By Andy
2010/06/15 — 95 km
Getting out of a city blows. Photo by Andy
The day before we leave Kunming our friend Aaron flies in from Shanghai to spend a week biking with us on his 20” wheel, folding Dahon bike. A number of us own these things (including Evan and I), which are great for getting around in the city and occasionally folding up and taking on a short trip. Evan and I have both sworn off doing anymore long trips with them though. They’re just not quite meant for it.
We wake up in our 10-person dorm at The Hump hostel in Kunming and grab one more big breakfast of french toast, eggs and fresh coffee before heading out into the wild. We make another run by the bike shop in town to pick up some last minute things for Aaron, and then we’re off.
Despite its many charms (and we’ve decided we do quite like Kunming, especially after discovering the nifty restaurants and bars in the university district), getting out of the city is a soul-sucking experience just like getting out of any other. It starts out with just too much traffic and people, but soon we’re lost in the numerous overpasses and interchanges and wishing that for the love of all things good and holy couldn’t China just put useful things on street signs, accurately?
It still sucks as we ride through crappy towns where the national road has completely worn away. Photo by Andy
Once we’re finally on the provincial road we’ve been searching for and heading east toward Guizhou province, it’s just a matter of gritting our teeth and bearing the awful unpleasantness of the rings of industry, half-demolished buildings waiting to be “developed” and construction that surrounds the city proper. Fortunately, the cities out west here are smaller. If we were riding out of Beijing or Shanghai back east, we could ride all day and never escape the mess. After 50 or so kilometers out of Kunming, we’re back out in the country.
We’re also back in the rainy season. The sky stays gray and foreboding all day, occasionally opening up on us for a quick drenching. I can only hope that we don’t get holed in for weeks at a time like we did during the winter coming down the east coast — we’ve got a lot of distance to cover to get back to Beijing and only three months in which to do it!
The road alternates between good, paved road and long patches where the pavement has disappeared entirely and we have to slow to a crawl. The rain has turned these sections into mud, and before long we’re all caked in brown from the waist down, except Aaron, who neglected to bring the front fender for the Dahon. He gets it as far up as his eyes.
We follow rolling hills and valleys into the countryside, the steepest climbs coming on the four or five times we have to cross over railroad tracks. This is the longest ride we’ve had since Guangxi on such flat ground.
The race is on! Photo by Andy
As we start getting close to 90 km, we look behind us to see storm clouds gathering and rain cascading down over a not-so-distant mountain and pick up the pace, a little frantically. We pull into a small town five kilometers later and see a restaurant just as the big raindrops start to come crashing down around us and shove the bikes inside just in time. Looks like camping is out.
After a big, cheap dinner, we head a bit down the street and find a hotel with a hot shower but no working toilet. The hotel owner tells us to use bathroom at the gas station (It’s free! she says) down the street and locks the hotel bathroom after we finish showering.
