and then we came to yet another tunnel. Once again there was a road going off to the right that looked like it might be taking a route around the cliff instead of through, but unlike the last one it was a good paved road with quite a bit of traffic and signs saying this was a tourist route.
I wasn't sure if this road was going the right way, and the people that were around there were typically useless at giving me directions, so I got my laptop out and checked some images of maps that I'd been sent. I didn't have a good map, but from what I had I could see that there were two roads running parallel south of the lake, that would reconnect further down. I guessed this right turn would take me onto one of them, the scenic one, while the other went through the tunnels. I was satisfied with this conclusion, and turned off the main G213 highway and onto the tourist road.
And it was a very nice road too, winding around beside the lake, those autumnal colours everywhere. There was traffic but it was all going in the other direction. I assumed this was because the tourists all drove north from Chegndu on this nice road and then looped back on the main highway. I was just happy that I was going the other way to them all, and that I didn't have to go through all the tunnels. And then, of course, I came to a tunnel. There looked like a track around it, but by chance there was an old man walking along the road the same way as me and he indicated that I should take the tunnel because the track was no good. I did as I was told and bumped my bike up onto the footpath again, wearing my hi-viz vest and putting my lights on just to be safe. As I did so the man also entered the unlit tunnel, dressed as he was all in grey and without any lights it goes without saying he walked down the middle of the roadway.
Shortly after the tunnel I arrived at a roadblock where I was ushered into a busy car park. I was surrounded by people and told that I needed to go to the tourist centre and buy a ticket. Damn, they were going to charge me 80 yuan to take this nice road. Damn. I was pretty stressed out by now anyway, and I wasn't even entirely sure that I was going the right way. "Is this road going to MaoXian?" I asked the ticket operators, the policemen, the security man, the manager who came out to me, the hotel staff and a random little odd man. Nobody could tell me. Don't ever try and ask Chinese people for directions. Growing more frustrated, I asked if there was a wifi connection that I could use, and luckily I was allowed to use the hotels. I pulled up a map and asked someone where I was. I was going the wrong way. I sighed. I took a deep breath. And I left.
Back along the way that I had come, this time with all the traffic honking at my rear wheel. Back through the tunnel. All the way back to the main road. Then the tunnel on the main road - 750 metres this one, and of course I was pushing on the footpath. At least I was until I came to another fridge freezer. This time it took a really long time to get around it, because the traffic was almost constant and gaps were rare. Being trapped in the dark in a noisy Chinese tunnel isn't particularly fun anyway, but some of the vehicles decided to make it even more enjoyable by blaring their horns at me. In a f*cking tunnel. This led to rather an interesting outburst from me, more of a tirade really. It went something like this: "OH! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HONKING YOUR HORN! BECAUSE I COULDN'T HEAR YOUR SILENT BUS AS IT MOVED NOISELESSLY THROUGH THIS PEACEFUL TUNNEL AND I WAS JUST ABOUT TO THROW MYSELF INTO THE ROAD BECAUSE I DIDN'T NOTICE THERE WAS ANY F*CKING TRAFFIC IN HERE WITH ME, YOU F*CKING BEEPING MORON!!!"
The road continued to be terrible beyond the tunnel, with heavy traffic, no shoulder, plus a crash barrier at the side so there was no escape route. It was too much, I was too stressed out and this was too dangerous. I noticed there was a nice patch of trees for camping and so I stopped early, deciding that cutting the day short was better than cutting my life short. I was exhausted, frustrated and angry with the world. Worst of all was that I'd only cycled 78 kilometres, quite a bit of which had been the wrong way. And this was on a day when the road was all downhill. I was nowhere near doing enough to make it out of China on time before my visa expired. I was in real trouble now. My eternal optimism was beginning to wane.
Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 32,168 km (19,976 miles)
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