Kunming -> Chengdu -> Kunming [2010]

Day 1

Just got the bike a month before that, and was looking forward to a serious trip. Dragon boat festival coming up, so I thought I'd go up to Chendgu, take part in this. Right, the day has come. A quick look at gmaps said the trip would be ~1000 km if I stick to the back roads. Map? I tried, just couldn't find anything big enough in pinyin. Ok, so I can use my phone. After alot of searching, I found this one application that lets me create my own maps for offline use in the wild, OruxMaps. On June 8th I plot my route, downloaded the maps, and copied them onto the phone. I've never been on any such trip before, so not sure what I should prepare. After much fumbling and confusion, I thought I will never be ready, so I might as well get moving. Started the bike at 2.30, fingers crossed.

First stop, passed by computer street in Kunming, made a charger for my phone.
http://IMGur.com/5S4hB.jpg

Best to start with a tasty dinner.
http://IMGur.com/jWWLX.jpg

Can you see the small girl hiding behind her mom?
http://IMGur.com/LOxwZ.jpg

A brand new sleeping bag that I just bought from Kunming the day before. And a brand new sleeping bag a friend of mine had her parents carry all the way from their hometown in Czech. As I said before, this is the first time I do this, so my ingenious packing strategy was to use bungee cords. And this is the last place I saw of my sleeping bag!
http://IMGur.com/XSWVC.jpg

This guy looks like my dog milo. I stopped to say hello but he was too busy meditating, didn't budge.
http://IMGur.com/qHQbg.jpg

Here I notice that somewhere on the cobble stone I was bouncing on for the last 20 km, lies my brand new Czech sleeping bag. So much for trusty bungees.. went back to look for it, but instead only found my sandals!
http://IMGur.com/Q1yHM.jpg

http://IMGur.com/8xdyg.jpg

Was trying to find a place to sleep, but you can only go up this binguan by stairs.. I don't want to leave the bike out, so I decide to give it a shot sleeping without a sleeping bag. I'm tired, and it doesn't look like it will rain.
http://IMGur.com/sayJo.jpg

Found this place after getting lost for 20 minutes ~8.30. After fumbling in the dark by the headlights for 30 minutes, I somehow managed to pitch the tent. Last time I camped I was 12, in boy scouts, and my part of pitching the huge shared tent then was digging one pike in. This photo is from next morning. Don't be fooled, I didn't get up early, I just didn't sleep at all.

http://IMGur.com/AgHqp.jpg


http://imgur.com/ArkjW.jpg

Looks good so far Slabo. Are you posting this from the road or have you already arrived home safely? If the former, hoping you get some sunshine for the remainder of the ride :).
3rd from the bottom pic, the bike is dry but the ground is wet, or you're parked on a mirror.

Slabo! Better late than never. (I've got two ride reports yet to file, maybe three!)

So what is Imgur and what (if anything) does it cost to use? Their site looks a lot like smugmug, but simpler.

Keep it coming!

cheers

Day 2

No sleeping bag, I didn't get any sleep. Not used to being homeless yet. I get up early and find these guys poking around my tent. Friendly confused bunch ...
http://i.imgur.com/L2CD9.jpg

There's something about misty mountains, maybe Jeff can find the right words.. But for me it was scary riding through with the wimpy stock headlight I had. More on that later.
http://i.imgur.com/osGdV.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/6y1Nn.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/haumJ.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/Tyrg5.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/yIbA9.jpg


I quickly found out the maps I had on my phone were pretty useless. I didn't download maps detail enough, and got lost even before I got out of Kunming, but somehow I found a highway going to where I want to go (the G85 highway). I was on the highway all through Yunnan. But all the time I was going on and off the highway.
http://i.imgur.com/nZjW0.jpg


Feels like I'm going much slower than I what the speedo reads. A very sad moment when I checek out the GPS to find out how fast I'm really going max 65km/h! How can I make it in time to the festival? I have to keep riding 16 hours a day?
http://i.imgur.com/GUzGZ.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/YfyYt.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/wg0qS.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/DY1RC.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/Bi7XM.jpg


This used to be a river? I don't think July is the dry season.
http://i.imgur.com/vWO1n.jpg


How many dams are being built in Yunnan alone?
http://i.imgur.com/bAI0L.jpg


Something else I saw on my trip. Construction everywhre. New highways, new bridges, new tunnels, everywhere.
http://i.imgur.com/Pq4sJ.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/FtmQh.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/penY5.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/qeLI0.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/CPMwf.jpg


Even the dogs are lazy here. He just doesn't want to move.
http://i.imgur.com/RlhqT.jpg


Where did you come from?
http://i.imgur.com/giR1a.jpg


Can you still see the white spot?
http://i.imgur.com/APQI4.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/56LDr.jpg


I tried to offer her some cookies, she gave me a look of "I don't need your charity". She's out here collecting plastic bottles in exchange for a few rmb per day, depending on how much she finds, so the more you litter on the highway, the more money she can make in a day. Maybe it's time you cleaned out your car?
http://i.imgur.com/aNQzk.jpg


A broken clutch lever? Someone pushed their bike home from here.
http://i.imgur.com/uUowA.jpg


She seems to be collecting wild herbs or something.
http://i.imgur.com/ifxcH.jpg


After loosing the sleeping bag, I've become very paranoid. Every few km, I put my hand on the bags and feel around for anything missing, check the bungee cords..
http://i.imgur.com/IM5ro.jpg


Coming up to Zhaotong.
http://i.imgur.com/vbW83.jpg


Rice fields everywhere I look. The plan was to camp as much as possible, but I just can't find a dry spot.
http://i.imgur.com/1MHbH.jpg


In a book I read about China(Wild Swans), the author kept using the term "walks bent double". Now I see what she means. This is hard work, and mostly done manual, very little agriculture machinery used, or none at all.

http://i.imgur.com/zSoq6.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ulzlU.jpg

This is what I see when I first enter Zhaotong. Nothing much to see here, a dusty town where everyone is rushing, pushing and pulling... I was told there are temples and other sites to see, but after riding around town for a bit I decide sleep is time better spent

http://i.imgur.com/ruADg.jpg

Found this under the hotel I was staying in..This was a Shineray dealer, and there were others on the same street, many bike dealers and non of them have a lightbulb!

http://i.imgur.com/azJ06.jpg

http://imgur.com/ is free. There are a couple of upload tools if you click tools that you can use even without registering. I found it's best to upload a batch of 30 at a time. There is no limit to what you can upload, even with a free account. But keeping track of this is a pain in the ass, using some voodoo excel magic to match comment to image to url... Main benifit for registered users (still free) is that the last 255 images are associated with your account, and you can make an album out of them. Pro account, 24$/year, no limit to what's associated with your account.

Sounds like $24/year might be worth it. I'm paying $40/year for Smugmug, which is super easy to manage.

Every time I see something that's "free" I get tempted. Flickr most recently, and now imgur. Alas, once you are embedded with one, and have other sites piggybacking off your selected server, it's hard to turn back. Think about that if you are not happy with Imgur.

cheers

Aye and something else I didn't know and couldn't find on the sites, is that photobucket and I think it was smugmug, both dump your account if you do not regularly add stuff. So worth a paid account if you take lots of photos.

I lost a whole bunch of pics like that once when a backup on the computer went wrong and a thumb drive failed coincidentally at the same bloody time ... so I relied on my photobucket backup and found it had disappeared. No one there warned me or later answered my several queries about it.

Thank you very much of the report, was interesting to watch pictures. MCM is my window to China, thanks to you and other people posting reports.

Slabo, thanks for adding captions! Just went through again and it all makes a bit more sense. Subtitle for this post should be "the steep learning curve ride".:naughty:

The biggest reason why I didn't post this report before is I find it difficult to write. I should have kept daily notes, makes writing much easier. But now it's still very clear in my memory, at least the parts worth writing about are still crystal clear. Indeed it is a steep learning curve. I'll be writing about more mishaps later.