China has a national holiday from the 1st till the 7th of October. This is known as golden week, hundreds of millions of people take domestic holidays. Google warned me of traffic chaos, fully booked hotels and packed restaurants. So I looked to take backroads where possible.
2 October, 100km and 600m of elevation
Shangri La to Hutiaoxia
Following an undulating road in a light drizzle for the first 60km then a fast 40km and 1500m descent. Overnighting in a small and pleasant town, booked the Hotel in advance and paid a premium but didn’t need to.
3 October, 65km and 1000m of elevation
Hutiaoxia to Naniongying
Surprisingly hard day today, a strong headwind and quite an altitude gain.
Stayed in a small homestay, was the only guest, and was invited to share dinner with the owners and extended family. It was a delightful evening, some of the foods were delicious, others, notably jelly beans were not. They took great delight watching me eat them and kept adding more to my plate . They were strips of something gelatinous in bowl of slime.
4 October, 45km and 450m of elevation
Naniongying to Shaxi
Shaxi is a wonderful old town, famous for its position on the Tea Horse trail a historic trading route connecting Tibet.
The town doesn’t have any rail or expressway connections so remains less commercialised than more connected towns.
5 October, 101km and 900m of elevation
Shaxi to Dali
My last proper day on the bicycle for this tour, a fairly big day with some rain and headwinds, also for the last few km backtracking the route around lake Dali on the cycle path,
6 October, 31km and no elevation
A gentle morning ride along the lakeside bicycle path, dodging the large numbers walking, cycling and rollerblading.
Called in at the cycle shop where I had pre booked a box, no box available. Checked another couple shops and drew a blank,. At the same time I was also looking for a car wash to clean the cycle with no success.
I stopped on a quiet side road to map out some more cycle shops when a lady approached and asked via translate, where I had been cycling, she also had toured extensively in China and owned the little cafe and cycle shop nearby, had a box and offered to wash my bike for me. Opposite was a reasonably priced Hilton Hotel which were also happy for me to take my bike up to my room to pack.
8 October
Start the journey home.
Despite covering covering nearly 2000km I only covered a small corner of western Yunnan, a mostly rural and mountainous province. In other SE Asian countries, westerners are always a point of interest or seen as a source of tourist dollars. China is very different, a few children would shyly look and maybe say hello, tourist areas were for the Chinese and I was an anomaly and not targeted, I saw very few foreigners.
Language is a huge barrier, in some of the ethnic areas mandarin is their second language and especially amongst older people reading mandarin was difficult, complicating translation
I generally had much better food in small rural towns where I slightly understood the ordering process, you pointed at ingredients in the fridge and hoped for the best with mostly great results. Tourist towns were harder, they sometimes had picture menus which were vaguely like the final dish. Bigger restaurants in small cities were too hard, they had online menu’s which could I could not translate, online order and payment system not compatible for my payment methods:
Finding information was challenging, google knows very little, and is mostly wrong. Full of dire warnings about the crowds, traffic chaos and fully booked accommodation during golden week. The map and route finding apps I used were also thin on information which lead to some challenging days riding.
The infrastructure is unbelievable, the mostly elevated expressways and high speed railway. In just over a decade China has built over 50000 km of high speed rail. Some of this through mountainous, unstable and tectonically active areas. Australia would maybe manage another feasibility study into a a Melbourne to Sydney potential line in this timeframe. A large percentage of their road traffic is electric including their trucks.
Will I go again, definitely. Maybe with a folding bicycle to utilise the railway network, more research into route finding and attempt to learn at least a few words of Mandarin.
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