Yunnan to Guangxi

Northern Yunnan proved to be almost the best part of Eastern Tibet - Tibetan culture, spectacular sceneries and friendly people!

Reaching Shangri-La was another milestone: being back to "civilisation" and the first and best place to get a desperately needed visaextension. Got another 2 months without any problems, stayed there for 3 days - pretty relieved - enjoying western food and the company of fellow-cyclists. Left Shangri-La on a backroad leading to the northern end of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Went through the TLG, and headed for Dali. Decided to skip Lijiang for several reasons (backtracking necessary, touristy, expensive, etc.), but the mainreason was probably that I was a bit burnt out. I was missing a goal, now that with reaching Shangri-La the great Tibet adventure was definitely over. Dali Old Town was pretty touristy as well (as I expected), so I didn't stay there and headed for Kunming. Later on in Kunming I heard lot's of good stories about hanging out in Dali, so I kinda regret not having stayed there. But that's how it was.

Naive as I was, I expected the stretch to Kunming to be easy - in reality it was more strenous than most days in Tibet. Whereas in Tibet I knew what to expect from the road ahead, and been rewarded with great views, here it was going up and down steep hills, mostly no good views, and quite often lots of airpollution caused bz heavy traffic on mostly grey and rainy days. Reaching Kunming was again quite a relief, urgently needed to "load up batteries"...

From Kunming I left for Shilin, a place with bizarre geological rock formations. But, as usual in China, the Chinese tend to make some kind of Disneyland out of it, which takes away most of the atmosphere of the place. Furthermore they charge ridiculously high admissions to get in. So I decided to skip sightseeing (which I actually did long before - exactly for this reason) - there's no point for me in doing this, just to have been there without really enjoying it.

Continued onto Guiyang, another chinese Metropolis. Cycling into places like this is usually quite a headache - but thanks to the good descriptions of some locals I found the hostel right away! Guiyang was quite amazing: a city with not much interest for the average international tourist these days - meaning hardly any touristy infrastructure. Guiyang does't even have McDonalds (but loads of KFCs...)! Imagine being the only westerner in a 1,7 Mio city furthermore roughly a head taller then the average chinese guy. Can you imagine how it is walking down the street and EVERYBODY is turning their heads??

The ride to Guiyang was even tougher then the one to Kunming... Grey, rainy, many long and steep climbs which had quite a negative impact on my emotional "well-being". Additionally days have become short, so one has to cover some ditance to reach a place with a hotel. I'd love to camp though, but camping has become difficult these days: it's very hard to find a campspot due to dense population, all space is literally used up for living and to grow stuff. Another problem is the climate. It's cold but very humid, so the tent will be moist in the morning, and due to the humidity it will take very long to dry, if it ever gets dry. That would reduce cycling time in daylight by another hour or 2. But people have been surprisingly friendly, which was compensating a bit for the depressing mood.

Next destination will be Guilin, a place famous for it's karst-rockformations. And there's a beautiful rivercruise going down to Yangshuo. Hopefully I can take the bike with me on the boat!

Stay tuned...

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