Portrait of an LBX

The scene as we climb out of Danjia (單甲村), where we were treated to a most excellent, home-cooked Wa (佤族) dinner the evening before.

A mother holds her son up on a wall in Xuelin (雪林鄉). Our rides through these forested mountains on the Burma border have been plagued by ominous clouds and on-and-off rain, an unwelcome departure from the predictability of the once-daily monsoons we've had since a few days after entering the province.

We are now retracing the steps of Evan and my October 2008 bike trip through the mountains of southern Yunnan. Last time, I managed to leave my camera's memory cards in Beijing. Evan saved the trip (photographically speaking) by having a 512mb CF card on him, on which I was able to store 42 pictures from my Canon 10D in JPG format. This time, we are covered with all the (heavy!) camera equipment listed on the Gear page, and no photographic opportunities shall be missed! This view can be found on the way down from Potou (坡頭鄉) to Yuanyang (元陽), a 33km descent.

A woman prays at a small shrine in the courtyard of Luxi Town's Shengwu Tulou (绳武楼), the larger and more recent of the town's two remaining tulou (roughly 120 years old). The building used to house 24 families, but now only two remain. The others have used money sent back from relatives working in China's cities to build their own homes and move out. But since the building is considered to be of historical and cultural value, the families are not allowed to sell their tulou homes, which are now used only as storage spaces. Each tulou includes a central well for communal use.

Yangshuo, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region