After a very fragile sleep interrupted by a pee break in the middle of the night, we wake with the first rays of the sun. The gate is still closed so we have to wait for the Daoban boys to head out. We make some coffee and oatmeal, wash our dishes and have a stare-off with the chicken that’s interested in the contents of our tent. At this altitude, when it rains, you get snow. The rocky peaks on the opposite side are covered in virgin snow gleaming yellow in the early sunlight.
The gates open and we head out in the crisp mountain air, watching the morning fog burn off as we creep on towards the pass. When we finally reach it, our excitement is quickly smothered by the discovery that we can barely roll down faster than 15 km/h. The cold, exacerbated by two rear wheel punctures in 15 minutes, makes our descent a difficult one.
Fortunately, the combination of fog and autumn foliage give the eye something to see when it’s not busy navigating the maze of pointy rocks sticking out of the road. Being a chameleon would come in handy here. Our bikes turn around the edge of the mountain and suddenly we’re bathing in sunlight. The end of our ordeal lies cradled in a bowl between towering mountains: the village of Ranwu 然乌. From there, we were promised, our road would improve considerably.
Ranwu also has a small restaurant and we wolf down numerous plates of Sichuanese food. Recharged, we barrel down the perfectly paved asphalted road through a beautiful gorge. The lack of photos here is reflective of how much fun we had riding this section. From here on, it’s all undulating downhill to a river at 2600 m leading to Xiangcheng 乡城, our first big stop in Sichuan Province.
On the road there are plenty of smaller Tibetan villages, all with their typical shiny white houses. Pears seem to be the cash crop around here, with signs all over the place advertising their quality and price. Pigs lazily lie in the middle of the road, not bothered to move when two cyclists ride past, and this is very reflective of the general atmosphere in these villages. Apparently the area still accommodates a lot of nomads, as waterworks projects document the supply of water to places where they set up camp.
A few hours later we roll into Xiangcheng which sits atop a steep hill. All hotels we visit are over 300 RMB, a little more than we’re willing to pay. The cheapest we could find was a smelly and nasty hole with no light in the shower and cigarette butts still piled up in the ashtray. A place hardly fit for two people that have just come in from the wild. When we realise that prices are this high because of the national holiday, we decide we had better just suck it up and settle on a nice business hotel where we can wash our clothes and have a comfortable shower.
We eat at a Chongqing restaurant that is packed with Chinese tourists, all wearing their bright anoraks and yapping happily in non-local versions of Mandarin. After a few games of Rummy we hit the sack, bent on getting up earlier the next day.
