The Long Road Home

Well I’m OK again. Phew. Now in Lanzhou and all just fine. Back in Chuanzhusi, the lovely Tibetan lady manager of the hotel I was in looked after me as if the place was a nursing home, coming in and quietly opening and closing the curtains etc, and giving me cups of hot water and pillows. Luxury really. She kept suggesting some special tea, and tsampa would put me right. I’m afraid I couldn’t face those, and just slowly had a boiled egg, a tiny bit of flat bread and hot water for a couple of days.

When I was OK again, I caught a very rattly bus to Langmusi via Zoige. I went up the same track that I’d struggled up on the bike in the cold and rain. Now of course it was glorious sunshine. Ha. I watched to see how close to the top I’d got before flaking out… Really close! Only a few KM before a last set of hairpins, and then I would have made it. How frustrating. Oh well.

The bus went over the high grasslands to Zoige, and then Langmusi. I had been really looking forward to the grasslands. Actually, the first bits we went through were rather like bits of the Peak District - say, Rushup Edge or Win Hill etc or maybe Mam Tor, smooth green hills with sheep and so on. I was thinking this was no big deal. Then the valley flattened out and the real grasslands began. Open green space just on and on… All you can see are herds of black maoniu hairy cattle here and there, and black kites overhead. Occasionally you would see Tibetan men on motorbikes in huge overcoats with red sashes and balaclavas. I saw a crane standing in the grass, with very long black legs. It’s not in my bird book, so no idea what it was. I also saw some of those massive Tibetan dogs which I’d been warned about. Good to be in the bus for this bit after all. It filled up with Tibetan people in cloaks and huge coats whose clothes smell of sheep or something.

The bus punctured once but finally arrived in Langmusi. This was the rendezvous where I was meeting Rick, the husband of Polly, my colleague in Hong Kong. Rick had flown to Lanzhou on this rescue mission. Poor thing had been messing about for three days on buses and in little places for three days until we could meet. Lucky a very nice patient person. How good to see a friendly face! We had dinner at a cheery cafe where they had COFFEE, and which turned out to be where the local folks got drunk and then danced, so we ended up doing some dancing. We were pretty good for beginners suffering from after-effects of altitude sickness. (pod recording on its way…)

From there we went to Labrang Monastery at Xiahe by bus, to do some proper sightseeing. It’s a huge place, with a massive prayer hall that thousands of monks can sit in - all dark and butter candles when we were there. The monks all seemed to be busy doing things in the town. Also in the town were lots of outrageously wild-looking Tibetans in enormous coats carrying long daggers. We found a place where you could get western food, so I had a chocolate pancake, a coffee, a salad, a pizza, two more coffees and one more chocolate pancake. The following morning I had two rounds of toast with scrambled eggs, an earthenware jar full of delicious yoghurt that had just arrived from somewhere, orange juice, two cups of coffee and three more rounds of toast with jam and rather odd butter. (So you see no need to worry to much about me now. )

We did a glorious ride down from Xiahe to Linxia, downhill all the way, thereby setting a trip record fast average speed (19.6kph). The villages round Linxia had lots of mosques, extraordinary shapes, new ones all white and green and shining, with thin columns and so on. In one village crowd of Muslim children with matching caps (boys) and tinsel hair bands and grubby frilly skirts (girls) mobbed Rick and performed various songs etc for him. Does this happen a lot, Polly? Pod recording on its way.

We then spent a day in Lanzhou fixing stuff - bike, etc, ready for my next stage along the Silk Road to Kashgar. It’s been GREAT to have company and such cheerful help on the road. Thanks a lot to Rick (now on his way back to HK) for flying all the way out here to rescue me, and to Polly, who organised everything including a lovely hotel here in Lanzhou, and as well as sending Rick, also sent some delicious Taiwan biscuits and some cosmetic face masks and tea bags for me. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! Now I’m really OK again ready for the next bit.

By the way, I can’t receive or send email on Blackberry right now for some reason, so I can only check email etc when in an internet cafe - I’m therefore not at all quick to reply to emails, but I will reply eventually. Off to get SALAD lunch now in this lovely hotel.

Well I’m right back at Chuanzhusi where iwas two days ago.. For two days I’ve been battliing to cross the last 140 or so km up to the grasslands and get over to Zoige,  but I can’t manage it. I’m completely done in, and have had to retrace down to a town and rest.

I knew it would be tough, but I thought I could manage it in three days, and I REALLY wanted to do this last little stretch, because after a week climbing through the mountains of northern sichuan, I’m so VERY close now to the highest point, where the grasslands begin, and from where rivers run to the Yellow River.

Listening to people, it seemed the main problem would be dogs. People told me I would need thick protection on my legs, and a lassoo with metal objects on each end. So in Songpan I went shopping and in no time at all a lovely Muslim ironmonger helped me buy a rope and two chunky 17mil spanners (which will actually double up as cone spanners, which I didn’t bring, so not wasted weight). Then I went to a shop where Tibetan people buy the things they need like saddles and cloaks and oil for prayer lamps, and a nice old chap fitted me with some heavy fur and canvas gaiters with great leather buckles. So I was ready. I’d been quite anxious in the morning, but I felt quite good in my adventurer’s kit. I bought some mini chocolate footballs which didn’t quite fit the image, but thought would be nice.

Well, it turned out dogs were not the main problem. What has defeated me are the terrible track instead of a road, altitude, and rain. I found that the road to Zoige is not even a decent dirt track right now, as it’s being rebuilt. So it’s a total mess of mud and potholes, like those bad roads down in Guangxi. I battled 30km. At the start I was ok. The scenery was stupendous - huge ice-topped black rock mountains, pine forests, turquise river. There were wild horses on the hillsides, goats, massive maoniu black hairy cattle, and huge raptors circling overhead, golden eagles I think but I didn’t look carefully enough at the tail and they might have been black kites. The light was fabulously bright.  People were travelling on horses trotting along wearing trilby cowboy hats. Sometimes you’d see them galloping across the green - horses galloping with Tibetans on their backs is a really exciting thing to see.

I was going to stay at a Tibetan stockade village which folk down in Songpan said would be OK. However when I got there, the road workers on the road near there told me not to. The workers are Han and don’t seem to mix much with the Tibetans. So I camped near a river. Actually a lovely camp, with soft grass and the river close by for washing. I was at 3100m. It gets really cold at night. All my plastic things are really brittle. The ziplocks on plastic bags have fractured, and some plastic clips on my tent won’t open. In the morning I thought it was quite chilly, and when I looked out there was hoar frost over everything, including my cycling shorts and jersey washed the night before. I was a bit surprised by that. But I was still doing ok. I made hot coffee and made up hot milk to have with muesli. So far so good.. I put on my tough gaiters. However I was already breathing really hard just to do small physical efforts. Talking into the pod recorder in recordings lower down, you can already hear me panting eg at a monastery I went in to the day before. I hadn’t realised it till I listened to them just now.

Also it was grey and windy and really cold. And the road was appalling. From the lack of oxygen, I was exhausted even on really tiny slopes, and had to walk pushing the bike slowly up any proper climbs. I could only manage 10kph or less. I got a headache. It started to rain. Now this was a serious problem because I’m wearing almost everything, and knew I’d get cold very quickly if I’m wet, and I don’t have many spare clothes. I put in a (feeble) spurt and managed to reach a roadworkers camp. They invited me in for some food. They live in tents with shack shop selling cigarettes and basic dry food. A Tibetan child was begging for food and the workers nicely were playing with him, picking him up and swinging him. The boy didn’t speak Mandarin. His face was deep red and scabbed from the sun and wind. A huge herd of cattle went through with Tibetan men and women on horses, and huge black dogs. Lots of people gathered round me and everyone asked me where I’d come from. My headache was getting worse and I was tired of saying hong kong and explaining that it was possible, and that it wasn’t xiong. I wanted help now. I tried to hitch a truck to Zoige but none came. Then the rain stopped and the sun came out. So I went on. That was a mistake, but it was now less than 10km little km to the highest point, then I would be on flat grasslands to Zoige, and down to the Yellow River. So tempting to try. But I just couldn’t do it. I was struggling to move. It started to rain again. I stopped and pitched the tent in a clearing, and lay in it. My head was smashing with a headche, and I couldn’t do anything without panting. I was now at over 3500m. I realised I’d got altitude sickness. I knew I now needed to get down at least several hundred metres to stop feeling so ill. It was too late to hitch onwards to Zoige so I decided I’d try and get someone to take me back down to the last town I went through, Chuanzhusi. I left there two days ago, but it’s only about 50km away, I’ve been going so slowly. The rain was pelting down. I got myself up and stood in the rain until a van agreed to take me. I quickly struck the tent, which I’d left up in case no truck appeared, and four young guys in a van helped me put my stuff in the back. We lurched down the road, my head clanging. My lips are cut and bleeding from the dry and wind. My hands are rough and sore. I was not having fun at all. The men threw handfuls of pink spirit money out of the windows as we went past a monastery. At last we reached the town. They dropped me off. I was muddy and cold and still had a headache though much less than higher up. I was really relieved to be safe, but whilst the hotel had oxygen bottles for guests, it had no hot water.

I had to walk into town to get a shower at a public bathhouse. That was nothing, but too many things were too hard. I was then sick all night, and things were not cheerful at all. I guess it was the roadgang’s food. Silly me. Another mistake to eat that.

It’s been a really tough few days, and I see I made quite a lot of bad decisions. Well, I know a few more of my own limits now. I’ve lain in bed all day sleeping today, with a lovely Tibetan lady at this new empty hotel bringing me hot water and orange juice and xifan rice congee. Incredibly tired. I’m going to try and get to Zoige tomorrow by bus. I’m looking forward enormously to meet Rick there, the intrepid husband of Polly Hui from the Equities or ETI team in Hong Kong. He’s joining me for a stint up here in far north Sichuan, into Gansu. The first time I have company since six weeks ago back in Guangdong, and, as you can imagine, for me, company couldn’t arrive at a better time. I’m looking forward to ride safely with Rick DOWNHILL to Lanzhou. Now first going to sleep some more.

Finally here I am in the town of Songpan. I arrived here 2500m up in the mountains of northern Sichuan yesterday evening. It’s taken me four days of climbing to get here. I’m stopping for a rest for a day, and just now am sitting under an umbrella having green tea by the covered wooden bridge, with all its fancy plaster dragons and doglike things with horns and big teeth madly running on its roof tiles.

Songpan has a bit of a wild west feel, like a frontier town. There’s a watchhouse on the hill above the town with a massive stone base, little upturned wooden eaves and flags flying. The town has massive surrounding walls with gatehouses under which the roads enter through tunnels. There are Tibetan women in thick cloaks down to their feet, red headscarves, and heavy silver buckles round their waists. There are men in wool cloaks with handwoven bags slung over one shoulder, and sort of cowboy hats. Young men from the hills are wearing huge sheepskin coats swaggering, jumping on tatty motorcycles. I was quite nervous to talk to people but it seems OK; a fierce dark Tibetan man in cloak and hat smiled and said goodnight very gently last night when I walked by and spoke to him. Tibetan ladies with gold teeth and big round things like oranges tied in their hair turned out to speak Mandarin and told me about their children at school. There are lots of Muslims here too, bicycling around, all neat in white hats. You can buy saddles and leather stuff (?tack) in the shops.

The ride to get here was really hard, so I would just eat and sleep in the evenings. I didn’t write till now. Now I’m catching up.

As soon as I left Dujiangyan down on the Chengdu plain there was aleady a stiff climb in hot sun, zigzagging alongside the Min River. That first part had loads of scary lorries and buses. The road surface was poor, and I was struggling at edge with bumps and potholes with lorries grinding past. There were bends after bends up the valley, and tunnels which people were driving madly through, overtaking etc. Wet and potholes in the dark in a tunnel with crazy lorries is a bit frightening. People mainly were driving madly. When you see roadsigns saying ‘lots of bends, no overtaking’ actually it means ‘watch out there’ll be people doing lunatic manoeuvres on blind bends’. Just blast your horn and go.  I didn’t really enjoy it. The river was green and wide in deep rock gorge with monstrous dams and engineering works and sluices with water spurting white and huge.

I made it to Wenchuan and stopped in a hotel with the river on one side and a coffee shop on the other. The stars over the river were really bright. The plough upsidedown. The coffee was gorgeous.

The next day was at first fantastically sunny with deep blue sky. Everything was cheerful. Ten ladies in red costumes were banging drums and gongs at the toll gate out of town for some reason, and suddenly cheered me along shouting ‘ni hen xiong’. People say this a lot here. I thought it meant ‘you are very fierce’, but I now realise it means ‘you are heroic’. I decided it was too sunny to be heroic and I would go slow and stop a lot. There were suddenly mountains with SNOW on the top. It’s surprisingly thrilling to see snow. I ate pears and minuscule cherries sitting above the Min River looking east at the snowy mountains. There were Qiang watchtowers, some all smartly tidied up, some just jagged stumps on the hill tops. Hollyhocks, roses, yellow marigolds at the roadside, and deep pink vetch, and little purple lilies. There were blue flowering bushes like people have in gardens in England. The river was now paler green and sometimes white over rocks. I ate a lot of piba fruit which people sell at the roadside and I think are loquats.. Gorgoeus like apricots but with smooth skin and several slippy pips inside. I went in a tiny temple with a statue covered in cloaks above a stony village. There were fewer and fewer villages. The road wound up and up with gigantic cliffs above and mountains on and on ranging ahead. On a windy corner I saw a hand-done sign for ‘dragon king temple’. I went down the path and there was a little tiled shed with three statues inside, looking out over the river bend far below through the wind. It was lonely up there. The sky had clouded over. A huge wind blew up dragging the bike across the road. I stopped at the town of Maoxian. The town was full of women in extraordinary pink gowns with long apron strings down their backs. I ate delicious flat bread from a stall and get wet in a big storm with a lot of lightning.

The next morning was just gorgeously sunny. The moon was still white above white snow mountains when I woke up. I had tea at a mosque with a man called Mr Ma. The town of Maoxian had a kind of seaside feel, with lots of hotels on the edge of town with plaster walls painted pink or cream (nice) or blue (not). I brew coffee at the roadside above the river, looking for birds which as usual failed to appear. The rock faces at the roadside look like shale, all flaking and splitting, and there are big sweeps of gravel where little bits are trickling down, rather worryingly. The village houses were mainly plaster with odd little triangular ears poking up at the corners, and people decorated the front with animal horns. Even public toilets had ears.. Suddenly the road went into hairpin bends. There were laburnums with the flowers blowing off and I was getting confused with the shadows and the flowers blowing. Also quite tired. I had noodles at a stall selling dried mushrooms, where the people turned out to be Tibetans. A cute three- year old girl with ruler-straight fringe who only knew her name in Tibetan. Her father told me how pleased everyone was that the government had cut rural taxes and abolished school fees last year. Cheering up the rural population seemed working well there. The hairpins went on and on reaching deep into the mountains. I didn’t expect to go so high. It was wild and lonely. I stopped high above the vast empty valley near a shrine draped with silk coloured cloth, with paper spirit money blowing off over the edge of the road, and the river far far below. I ate oranges and made quite a mess.

The little settlements didn’t have any guest houses so I camped for the night on a stony terrace above the river. There were prickly trees, maybe loquats. I’m not sure.

The next morning was misty grey and completely still. The sun almost burned through a couple of times like a yellow circle but then failed. There were no shadows and the only sound was the river. I was getting almost dizzy looking at the river waves on rocks and hearing only water on and on day after day. Even when it’s out of sight belwo the road you can hear the water echoing from the rock walls. When I first heard that I thought it was a waterfall somewherw, but it’s just the river. I had tea at a village to talk with people and liven myslef up. The house had a wood stove and cosy seats round three sides, with three kettles on the stove.

There were now white anemones, blue speedwell, buttercup like things, or celandine, bushes with pink flowers, pink dog roses, may bushes in bloom, and very bright pale purple violets. The wild flowers are really great. Spring is a good season to be doing this. There were goats on the mountainsides and conifers. Some large black crows. The houses were now dry stone with wooden cabins above. Quite fancy beams and balusters and carvings. There were footbridges slung across the river. Children were scuffing around the hills near villages with little syckles collecting some kind of grasses and putting them in homemade rucksacks made from grain sacks.

It started to rain and I stopped at a village shop. The women invite me in and I had rather a lot of their homemade bread sitting at their wood stove, all cosy. They were Muslim Hui people. They feel sorry for me that I don’t have children (this very common) and try to give me their baby to take back to England. He’s in a wicker papoose basket, sort of standing up. The neighbours come in, a lady with a lovely smiling face, who says she’s Tibetan. Her birthday is almost exactly the same as mine, and her mum and dad exactly the same age as you, M and D.  Her daughter does a dance for everyone, all fingers and wiggling her head. They try and give me the daughter, who looks surprisingly enthusiastic to be donated to strange foreign woman with a muddy bike.

It’s cold and windy. I go on through one long valley after another, now with conifer forests up the mountainsides. Slowly the peaks ahead get less high, and I’m looking round each new bend for the grasslands which I think there are around Songpan. Suddenly there is open space and grass and brown cows with bells. Some people in cloaks trot by on ponies (very exciting). Some Buddhist monks appear getting out of a minivan and tangle around with their purple cloaks getting into another minivan. Also very exciting. And then at last I arrive in the town of Songpan. Phew. Hot water and nice clean sheets! Bread! A day not riding a bike uphill! It’s been LOVELY to stop here. I’ve had about eight refills of tea and will stop writing now, and look for some dinner.

Sue is shown how to cook chinese for dinner.

 

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Yesterday I arrived in the small town of Dujiangyan in the late afternoon. This place is famous for its irrigation system, first done, rather amazingly, in 3rd c BC. I went to see the river. By the South Bridge, I there was a gateway marked Qingzhen Si, or mosque. Noone seemed to be around. Inside there was a passageway with whitewashed walls and a trellis with pink roses overhead. Then a wooden lattice screen, and behind it an absolutely exquisite cobbled courtyard with wooden prayer hall up a flight of stone steps.  Two knobbly trees. Around the courtyard were wooden side buildings with eaves over walkway where there were tables, and there was a tricycle rickshaw parked. The prayer hall had a pagoda tower with a crescent moon on the top.  A man was chanting alone kneeling in the prayer hall. Two men in white caps appeared and sat at a table reading newspapers and showing eachother paragraphs. I went to say hello. The younger guy was in a smart ironed shirt and was very articulate and turned out to be a leader of the Muslim community in the town. He said there were 2500 Muslims in Dujiangyan. His boy and girl were playing a game in which you skid in your socks on the tiles in front of the prayer hall. He said his family genealogy showed they were descended from Uzbeks who came to China in the Yuan Mongol dynasty ie 12th c and moved from Beijing south to Yunnan and then Sichuan over the centuries. He said Genghis Khan had brought back lots of artisans from the Middle East and Central Asia after they took Baghdad and came back to China. He said the mosque was 400 years old and though had been constantly restored, had never changed its appearance. He was very keen to talk about football and Wayne Rooney’s foot. Suddenly he said he had to go, and went down a corridor by the side of the prayer hall. The old man still reading the paper said he had gone to wash. Around 20 men then gathered all in white caps in the courtyard, and went into the prayer hall. The Uzbek origin football guy put on a gold hat with a tail and a cape of some kind. One young man stood outside at the threshhold with all the shoes, looking in at the backs of the other men, and did a fabulous loud nasal call to prayer, holding his ears. The children were on the threshhold with me, giggling and also holding their ears. The men prayed kneeling and standing for about ten minutes till 8pm. The little girl absent-mindedly hummed along. Lanterns came on under the wooden eaves. I left as it got dark. Outside, tricycle rickshaws were trundling by, ringing bells. There were halal food kiosks selling baked flat breads under bare light bulbs, a green Muslim Hotel, and a motorbike with ‘come and go in peace’ on the number plate in Chinese with Arabic above.

Update 17/05/2006 - there are several new podcasts waiting to be posted, the first of which should be available tomorrow!

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Simply search for ‘Susanna Thornton’ as the artist or ‘The Long Road Home’ as the title. Alternatively if you have iTunes intalled you can click on this iTunes direct link.

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I got a bus on Saturday evening the last bit to Chengdu. The good thing about buses is you can listen to your ipod, you are quite high up, your legs don’t get tired, and all technical issues eg breakdowns, finding the route etc, are someone else’s problem. The bad thing is that you can’t stop to look at things, they go on motorways so you don’t see much except hills and valleys flashing by, you can’t watch birds, you can’t hear anything eg water, wind, birds, people hoeing and calling to eachother etc, or smell anything eg pine trees, flowers, wet green things. Anyway, I can’t get to london in time without a few bus hops, so there you are.

The rivers were overflowing, sticks and weeds and things washed in were whirling along. The Yangtze was a brown blur at dusk out of the window. Finally the rain stopped and moon came out, rather effectively, over forests and water. Close to the city there were lots of flyovers and rubbishy waste lands.

Next day in Chengdu was bright sun. There wide streets with tricycles rickshaws with green awnings. There were tea houses with chairs and tables in deep shade under climbing plants on trellises. People were fishing, chatting, playing cards and mahjong, pushing toddlers in pedal cars. You could buy black sesame paste in bowls, waffle pancakes, chicken wings, sunflowers seeds, icecreams. A group of men sitting on the low walls of a wooden covered walkway were playing erhu violins and flutes.

I met some people from the Sichuan People’s Arts Company and got a ticket for their evening performance.  The show was called ‘The Thatched House’. The audience was lots of families, who ooohed and made ghost noises when the lights went down, and clapped everything, even the man at the beginning saying we should be quiet and turn off mobile phones.

The performance was a musical set in a village school in north China. The school children are in patched clothes with red scarves. According to the programme, it was about childhood and hope, but it was all awfully sad and everyone was brave but noone’s hopes seemed to turn out. The teacher’s lover sadly marries someone else. An old woman drowns saving the life of a mute girl in a storm on the river (so effectively done that the boy next to me dived under his seat and wouldn’t watch, and his mum was flapping his head). The old woman’s grandson becomes ill and has to leave to go and find a cure.. The performance ends with him saying farewell, giving his pencil case to the mute girl and his straw hat made by his grandmother to his best friend. He asks his school friends to be burn incense for his grandmother, "who’s gone to the moon". The children sang again the opening song about hope, and then the stage went dark and the story was over.  We were all wiping our eyes.

When the house lights came back on, the caste were all still there on stage, and they had a jolly time doing group photos, loafing around on stage chatting, with people from audience, whilst sweeping ladies swept up around the empty chairs.

I went back to the hotel on a tricycle rickshaw. I don’t think a huge number of foreign people go to Chengdu, but it seems a very nice place, and has been a lovely place to resting and relax before the next stage.

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I’m in the Springs and Autumns Temple in the town of Xuyong, in Southern Sichuan province, having a green tea, with a huge flask of boiling water by me. It’s pouring with rain, again. There are men on bamboo chairs at bamboo tables chatting, and some people playing mahjong. This temple is one of those places with coutyards and lotus ponds and bonsai trees and carved wooden windows. It was apparently built by Shaanxi salt merchants in 1900. There’s a stage where they watched plays and an open hall with birds painted on the ceiling where they’d meet to chat and discuss affairs. There’s a stone sign saying "officials and soldiers, get off your horses here".  I was actaully looking for an internet cafe, and then found this. In fact I just noticed there’s a sign for an internet cafe in a dark doorway in the temple front courtyard.  So that’s rather convenient.

Yesterday it was also pouring all day. I rode from Shuangsha,the little Switzerland place, further uphill for about 3 hours in the rain to the top of the pass and then sloshed down a couple of enormous descents with blank white cloud where probably there were fabulous views. I was wet the whole day and got really cold. The descents made me shake with cold. I thought something was wrong with the bike then realised it was me. There was not much on the road, the odd truck and bus splashing along.  I saw a flock of about 20 white egrets in a boggy field. People had got out their ultra-large straw hats with enormous brims. Like an umbrella on your head. A few bent old men were walking along the road in these hats looking like people out of ink wash paintings. People were nipping out of their big clay and thatch houses to do little things under the dripping eaves, then nipping back in. My feet got so cold I couldn’t feel my legs below the knees. I stopped and ate a whole pack of buns like dry madeleines you get in France. I sat in the shop at its coal stove with an old lady and the shopkeeper. The coals burn in a cylinder in the middle of a heavy square metal table. A big kettle sits in the middle on top. Underneath, there is a step for cats to lie on and a footrail. People sit round warming themsleves. It’s very nice. When it’s really cold you move the kettle and warm your hands directly over the coals. This is what we were doing. We watched a costume drama about Sino-Japanese war on the TV behind the shop counter.

Close to Xuyong town there were small quarries and coal mines with lorries pulling in and out, and I got covered in black from the coal and also a strange sort of blue grey from the quarries. I was very happy to get to a hotel with HOT water to warm up and wash everything. I had three bowls of crispy fried guotie dumplings which are one of my favourite things. It was at a stall owned by a man who’d lost his job when a saw mill owned by the county goverment stopped working. They have a very weird type of chocolate in the local shop.

I wanted to ride the last 100km to the Yangtze today but as it’s pouring, I am instead catching a bus this afternoon, hopefully, to get to Chengdu. That’s a bit disappointing, but yesterday’s wet cold ink wash experience was enough. Actually it’s very nice to be dry and warm and drinking hot tea in a temple.

Note to Puk if you are reading this: please explain where the merchants bought the salt and how the system worked again. Sorry I know you already explained but I forgot.

I’m finally in SICHUAN! For miles there were signs counting down to the Sichuan border, making it seem like it would be a real event… After the rain stopped in Dafang town back in Guizhou, I set out to cross the mountains into Sichuan, which would take me two days. The mountains were big, triangular and dark green, with white clouds around the middles. It was relentlessly uphill. A thick fog came down. It’s really quite boring cycling in fog, especially uphill.  It’s quite disorienting too, like skiing in a whiteout. All I could see was white fog and the odd black silhouettes of people trudging along the road. I got fed up and stopped in small damp village of Piaojin. I couldn’t see the village properly because of the fog, so it was hard to know whether I was in the middle of it or at the edge. Just scrappy workshops and sort of shops. I stayed at a guest house with a fat lady boss washing cabbages. It was easily the worst place yet. No running water. The house backed onto wet rock wall of mountain side, so there was water trickling down the inside. It was like being in a cave. I ate hot noodle soup by a coal stove in the downstairs bit, with three migrant workers from Sichuan who were working in quarries in Guizhou. Cats were lying by the coal stove. There was one loo seemingly shared by half the row.

It was generally not very nice in the far northwest of Guizhou. The cold wet weather didn’t help, but it was silent, kind of closed in. The next morning I left early. Huge dark green mountains. There were caves in cliffs above wet fields. The road went through dripping rock walls with ferns and moss.. There were sort of blocks of thick fog across the land. I’ve never seen fog like that. As soon as you ride in, it’s cold and dark. There were horses and carts going slowly through; I would suddenly see them, with solitary men hunched in the cart.

I had the idea crispy honey rice sesame squares would cheer things up. Actually it’s a really bad idea to fix on finding specific food. The only foods that have been uniformly available across all of south china so far have been Wahaha orange drinks and longlife yoghurt. The other things on sale in shops change all the time, so you just have to keep trying new stuff and different brands. Outside the shop in Puyi town where I was hoping for honey rice things, men in plastic motorbike helmets stood round my bike and just stared at it, ignoring me. They hardly spoke. They seemed totally spiritless. I didn’t like them. I guess they have nothing to do, no work. Noone would really speak to me and the rice crackers weren’t right, soggy and oily. I was getting depressed with the whole thing, too much silence and fog.

I went through a very scary tunnel called Horse King Temple tunnel and emerged into weak sunlight, and a huge view of high valley. Finally things to look at! I rolled down enormous descents with villages of clay (?) houses on mountainsides. It warmed up. There were rock faces the colour of coffee cake icing, and dark green conifers. There were tiny terraces with cabbages, little rows of corn, oil seed rape, bean canes. I finally reached Red Water River at the bottom. Now the sun was really out. I saw a blue laughingthrush on a rock by a bridge. Red Water River turned out actually to be muddy brown. It flows in a curve eastwards, up to the Yangtze not too far from the city of Chongqing. I want to go west of Chongqing, to Chengdu, which is on the other side of the mountain range north of the river. So I finally crossed into Sichuan at a bend of the river (at the border was just a sign saying wellcome (sic) in enormous letters, and a few motorbike men under it), and turned north along a cheerful green tributary, and climbed steadily up, alongside it. It was the most LOVELY climb, long but not too steep, so you could alternate in the saddle out of the saddle, with enough bends to be interesting and fabulous mountains to look up at. I put it in my list of most enjoyable climbs. There were clover patches and purple vetch and flowering trees and wild grasses like in England. I brewed up coffee overlooking the river, trying to see birds but there were none. I stopped for the night in a small town called Shuangsha, where market stalls laid out with fruit and shoes and tin bowls and nice clean new hoes and syckles (not sure spelling). There were stoves with steamed buns under cloths. Conifers. Big mountains above the town. The little hotel had running water - only cold, but brilliant compared to grim north Guizhou. An old man and his son brought me tea and I sat wiith them on a bench. The old man had painted the wall paintings in the little monastery on the hills above the town. They showed me photos.. Tigers and eight immortals. I know they don’t have tigers, immortals etc in Switzerland but it really does feel a bit like Switzerland here. Sichuan so far very good.