Walnut Garden to Shuhe (Lijiang)

Our final days of riding in China had arrived and it was going to be an exciting route over a mountain pass to finish on. And an adventure it was!

We got up at the crack of dawn (maybe a hour after) packed up and headed down for breakfast. No one else was up and we had to hunt around to find someone to cook us some breakfast.  With all the creaking of going up and down the stairs we had roused one of the owners, great! Eggs, bananas, a massive honey and buckwheat pancake, and a Yak sandwich on order to takeaway. Half and hour later breakfast arrived but no sandwich. Concerned with loosing valuable riding time we didn't reorder. We paid and left without the mysteriously deliscious sounding beast of a sandwich.

We whizzed down through the gorge enjoying all the twists and turns as we descended to the Ferry turn off where we un-whizzed down the bumping zigzaging gravel road to meet the Yangtze River and our ferry. We were welcomed by a generator, a bunch of guys building a new docking wharf and no ferry. We hadn't  gone all the way down to the river the day before but were sure the ferry had to run from here. With help from one of the friendly construction workers a call was made to the mobile number for the ferry operator (painted on a rock where we were waiting - obviously!) and hopefully he would come and pick up to white fellas with bicycles laden with silly amounts of gear - "wait two minutes" we were told. 10minues later nothing happened. Our friendly helper phoned again and we continued to patiently wait for something to happen at the ferry on the other side. 15 minutes later nothing happened. Another moutain bike cyclist had now made their way down, a Chinese man aiming for Lijiang. Much less laden with gear (a small pack and two drink bottles) yet still very ambitious to make it all the way through to Lijiang, especially as the ferry was not moving. He called ferry operator. And then we waited some more. A lady had now wandered down and joined the ferry que. About an hour after us arriving a vehicles made its way down to the ferry and things started to happen. We probably could have waited for our yak sandwich after all. No point dwelling on delicious meat sandwiches though, we were crossing the Yangtze and off to tackle a 1600m climb to give us grand views and an epic final descent to complete in China.

We waited

Then we all waited

Then we were on our way!

10.30am we were in Daju - a steep climb out for about 3km from where the ferry dropped us on the bank of the Yangtze. Food hunting time. Every convenience store was to be searched for goodness to stock us for a couple of days. Water, rice crackers, lollies, yummy creamy rice looking things, fruit, noodles and jackpot; Kate, when unsuccessfully trying to find Mantou came across Naxi bread. Very similar to Naan bread but more doughy and thicker. 11am we were set and on our way to tackle some many hours of climbing. The road was sealed as promised and twisted up the side of the mountains so that we more or less rose vertically above the town of Daju for the whole duration of the day. Every turn getting us higher and offering grand views for as far as you could see and some slight reprieve from the heat as we climbed from 1600m at the river level to 2000m...2200m...2500m...2700m...

Climbing. For ages.

As we were quickly drinking through our water supplies we conveniently came across a store. One of the most convenient placed we came across. "Ni hou...Ni hou? Ni hou!" Cold drinks, more water, crisps and peanuts, it was glorious. We sat and devoured everything and some Naxi bead and banana under the shade of the verandah. Very satisfied we waved thank you and goodbye and continued on climbing. We reached around 2900m and getting late in the day we started to scout for a sneaky campsite. Not great potential so we pushed on. Suddenly a van approached waving out the window at Calvin, then it became clear they had a wallet in their hands. Calvin's wallet. Two and a half hours after leaving our lunch stop the kind lady had seen we had left a wallet and chased after us. Good thing we hadn't disappeared into the bush to camp when they came by. Calvin was a little bit stunned at what had happened and after an awkward miming conversation with the lady we established she wouldn't accept a small money offering in thanks so we continued on our campsite search. Half and hour later the lady was back and tried to tell us something. This time she hung around for a while and kept repeating "mei jing" while we tried to guess at everything she was saying with the help of Google Translate. Everything was very much lost in translation and neither knew what the other person was going on about. Was she happy, annoyed, wanted to warn us, help us? We will never know. Finally we went our seperate ways and we found a great hiding spot to camp at. We were a little creeper out at the exchange with the woman so we wanted to be well hidden from the road for the night.

Now we got to enjoy our creamy rice things, fruit and cold noodles. No wait, the rice tasted alcoholic and fermented so we threw it out. There goes most of our dinner. Camping was not going so well in China and just shy of 3000m it didn't cool off much overnight. The morning came and we were both keen to get moving and to the top of the pass. The last 7km to the top were a slog with tried legs and no time to ease yourself into a rhythm. Then there in front of us stood the gateway to:

AAAAA

The First National 5A Level Famous Scenic Site

Yulong Snow Mountain National Park Of China

Epic. ¥130 each for entry and we were in. The park provided a beautifully new sealed road and the descent we were waiting for.  The first couple of descents were short but sweet and followed by small rises only to prolong the descents for us. Then we hit a goodie and it was freewheel time. Coming around a big sweeping bend we were welcomed by a spectacular view of the dominating Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and surrounding mountains and we could see the twisting descent continuing below us. However, much to our amazement, although not all to surprising for China to spring a swift one on us, the great descent turned to cobblestone 100m after our scenic photo stop. Ironically the following 400m climb back out after the descent was on  beautifully new sealed road. Uncool.

The sneaky cobbled descent below

We passed through the very touristy spot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain National Park and began the ride out to Shuhe. Although it had been a relatively easy cycling day Kate sat down on the side of the road, put her head in her hands and confessed that she had no energy left for the remaining 20km. So together we slogged out the remaining ride to Shuhe. It was generally good road, although undulating a couple of hundred metres a couple of times, before giving us a gradual downhill pedal in to Shuhe with some headwind.

It was a journey to remember.

Arriving into Shuhe. On cobblestones.