Chengdu - Kunming via Litang, Tiger leaping Gorge and more

Well i've finally got round to it. This ride was my first anywhere and started a love affair with bikes and China. At the time we were all living in Yangshuo and riding our taxi bikes to the river and on some small day trips around the area when we had a collective brainwave and decided to go on a proper trip. We had no gear and even less of an idea but that's what made it! Still probably the best trip I've ever done.

We shipped the bikes to Chengdu on the train from Guilin then headed west through Kangding and eventually Litang where we headed south and on to Zhongdian (Shangelila) then Lijiang, Dali and finally Kunming.

here's the route...


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On the train from Guiln to Chendu. the bikes had taken the same route a week ahead of us.

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We arrived in Chengdu with enough time to get the bikes from the train station, find a hotel and go out and get shitefaced. We stayed in one large room in a crappy hotel and some of us were more worse the wear than others..

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...Bill paid the price with his eyebrow :naughty:

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Outside the hotel in Chengdu the morning after the night before. All ready to start our adventure proper with literally no idea what was in store for us!

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Bong on dude! West of Chengdu

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The first problem - a leaky petrol tank on Ozzie Paul's ride


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Somewhere near Kangding

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As we gained altitude we stopped to add wires to the main jet in the carbs. Here I'm in watch and learn mode!

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Me exploring a pikey kitchen near the hotel on out first night.


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Our hotel on that first night, just past kangding. We were outside drinking and causing general mischief when the coppers came up and went through all our passports. Things were looking a bit sketchy but after we told them we were humble English teachers they said good luck on your trip and even gave us their business cards with instructions to call if we experienced any difficulties.


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Filling up with petrol

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First high pass on day #2

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Shortly after the previous photo was taken Nick's rain condom, which was wrapped around his handlebars after a brief shower, blew up in his face blinding him completely, but not before he saw a truck coming his way! He naturally veered to the right and ended up in a drainage ditch. Luckily the bike suffered minimal damage and his 40 quai helmet saved his noggin.

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Meeting up before a turning over a bridge. This was way way before any of us owned smartphones or had any experience with GPS. We had a crappy little map and relied on locals and short term memorisation of town names.

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Nick's drainage ditch


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Temple viewed from up high


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getting some repairs to Nick's bike post crash

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Can you smell what the rock is cooking?!! :lol8:

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First view of the big mountains

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Nick picked up a local hitchhiker


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I think Nick took the daughter on his bike, brother Bill chauffeured the mum!

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Plateau scene

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After coming down from a particularly cold and windswept mountain pass we were saw a young boy by the road selling some random stuff so we stopped and asked where we could stay in the area. He said we could all stay at his family's house and we had had more than enough for the day so we all piled in having parked the bikes on the ground floor with the livestock. It was a great front room with a sofa/bed around the outside and we got stuck into some yak and butter while an uncle was sent off to fetch some beers. We had a few and Bill and Ozzie Paul were feeling the effects of the altitude a bit but nothing too serious so after a while we just spread out the bedding and slept where we were sat in the living room.

I'm a light sleeper at the best of times and even more so above 4000 metres and I woke at dawn to see the matriarch of the family tidying up the tables, I thought nothing of it and tried to get back to sleep. Shortly afterwards everyone was up and about and we had a bit more yak then started to pack the bikes up. We'd had a lovely evening and our guard was certainly down, I'd left my CB radio on the sofa deliberately as my hands were full with gear to be bungeed onto the bike. I came back upstairs to pick up my radio and helmet and it was nowhere to be seen. The mum was tidying up the cushions and I said I'd just left the radio there and had she seen it. She deftly then rustled around a bit, produced the radio from under her clothing pretending it was under the cushion. Nice try but not good enough! I didn't make a big deal out of it and we were soon on our way. Later on it turned out that Timmy and Missy's sunglasses had been swiped from the table right under my nose! They were unsure in the morning and just assumed that they'd packed them on the bike somewhere. Of course it now made perfect sense; the random stuff the kid had been hawking on the roadside was the loot robbed from the previous passers through! Later on that day Missy had her helmet stolen from the mirror of the bike while we had noodles and quickly learned that Tibetans can be quite light fingered, or rather if it's not bolted down they'll have it away!

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The man of the house

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If you ever wondered how high shit can be stacked the answer lay under here!

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Missy with the light fingered matriarch, although I suspect the whole family were at it!

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Messing around in the robber's lair!

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Mountain roads - a mix of good tarmac and dirt roads

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These Red Indian looking fellows were very taken by Paulie's tattoos

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My bike developed an electrical fault and a new CDI from a much larger bike was bodged on and did the trick.

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I can see my house from here!

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Boys at the top - photo by Missy


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Tim and Missy nearing the summit


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More stunning scenery

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More tattoo appreciation


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This fellow was apparently drink driving and caused some deaths.


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The punishment was a walk of shame through the town followed by god knows what.


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An interesting array of medicine. Piles Sir? I've got just the thing!



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We hit a blizzard coming up to this mountain pass and things all went a bit crazy. Ozzie Paul had a slide and was only saved from a 1000 metre fall and a short sharp stop by a concrete stanchion on the side of the road. My bike couldn't handle the altitude or the huge incline and the carb was flooding so I had to keep stopping, taking off my gloves and draining the excess fuel. By the time I reached the top my hands were completely frozen, I think I just had a couple of pairs of white workman's gloves on, which were obviously hopeless. At the top of the pass there was a large tent filled with some Tibetans singing KTV! Definitely not what we were expecting, but they were very kind and gave us some tea and we returned the surprise by pouring it over our frozen fingers and toes. Our mixed reception from the Tibetans continued with some guys helping us repair a puncture on Tim's bike and some others taxing some spare oil and tools that were in my crash bar compartments.

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Fixing the puncture on Tim's bike

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A rather surprising location for a KTV tent but we were very glad for the tea.


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Some filthy KTV singing kids


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Old bloke


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Another shot of the puncture, the lesson to be learnt is never take your eyes off your bike, even for a moment....ever

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This was actually taken as I was failing to reattach Paul's brake properly after another puncture which resulted in catastrophic failure and no rear brakes for the rest of the day. A fact he has still not forgotten to this day!


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Tim and Missy somewhere on the road to Zhongdian

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Cool village

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After 4 punctures and about 16 hours on the road we finally arrived in Shangelila very dusty and thirsty

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I stayed in a cool guest house there the year before so we got stuck into curries and drank til they chucked us out

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More punctures...this time a front so less hassle

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Another one on the road to Shangelila....they were a massive hold up and a reason why I now go tubeless

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Tiger leaping gorge

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The landslide that stopped us in our tracks. We found a place to store the bikes and hiked to Sean's guest house

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Our entry into Sean's guest book

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Hanging out at Sean's

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Sean and Nick

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Next stop was Lijiang then on to Dali where we stopped for a week

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We stayed in town but were hanging out with the hippies in some weird commune type place...they loved us :naughty:

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Fun and games

That's all for tonight. It was a fantastic trip on really crappy bikes but that's sometimes what it's all about. We were going up those huge mountains in first and second gear, my bike was a 110, the others had 125s. We would have bought some local carbs had we not been on a serious budget but looking back it was all part of the adventure. I'll have a look through the photos again tomorrow and write some more about the journey itself

You lot were a fucking disaster, incredible that you even made it past the chengdu outer ring. And that's what it's all about. You don't remember the trips where everything went well because those are no fun. Nothing more satisfying than beating the odds.

The location also helps. That's the part of the world where i did my first serious bike trip too. I have yet to ride somewhere as beautiful.

fantastic report mate.. that photo where you are all covered in dirt is priceless .. is this the trip where the paul's had a tazer fight??

That's a tour you guys will tell your grandchildren! ;)

Shame on me, i live in Kunming and never got the time (also i hate busses) travelling further than Dali... but watching your pics and reading trough your report, i will do that soon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by felix

You lot were a fucking disaster, incredible that you even made it past the chengdu outer ring. And that's what it's all about. You don't remember the trips where everything went well because those are no fun. Nothing more satisfying than beating the odds.

The location also helps. That's the part of the world where i did my first serious bike trip too. I have yet to ride somewhere as beautiful.

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Yes mate we were very inexperienced, it took years and riding with people like V to see how much kit and preparation is actually preferable, although as we showed even a bunch of pissheads on crappy bikes can make it quite far!

I'd like to redo that route one day, maybe even by mountainbike...

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Originally Posted by richardktm

fantastic report mate.. that photo where you are all covered in dirt is priceless .. is this the trip where the paul's had a tazer fight??

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Yeah it's one of my all time favourite pictures too, that ride into Shangelila was by far the hardest day with all the punctures and dirt roads. We arrived pretty late, maybe 10pm and my lights weren't working at all so I was following Tim. I remember a few kilometres north of Shangelila we were riding along a road with large mounds of sand on the right, some douchebag blinded Tim with his full beams and he went right into the sand. He made it through about 3/4s of the way and just managed not to go over the handlebars. He was lucky not to be injured and the only casualty on the bike were his crash bars which got bent right back. luckily Missy wasn't on the back at the time.

Here's some stills from the tazer incident! It wasn't so much a fight more of a test, we wanted to find out how strong the thing was and ozzie Paul volunteered, although there may have been a couple of extra 'tests' :lol8:


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The bikes were all standard 125 taxi bikes apart from mine which was originally a 90cc turd I bought for 500 RMB before putting a brand new 110 into it. They were all woefully under powered for the trip and really struggled with the altitude as well as the dirt roads and punctures which meant we found it incredibly difficult to cover more than 200 kms a day.

As for the lack of proper riding gear - after arriving as human blocks of ice in Litang we stopped for a rest day and hit the army surplus shops in a big way. We kitted ourselves up with wellies, rugby socks, waterproofs, polo neck jumpers and gloves. If memory serves me correctly Ozzie Paul even bought a splendid pair of furry chaps! Sadly no photos of them though!

From Litang onwards we were a bit warmer than we had been and the only major incident was a nasty invisible oil spill in a tunnel on a bend. I was at the back as my carb was still playing up but I arrived on the scene to see Nick flagging me down. Apparently Tim and Missy had gone down first closely followed by Ozzie Paul and the three of them and bikes went sliding on their arses together through the tunnel, Tim and Missy still attached in their 2 person bike condom! Nick was following closely behind and managed to slow down enough to avoid losing control himself and then doubled back to warn the rest of us.

So that's it really - it doesn't matter how crap your bike is or how little you know, the main thing about bike trips is turning the key and riding off into the distance! :riding:

True that. And it's good to remember that we all started there when we move up in the bike world, so as to not become bike snobs as we grow up. Like the guys who consider any bike smaller than theirs 'not a real bike'.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by felix

You lot were a fucking disaster, incredible that you even made it past the chengdu outer ring. And that's what it's all about.

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That sums it up quite well. :lol8:

Finish the story :popcorn:

Fantastic adventure mate, these are usually the most fun! If you do the route again, I'll be up for coming along (but not on a push bike) :D

That is true spirit of adventure... gives it the Burt Munro feel to everything. Thank you so much for sharing....

Thanks guys,

The story is pretty much finished, we rode to Kunming then shipped the bikes on the train back with us to Guilin and we went back to our crappy jobs in Yangshuo! BTW the most dangerous road of the whole trip was the old Guilin - Yangshuo one!

tom you have done nearly most of China. and you still think the best of this trip is G318 from kangding onwards. actually, I strongly try once again to go to BOMI. it is the diamond on top of the crown. from LUDing. you can ship the bike first to there. then keep riding on. it is amazing.

Lol... Man you guys posted an interesting trip summary.

How high can you stack shit?

Classic

awesome trip. need to try something like this myself one day