Big mountains day: It felt like it would never end

December 12, 2014

It seemed very likely that Dea had been afflicted by the same tropical disease that had lain me low for a full four days, and so it was no surprise at all that she was up at 6:20 a.m. the following morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and ready to resume cycling. I groaned as she cajoled me out of bed and onto my bicycle, and we cycled on through another misty morning towards our date with destiny on the big mountain.

Leaving the guesthouse and heading towards the Mekong Bridge

I had another new top! I do like to look bright, so I do!

For the first thirty kilometres the cycling was flat and easy, up until the town of Pak Lai, where we stopped and ate to gain strength for the climbs ahead. Beyond Pak Lai we turned away from the main drag that was continuing south towards Thailand, and instead took a ferry across the Mekong. The 'Mekong Bridge' was still under construction. It seemed like the first thing that had been built were the signs along the roadside informing people how far it was to the 'Mekong Bridge' and once that was done, they'd started to build the bridge itself, although so far they only had one supporting pillar in place. It didn't matter, we timed our arrival perfectly and cycled straight onto the ferry.

On the other side for a good while the road was absolute bliss. It was like a narrow country lane and there was very little traffic and, because of the ferry, I had the feeling that we were on an island, where the pace of life was much slower and more relaxed, which for Laos is saying something. The sky seemed bluer than normal, the surrounding fields and mountains a more intense green. The road climbed gently and I made the mistake of thinking it might continue like that and, confident, we took a long break in another little wooden shelter in paradise.

This is another picture of Dea. I like taking pictures of Dea

Ah, it's going so well, let's just relax here for a while!

Then the climbs started. But it wasn't just one steady climb, the road went up and down like a rollercoaster, and the gradient of the road was unbelievable. A sign said it was 15% but to me it felt like it was more than 20% a lot of the time. It was the kind of steep where all you can do is battle as hard as possible for each pedal rotation, bending over the handlebars and putting your back into it and pushing down on those pedals with all you have, or standing up and using all your body weight to crank down on them. Whichever technique we used both of us could only do 50 or 100 metres at a time, before taking a break to lean over and catch our breath.

It was the kind of steep where, when it leveled off and became a normal steep climb like 7% or 8% and we were still in our lowest gear, well, then it felt like bliss. "It feels like we're going downhill!" Dea said on such a section. Once again she was taking all this in her stride. I didn't just meet my match with this girl, I met an absolute superstar. Certainly she wasn't any contender for taking on the still-vacant position of my hapless sidekick, for I was the hapless one and she the heroine. She spurred me on, even as the road seemed to get steeper and the downhill sections disappeared and we just climbed and climbed towards the top. "I've never known anything like this" I said, and I meant it. It was so steep that when, unusually, Dea was a little below me, I simply put a water bottle, a mostly square-shaped water bottle at that, on the floor and it rolled straight down to her.

Actually the water bottle veered off to one side and Dea had to retrieve it from the other side of the road, but it did roll down very fast!

My legs hurt like hell. I'd done some things on this journey to make them tired along the way but this really was something else. They hurt so bad. I promised that once we got to Vientiane I'd give myself a very long break from cycling, but until then I just had to keep on going. And finally we reached the summit, where a car beeped loudly at Dea and then slowed down and said "very good, very good" to me. But our celebrations were short-lived, for these forested mountains had more for us, and this was only the first summit and there was still more steep climbing to do. It felt like it would never end.

With the day beginning to draw towards a close we both ate a bunch of cookies, a cyclist food staple that I had introduced Dea to with great success. "My stomach feels like a giant cookie" she said, a normal situation for anyone that spends three weeks eating with me. But the cookies did give us the strength needed for the final push and suddenly we were whizzing down and then coming out into a flatter area of farmed land and the mountains were behind us, defeated. We high-fived triumphantly and cheered our success. We both felt a great sense of achievement at what had been one hell of a challenge, both for someone new to cycle touring, and for someone who's been doing it a while but isn't that good. We quickly found another wooden hut and climbed up the steps onto the platform where we collapsed. There was nowhere to put the tent on the ground, but that didn't matter, we could just sleep right there. And boy, had we earned our sleep.

Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 34,757 km (21,584 miles)

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