Leaving Ya'an, the plan is to go east and even a bit south, first to Emeishan and then to Leshan, staying around 150km below Chengdu. The ride from Ya'an to Emeishan is about 125km of quite easy riding, which makes for 2 pleasant days. The first day was very nice, well above expectations. We thought that, once in the Chengdu plain, things would become busy, urbanised. For most of the ride that was not the case. First of all, getting out of Ya'an was a positive surprise: great cycling lanes for almost 10km, along the river, even through the riverside park. Then we had tea fields, huge bamboo forests, wildflowers, blossoms, trees with fresh green leaves, lots and lots of singing and chirping birds, cicadas; really a perfect spring day. The day started gray and cold but once the sun came through (fantastic coffee break in the tea fields), it was perfect cycling weather, and on top of that it was a nice road, with little traffic and with pleasant hills but no mountains. So yes, a very nice cycling day!
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| Tea fields, spring leaves, misty sky |
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| A good impression of the route between Ya'an and Hongya |
We arrived mid afternoon in Hongya, halfway towards Emeishan. It was a strange place from the beginning: enormous construction works, among which a huge stadium. A lot of new city development, but no people; there was a big new mall, which we went to in the evening, with shops but no customers. We checked a first hotel, which was a bit expensive, so we continued and checked a dozen more. Most of these could not accept foreigners, and the ones that did were even more expensive than the first one... The people in most of the hotels where we were not allowed to stay were really friendly and helpful, only we could not stay there. One even called the police to check if it was not possible, and got a clear no as an answer; it was all about having the license or not... After about 1h and 10km of hotel exploration, we returned to the first one and checked in. The most expensive hotel on our trip so far, not even breakfast included, and the room was not even that impressive - we've certainly had better ones, in China, at much lower prices. Something strange and if you ask me, fishy (smells a bit like maffia...) going on in that town.
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| View over the tea plants and bamboo right from our coffee break spot |
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| Bamboo |
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| Read above the door: "tourism toilets"! Classic! |
Hongya town itself was not interesting at all - we saw that well enough while looking for a room, also no nice restaurant in the mall or near or hotel, so we decided to stay in our room and prepare a pasta meal. We used the water kettle to boil the pasta - which worked amazingly well - and just added the tomato sauce and some spices. Very funny and tasty meal, hahaha! We also gave our bicycles a well deserved shower... So we made the most of our expensive room!
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| Nouvelle cuisine pasta cooking |
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| And a four star meal! |
As if Hongya was really not our place, it rained heavily during the night and early morning, so we got up a bit later than usual, after the rain had stopped. It was a gray and cold morning, but at least it was not raining anymore. Leaving Hongya was also crap; something really wrong with this place, we found it really a "shithole"... Anyway, once we left the town behind us, the cycling was fine again. Not as good as yesterday, but fine. It was very damp and foggy weather, but in some places it made the scenery beautiful. After around 30km the road became very busy, with a lot of heavy trucks, and we even hit a traffic jam - caused by 2 trucks that had had a head on collision. Soon after that jam, we rode through Jiajiang where we joined the S103. An "S" road, I had expected a small and quiet road, the reality was a 4 lane busy road... To summarise, the second part of the day was a high dose of The China We Don't Like: busy, noisy, full, almost claustrophobic - more like what we had anticipated in this region unfortunately.
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| Today's coffee break, in the tea fields again. This lady came to work in the fields; in this region it's been very striking how we saw almost uniquely elderly people, it seems the younger people have all moved out, and the elderly stay in the villages to work in their fields... |
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| These are the fruits I mentioned before, individually wrapped in paper bags on the tree; meanwhile we found out this fruit is called "loquat", it's very nice! |
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| The S103 4-lane road, here still a short stretch with bike lane but a few km further that disappeared and the road became more busy too. |
In Emeishan there is a lot of choice of hotels at the foot of Mount Emei, we took our time to check a few places and then checked in to the Teddy Bear Hotel. We then learned that there will be a Chinese national holiday from 2 - 4 April, which means things will get very busy on these days - and hotels fill up and become more expensive. Ouch, we were not aware of that! It's not a problem for our stay in Emeishan, but it means the Giant Buddha in Leshan will be extremely busy (and that means: extremely busy in the Chinese version) when we get there. That was not the plan, it'll drive us crazy... So we changed the plans slightly again. We'll stay here for 2 days and enjoy Mount Emei, then we'll go straight to Chengdu from here in 2 days, meaning we have a day more than planned in Chengdu. And if we want, we can then still visit Leshan on a day trip from Chengdu (not by bicycle however). Easy!