Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejang, or how I spent 1300km on my new X5

[Snev313]

Hi all,

Sorry it took me a while, but as I promised … a small travel report from my October holiday which took me through (I believe

Shangai
Anhui
Jiangxi
Zhejang

First of all, the link to the Google Maps where you can see my trip.

https://www.google.de/maps?saddr=%E5...,8,11&t=m&z=12

Day (1)
I have to say at this moment of time my bike (Shineray X5) was 102km old and I haven’t been riding a proper motorbike for the last 3 years… So I was quite exited getting back on the bike… also curios what is going to happen the next ~1300km to the bike and me. But to this later The first day I set of towards Moganshan an area I knew from the year before as I explored it with the bicycle.

I like Moganshan, it’s a peaceful area.

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Small roads and nearly no traffic… but also great scenery….

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I stopped in a small town called Anji behind Moganshan where I stayed for the night… so far so good… bike behaved well, only about 60km in 3rd gear it started to shake a bit on the front wheel… which I checked earlier the day and found out that the tire and the rim are not 100% made for each other… maybe this caused it…


Day (2)

The next day I set of gen Huangshan following my aim for this trip…. to find all the little roads less traveled by others. The funny thing is, I didn’t imagine how little this could be ;)

I stopped in a small village to have lunch where I was immediately the attraction of the day and people asked me the usual questions… where are you from, how much is the bike, where do you go, etc.

After I asked them if I can continue this road to the next city I wanted to drive to they told me, it may be better to turn back and go via the big road… they told me it could be a small road and more or less a gravel road…. Well I thought… A) Chinese may have a different definition of small compared to me and B) perfect first test for my X5 if it should be really small…. So I convinced them that I want to drive on the small road, even gravel roads and they showed me the way to continue… so I came to this part….

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Well I though… that’s fine… I can handle that… After a while the gravel road turned into a trail leading up the mountain, mmmh… ok I can handle this…

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…till I got here….

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Dead end… for me and all the lumberjacks… ok, lesson 1 learned….! Listen to the locals… i.e. back to the main road ;)

This forth and back took me a while so I didn’t make quite as much progress as I hoped, also keeping in mind that the bike now was ~500km old and I still needed to control my right arm to stay under 4000rpm.

... please see next post for day 3-5 !!!