The Rainbow Mountains: Another epic day

October 12, 2014

No, not really, only joking, the skull was still there. "Goodbye Ow Mi Nek!" I said as I carried up the last of my bags, "Thanks for not killing me in the night!"

This was going to be another epic day. I hadn't dreamed of visiting the Rainbow Mountains for quite as long as I had the Great Wall, but ever since I'd seen photos of them a year or two earlier I'd longed to visit them for myself. The long shift I'd put in the day before left me with a chance to go and visit them now, and all I had left to do was find them.

At least this time there was a sign for them, directing me off the G30 and into a town. The only problem was that the town was north of the G30 and I thought the Rainbow Mountains should be to the south. No, that wasn't the only problem. Another problem was the insanely chaotic traffic in the town. It was older, which meant the streets were narrower, and traffic was simply crazy. It was a relief to survive.

If you absolutely must ride a motorcycle the wrong way down the road, may I suggest that you at least look where you're going

Entrance to a pedestrian bridge in a quieter part of town

The road finally looped around and crossed the G30 and started heading south. I saw a sign on the G30 above me indicating that the exit I'd taken was only two kilometres away, a bit frustrating considering I'd cycled 18 kilometres since taking it, but at least the extra 16 kilometres had taken me past this semi-interesting temple:

The road out to the Rainbow Mountains was good and I made it by early afternoon, with a good dose of fortune as the sun emerged from a few days of overcast skies at just the right time to highlight the colours of the mountains for me.

Gaining entry to the National Park took a long time. There were an incredible number of Chinese tourists and I had to queue for a long time for my ticket, then queue again to actually get in. And then, once inside the park, the first thing everyone did was get on a bus! Not me though, I walked along the road. Clearly the buses were carrying the tourists between the main sights, but they weren't half a pain because there was nowhere else for me to walk except the road and every few moments a bus would come past beeping at me.

But it wasn't a very long walk to the first viewing area and here everyone had to get off the bus to climb up to it anyway. And I was very pleased that I'd made the effort to visit this place once I got up to the viewing area myself. The Rainbow Mountains were incredible. They covered a huge area, and were lit up by bright stripes of colours, ranging from orange and yellow through to purple and blue.

I was amazed by how many tourists there were, all of them Chinese. If you've ever been to a tourist sight in Europe or North America you'll know how the Chinese love their photos, but can you imagine what it's like when you get thousands of them together in a place like this? Everywhere I looked everyone was taking photos, all the time. The only time anyone stopped taking a photo was to look at the photo they'd just taken on their camera or phone or I-pad. Some people, I swear, they never even looked at the view. And the view was stunning.

This guy was even taking a second photo using his stomach

A great view though (and yes I am aware of the irony that I was also taking photos)

Overall my impression of the Rainbow Mountains from this first area was that they were amazing, really, but that the pictures I'd seen before must have been exaggerated by colour-enhancing lenses, because the colours weren't as very dramatic in real life as I'd been hoping for. But then I walked to the next viewing area, and saw this:

Now that looks like a rainbow!!! Sort of

Now I was really impressed. Things were getting better and better. I walked on towards the next area. A lot of the places had funny names, like 'Monkeys rush into the sea of fire.' That imaginative name came from the fact that there were little brown rocks on top of orange and red stripy mountains. And those brown rocks really did look a bit like monkeys. These names were crazy but brilliant. Anther imaginative name that caught my eye on the map was 'Mozi's noodle restaurant.' I couldn't wait to see what crazy rock formations had inspired that name! Around the next corner I had my answer...

One of the buses carrying the tourists onwards

The crowds gather at the final viewing platform. Don't forget to look guys.

Overall I thought visiting the Rainbow Mountains was an amazing experience. The scenery was very special, something unique, something that I had never seen before. I wondered what could have caused such incredible geology. There were information boards, and they used all the right words - sedimentary, tectonic, oxidizamization - but it still didn't quite make sense to me. I mean, I understood how stripes of different coloured rock form horizontally, but just couldn't see how there could come to be coloured stripes in the vertical plane. It just didn't make sense to me. And, well, I'm not saying anything here, this is mere speculation, but, if any country were going to paint a bunch of stripy colours over a mountain range and turn it into a tourist attraction, well, it would be China, wouldn't it?

Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 30,816 km (19,137 miles)

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