After our rest day in Heijing, we deliberately had a relatively short ride to Mouding. We had found out that there was a local road connecting the 2 places, otherwise we would have had to backtrack a long way. This road, with the inspiring number XE30, brought us the holy trinity of tour biking: a good road, with very little traffic, and beautiful scenery: mountains, fields, and really old authentic villages. Of course, we had some climbing to do, and there was some headwind, but it did not matter that much as it was a short ride, and it was so pleasant. People were without exception looking at us as if we really were aliens. I guess that's understandable, this route is very much off the beaten path, we may be the first foreigners they see, or at least the first they see in their village (and even more likely, the first ones on a bicycle).
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Along the XE30 we saw many such "caves" made in the mountain walls. It seemed to be used as shed or stable.
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| It doesn't get much more authentic than this |
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| Well, it did involve some climbing indeed |
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| Pushing up! |
We arrived in Mouding in the early afternoon and took our time to find a reasonable hotel. We found one with friendly and helpful staff, yet they did not know how to register us properly, so asked one of us to come along and do the registration at the police station. Ellen volunteered, and it took her 1 hour to get this done... The police had no idea which country Belgium is, where our visa were granted (in Luang Prabang, where is that?), no one spoke English. Welcome to China! But all of it friendly and patiently. It got done, and once Ellen was back we went for a late lunch - and stumbled upon such a delicious Sichuan hotpot restaurant like we had in Mojiang! Yummy again!!! We ate a lot, then bought a big piece of cake and ate most of that, and later in the evening went for a simple dumpling dinner. Wow, that was a lot of food in a short time...
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| The end of the road? |
Today we had a "normal" cycling day, we did 76km from Mouding to Yuanmou. We rode along the S214, which we knew from Andy and Claire's blog, because most maps don't have that road or at least part of it is missing! It was a fantastic road, pretty new which means smoothly levelled as much as possible. Bridges, mountain sides carved open to allow the road to pass, and 3 tunnels (the first ones on our trip!); this made it a really nice and gentle ride, with more down than up for a change! Some of the bridges were very impressive: they did not go over rivers or valleys, but along the rivers, as the mountain sides were too steep to carve out a road!
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| Taking off our lights and reflective vests after the tunnel, the first one we encounter on our trip |
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| Wonderful! |
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| Another beautiful Yunnan village. Many houses had these wall paintings, I guess as decoration. |
Yuanmou is famous for 2 things. It has impressive "stone forests" in the area - see pictures. And some years back, they found remains of a prehistoric man here, the Yuanmou Man. We have not seen anything related to the prehistoric man, but we have seen some of those stone forests on our way before Yuanmou, and it was truly impressive! Just before rolling into Yuanmou we also went through another canyon, another wow moment of today! Yes, another great day of cycling, good to boost our motivation!
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| Trying to figure out what this meant; apparently it's something like "sharp curve, decrease speed" |
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| Not bridge over, but bridge along the (polluted) river |
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| Coffee break time! |
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| Impression of the kind of landscape we encountered today |
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| More beautiful scenery |
Yuanmou town is a bit different from most other Chinese towns we have seen so far. It feels a bit cosier, a bit more creative, you see more young people dressing a bit alternative. We certainly feel a bit less aliens here. And: there are a lot of (Chinese style) bakeries, looking nice and stylish, and we may have found a real bread... We'll find out tomorrow! Despite the cosier feeling, we had to check several hotels before we found a nice one. There were many with dull, smelly and dirty, uninspiring rooms, but in the end we found one which is nice; slightly more expensive than usual, but with breakfast included to compensate...
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| The first "stone forest" on our way today, with an enormous - by far the biggest I've ever seen - solar farm (the gray shiny part) on the hill behind it. I'll get back to that in a next post. |
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| The second stone forest, this time we rode right through it, very impressive |
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| The natural stone forest, strange rock formations as a result of erosion. |
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| More stone forest, with some Chinese tourists making photos as well - helps to get a feeling of the size of the rock formations. Just before this, they asked us to make some pictures with them. |
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| The grande finale for today, an impressive canyon just before rolling into Yuanmou |