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Published: October 12th 2007
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Five of us The group all wanted to disperse the day after we got to Miyaluo so we all tried to figure out how to get to our next destination. Miyaluo is a tiny town, so transportation is a bit hard. Shenzhen guy wanted to go up North to the First Bend of the Yellow River and then to the grasslands bording Sichuan and Gansu (Ruoergai). This was somewhat on my way to Jiuzhaiguo, so I thought I would be tagalong for the first part of his trip. Then the other four (Chongqing, Sichuan girl and Old Shanghai) said they wanted to come too! haha. In the morning we all get up really early to explore the mountains near Miyaluo in order to catch our 11:00 am bus out of Miyaluo. The car was 140 rmb for 5 of us, about 3 hours. The drive was Ok, and the views were so-so. I'll post pictures.
Stuck Of course we pack up, get to the street to wait for the bus, and find out there are no busses that go through Miyaluo. Again, Miyaluo is a one-street town. There are no bus stops, ticket offices, or even internet to find out
the bus schedule.Change of plans... go to Ma'erkang a few hours away (a bigger town) to try to catch our respective busses. Fabulous. Then we find out there are no afternoon busses there. Great. So being the opportunist he is, the driver from our morning drive asks us where we want to go and will drive us instead. We negotiate 500 rmb for him to take us 200+ km (north) to the First Bend of the Yellow River, which is close at the edge of the Sichuan border. I figured it didn't make sense for me to go back to Miyaluo since I wanted to go north to Jiuzhaigou. Sichuan girl thought the same (she wanted to go to Gansu Province), so we negotiated for the driver to drop us off at Hongyuan on the way back so we could depart from there the next morning.
The drive to First Bend was really pretty. Lots of prarie, grasslands, mountains, along rivers, etc. Yaks, sheeps, Tibetan yurts, etc. There were blue skies for most of the drive. The little van we were in was so uncomfortable. My legs and bottom were numb. The drive was nearly 5 hours.... but it
was entertaining. The driver played his Tibetan dance music, Chongqing and Shenzhen kept taking pictures out of the window (made me cold) and kept commenting about everything we passed - alternating from "Where did the blue sky go?" to "My god, this is so worth it and beautiful." Old Shanghai man kept trying to make conversation and no one wanted to really talk to him, although we were all nice to him. I sat quietly listened to my ipod while feeling my limbs go numb. We reached nearly 4000m during the drive. Old Shanghai had an altitude gauge on his watch. I smiled to myself because I thought it was funny that I was actually traveling with 4 people I would never have imagined interacting with. The scenery was nice, but the experience of doing some 'real China' traveling was fun for me. None of these towns are listed in LP, nor English sites. I was glad I got to see it. I felt a lot safer being with these people... Shenzhen guy was good to have along, he was super bossy and told the driver, hotel reception, waitress, etc. what to do all the time. I wouldn't have done
Yellow River
See all the curves? There are a lot of theories why the river bends like this. it myself; if it weren't for them, I would have taken the horrible bus back to Chengdu (Sichuan capital) and paid for an overpriced ticket to Jiuzhaigou.We finally get to the scenic spot, and it is pretty neat - the Yellow River bends 9 times. Very hard to photograph, so we hike up this mountain... and it's absolutely freezing. On top of that, we were pretty high up (3100m) so I was already out of breath as is. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, sweater, fleece jacket, and my Columbia windbreaker, gloves, and I was still cold. I climbed 2/3 up with Sichuan girl and we snapped a few more photos and hustled down the mountain. Luckily we didn't climb further up because when we got to the car, it started to hail outside. Brrr!
And then there were four We got to Hongyuan, where Sichuan girl and I wanted to stay for the night. The men in the car were nice and got out in the freezing rain to check out the bus schedule and ask around for hotel. We found out that there are only busses to our destinations every two days. I needed to go back
to the foresaken Miyaluo and take another bus 4 hours and then another bus to Jiuzhai... two days of bus. Argh! This is the problem with places outside of city centers... the transportation is terrible. Local people hardly ever leave home, nor vacation, so there's no need. I was a little disappointed and took the bumpy cramped van back to Miyaluo. Sichuan decided to stay in Hongyuan (by herself) anyway.
And then there was one We got back to the hotel at 1:00 am, and I coordinated with the Chongqing and Old Shanghai to take the 6:30 am bus out of Miyaluo. I found out I had to go to Lixian first, switch to Wenchuan, and then to Songpan. I'm here in Wenchuan waiting for the bus to Songpan. I'll stay in Songpan, horseback ride for one day, and then go two hours north to Jiuzhaigou.Phew. Almost there... I had a fun time the past two days, despite the many, many hours of bus and car riding. I liked watching the group interact and was so thankful that they were all nice people with common sense. They were all well traveled throughout China and it's so interesting to me
First Bend
Lots of zig zag how local backpackers have different interests from Western ones. Time to go!
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what a great adventure! um -can you put that map back up of your path of travel? thx. btw, i'm glad you have internet