Look on a map for Xichang, then look for Ya'an. China is very big, but if you look well you'll see that these places are far apart for a 1-day bicycle ride. They are indeed, about 300km. Yet, we are in Ya'an since yesterday, and that is because we decided to slightly change the plans: we took a bus! The first time we took some motorised transport since we left (other than the boats to and from Langkawi and Koh Lipe of course). When we were looking at our options, we saw that cycling all the way to Chengdu was certainly still an option, however it meant we would be cycling much, and over some serious mountainous routes again. On top of that, there are some really interesting places to visit before reaching Chengdu: the pandas in Ya'an, Emei mountain and the giant Buddha in Leshan. Impossible to include these if we'd cycle the entire stretch. 1 + 1 = 2, we decided to take the bus, and with that gain about 4 days compared to cycling - to make the tourist route possible.
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| At the bus station in Ya'an; I forgot to make any photos of the bicycles in the bus cargo hold. On the way to the bus station in Xichang, just before getting there, I had the second flat tyre of this trip! Again a metal pin... |
To be honest, this was with mixed feelings, because we had cycled everything since KL and now suddenly we have bridged 300km by bus... The route from Xichang was also wonderful, high mountains (exactly the reason we were reluctant to cycle of course), we crossed a pass of 2400m by bus on the highway (which is already taking the best route and using tunnels), were surrounded by enormous mountains - up to 4500m in the immediate vicinity, but even almost 7000m!!! a bit further out - and very much enjoyed the scenery with remote villages in the high mountain settings, in beautiful clear weather. It could have been great cycling... Nevertheless we are happy to avoid another week of mountain cycling after 1,5 heavy months, and to have some time to be a bike tourist instead, visiting some interesting Chinese attractions in the area. (Note: we'll still be doing some 300km or so in the next week, it's not yet lazy tourist time).
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| On the road to Bifengxia, in cold misty weather, through an impressive canyon. |
So today we visited Bifengxia, one of the panda bases in Sichuan. The one in Chengdu itself is more well known, but in Ya'an it seems to be at least as good, and with much less crowds. There is an option to take a shuttle bus from Ya'an, however we cycled (told you we're not lazy tourists yet), a ride of 19km which climbs 600m higher into the mountains; nice to do that without luggage for a change, as the road was sometimes pretty steep! The route was beautiful, through a steep canyon, lined with bamboo. It was a gray misty/hazy day, quite cold; not bad for cycling as such, but of course a bit unfortunate for the beautiful views we got.
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| The first time we needed our down jackets on the bicycles - while this is not such a high elevation (less than 1000m asl) |
The panda base is nice for a visit, and it was not busy at all! I guess the weather helped, it's also a Tuesday - weekends are probably much busier, as you could tell from the provisions in the centre for queuing for the shuttle buses etc. It was great fun to see the pandas, thanks to the cool weather they were still quite active - especially the young ones! All together it's a zoo, a very nice zoo, with only pandas - and of course it's meant to keep the species alive. We enjoyed the (cold) walk through the panda base for about 2 hours, then had a quick lunch (Sichuan noodles, yummy) and went for part 2 of the visit: a walk back to the visitor centre through the Bifeng gorge.
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| Taking it easy |
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| I love bamboo! |
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| The "kindergarten"; these guys can climb! |
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| Just playing! |
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| Drinking or looking in the mirror? |
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| Had a good lunch, time for a nap... |
This walk through the gorge was superb! 7km through a steep canyon, with beautiful nature, waterfalls, information boards, on a good trail. Wow, impressive! You go down a first canyon, then go slightly up in a second canyon, and eventually when you get back to the visitor centre, there is still a climb of a few 100m up. Luckily and thankfully, the Chinese have had the brilliant idea to build a lift all the way up (well, with still a few 100 stairs to climb as well). Once back at the visitor centre, we were in for a surprise: our bicycles had disappeared... When we arrived in the morning, we had asked several people where to park the bicycles, and the only answer we had was "no, no" - meaning we could not go into the panda base with our bicycles. So after trying a number of people, even with the help of google translate, we just parked them somewhere near the visitor centre. Apparently that was not an acceptable place... Luckily I made a picture before we left, just in case. The reality was that nobody at the visitor centre (or anywhere else at the panda base, for that matter) spoke any English, and so trying to explain that our bicycles had disappeared was impossible - until I showed the picture and then suddenly they understood. Our bikes had been moved, no problem, but what a difficulty to get that figured out! Sometimes the lack of English makes things really complicated, and in fact I fully accept that people generally don't speak English. You would expect however, at an attraction that is aiming to be international and world famous, that at least someone speaks a little bit of English?...
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| Beautiful pavilion at the entrance to the gorge. |
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| Idyllic gorge, with lush forest and clear streams. |
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| Spring time in Sichuan! |
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| This couple was having their wedding pictures made in the gorge, at one of the waterfalls; we pitied them, the posing thing really didn't work (especially for him)... |
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| Water trickling down all the way from the top of the canyon at the Pancake Waterfall |
Anyway, things got sorted out, and soon we were on our way down back to Ya'an. And talking about international... Since we are in China, we saw a few white people in Xishuangbanna, about 3 weeks ago. We saw a family in Chuxiong, and now we've seen a few (6 to be exact) here in Ya'an; not even at the panda base; that's all! It just indicates how much we've been off the beaten track for the past 3 weeks! It does not always make things easy, but it makes it such an extraordinary experience!!! I guess it will be different from now on, as we go on our tourist trip...
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| Our bicycles, before they were moved. Luckily we had this picture, at least we could get things explained... |