Goodbye Guizhou
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.