Who says there's no adventure motorcycling in eastern China?

To celebrate the 6 August "Rise of Autumn" (liqiu or 立秋 in Chinese) as well as MotoKai's getting his new JH600 legal, we decided to make a quick overnight romp out to Moganshan, the old Nationalist Era cooling off playground for wealthy cityfolk in the lush mountains west of Hangzhou. MK left his colleagues to dribble his Friday workload, and we set off around 2:30 p.m. after a quick oil change for me. MK's bike had all of 100+ km on the clock, so this was his breaking-in ride. We took along oil and a fresh filter for his first change.



Day 1
Moganshan is maybe 200km southwest of Shanghai, reached ostensibly on motorbikes via the G318 and the G104 highways -- yucky roads filled with everything from oxcarts and scooters and the occasional herd of sheep to giant long-haul trucks and heavy equipment. On a lark, we thought, "why not give the expressway a shot?" Moments later we were blasting at 120kph through rain squalls and doing our best to dodge some vexingly ballsy drivers whose motoring improprieties only worsened as the pavement got wetter. Thirty minutes later, we were safely through a second tollbooth, traffic had thinned to almost nothing and biggest weather concern was a mammoth black apparition throwing off lightning bolts to the south as we raced west.

Startled at our luck on the forbidden expressway, we pressed on and didn't stop for pix, so you are going to have to deal with the "worth 1,000 words" version of Day 1. The black chaos to the south got only worse, and began to chew into our daylight, and rain squalls hit again. We pressed west past Huzhou, knowing we soon had to turn south -- directly into the eye of the storm. Indeed, no sooner had we veered south off the G50 into the G25 and been chased from under an overpass by a work crew ("no motorcycles on the expressway!") were we hammered by the storm's full fury. Hail and torrents of rain, swirling wind and then, kaboom, a bolt of lightning maybe 50m to our right so close that the sound and flash hit simultaneously. Damn. Yes, let's get off this expressway, but, no, there's not even a safe shoulder! As the torrent slowed traffic to almost a stall, we groped our way down the emergency lane and found an offramp to the G104, and took shelter in an underpass literally under the G25. Soaked to the bone, we vowed to wait out the storm right there. This gave sufficient time for us to be interviewed by several crews of expressway police, who made no effort to cite us but did want us out of there. Maybe 45 minutes later we made a move, did the final 50km to Moganshan on the G104, splashing through floodwaters as the storm broke and slowly cleared. The 10km ride up the mountain was all lovely twisties, but as night fell we didn't see much except for the checkpoint where they extracted an 80 rmb entrance fee.

MK called a lodge run by a storied expat Brit named Mark Kitto (author of China Cuckoo: How I Lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China) to reserve a table for dinner and see i they could find us a room. Twenty minutes later we were in Mark's rustic dining room, drying out and nursing cold adult beverages with a media couple from San Francisco who met when he saw her using her teeth to pull the cable off a spark plug on her Ducati Monster. We had a lot to talk about over some serviceable burgers. Kitto even came out to say hello. Then off to bed.

Day 2
Saturday morning broke with the bamboo groves and this quirky "hill station" draped in characteristic mist, so we figured we might as well have a look around while the fog burned off.



We stopped for a breakfast of soup noodles with lovely bamboo shoots harvested in the surrounding forests by these local gals.



Then a pot of pre-ride cowboy coffee from Kitto's Lodge.



Then we saddled up to go.





Dig the reflective vests? More on those later...

Kitto and one of his staff had been kind enough to recommend some nice roads, saying we could expect 17km of nice twisties down the back of the mountain, then another set of lovely curves heading into the town of Anji. The quality of the road and scenery and the scarcity of traffic were far beyond our expectations. There was still a bit of mist in the bamboo groves as we set off.







If that pavement looks very fresh it's because it was. At one point traffic was stopped in both directions for a crew that was laying fresh asphalt. We managed to just sneak through. This surely contributed to the lack of traffic on the road.

We stopped at one scenic bend to take pictures.





If you look carefully, there's the start of a dirt road on the left. We decided to explore. It only ran about 1 km or so before disappearing as single track into the forest, but, WOW!



The previous evening MotoKai had said he was a bit skeptical about running the Jialing off road. After this little run, he was grinning ear to ear, saying: "The suspension on this thing is awesome!"



to be continued...