Ferocious Day Today

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Saturday 2nd April 2011 Hoang Su Phi to Bac Ha 46m 70k
An extremely hard day today (again) with several severe climbs straight out of the town passing a vintage tea processing plant. The higher we rode the mistier it got. Only 5 of us rode all day today, the rest rode in the back up vehicle as the terrain was so bad.
I had my first puncture this morning after a fast descent as I was crossing a crude steel bridge. A piece of flint had worked its way into my tyre and cut the tube. 15 minutes and I was away again, after being watched by half the village. .
I have never ridden in such low gears for so far (26/30). We stopped for lunch at Xin Man, 7 k before the summit of Mount Everest and a half! The Flower H'Mong tribe live in this village and they just walked up the road 200m to watch us eat, whilst standing along side us. They stood there in their pretty traditional dress whilst we happily photographed them. They must think we are from Mars.
Notice earlier I did not say roads, as they did not exist as we know them.The tracks were totally unmade and we had to carry our bikes on many occasions over rocks and through mud for 18k. The minibus had to take an alternative route since it was impassable to them and they still got stuck and had to be dragged out with an earthmoving machine.
There looked to be roadmaking going on starting in the middle of the 18k stretch of unmade road. How about starting at one end and working through making transport of goods easy.
We only travelled 47 miles today but they were ferocious miles! We five, Richard, Mike, Martin, Barbara and Bernard, plus guide Kian arrived in Bac Ha at about 4.30pm - shattered.
The Ngan Nga Hotel is a very nice place, possibly the best yet, the rooms are very good. The evening meal was very good too. There were several Europeans in and around the hotel, the first we have seen. Tomorrow is a day off from cycling and we are to visit a local market.

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