20 days Yunnan - Kunming -> Shangri-La -> Yuanyuang -> Kunming

[JayDee]

Here comes the RR connected with the planning: Link

Many thanks for LJH for his saddlebags, which worked great for us.
I also owe felix a drink, his tips were solid.
The bike did well on all the different road surfaces, just make sure to adjust the rear spring pre-load accordingly.

Total distance: 2686km
Time: 19 days
Observations: Yunnan drivers are the worst I ever encountered worldwide and, living in Tianjin, I encounter a lot of bad drivers on a daily basis.
General advice: Honk whenever you do not think it would be inappropriate. Honk. A lot.

We made a lot of pictures, videos, etc. and experienced a lot of things, it was a great trip. I will just try to put some information together...


This is our route, old-school on a map:
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After arriving in Kunming I picked up the bike at Deppon. Plan was to cruise around the city to some sights for one day, then press on to Erhai. Of course just picking up a motorbike at a local shipping company isn’t just that. The bike was there, and well packed – almost.
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Took us a while to peel off layer by layer of the packaging material – but nobody thought about packing the right handlebar, which was scratched. After one hour of haggling I received 100 CNY cash (great.) and 200 CNY discount coupons. Well, good enough.
Next day we left to Erhai, we wanted to stay the night in Dali/Shuangliang, anywhere in this area. From Kunming that is some 450km, so we thought if we calculate 6 hours should be ok. But it was not. First, there is a lot of construction going on in and around Kunming, and in Yunnan in general. So my navigation system app on my Nokia wasn’t always accurate. Some roads simply didn’t exist yet, while many others existed, but were not on the map. Before we found out we already wandered up and down abruptly ending streets for an hour to get out of town. Only the “Map of Yunnan” we bought in our hostel in Kunming for 2 Yuan was up to date and showed all the roads, helped a lot.

But the biggest problem was the national highway G320, which was in terrible condition for the first 2/3. Big areas full of potholes, big, slow trucks pouring water on the road to cool their brakes. I knew I would have the chance to test the bike on loose road surface on this trip, but didn’t think it would be on the first kilometers.

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Highway.

The going was slow. Additionally the road was flooded with driving school Jettas. Before we arrived anywhere it was already dark, at the end we decided to stop in Xiangyun, after more than 11 hours riding.

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This was pretty much the worst part of road during the whole trip. Right next to the highway runs the G56 Expressway, which is newly build and easy to observe while riding the crappy road we were on. I tried to get on the Expressway on two occasions, but they wouldn’t let me (the first guy was laughing, the second was not). A Dali resident expat later said you could sneak on the expressway after dark…
Next day we moved on and the road and the environment was beautiful! We didn’t notice that the surroundings changed the night before when riding in the dark. We rode the last kilometers up to Shuangliang, as felix mentioned the road on the east side of the lake is awesome! It is a broad, new road along the shore of the lake.

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Shuangliang itself was overcrowded with tourists and tourist busses loading and unloading new tourists. I saw a group of Chinese bikers with dual sports, but had no chance to talk to them. But the lodges on the shore were really nice. You seldom see accommodations in China that really deserve to be called “nice”, so I wondered why Shuangliang had such a high density of nice places, while this didn’t seem to spread too far north. Most of them are expensive though, but still fully booked. We managed to find a cheap room at one of the nicer lodges and had BBQ at the shore…
Navigating the bike with bags and two people through the narrow aisles of Shuangliang was another adventure…
...

[JayDee]

From Shuangliang we rode up north to famous Lijiang. We took the back route, S221 via Heqing. The road was good and already gave a good idea of what was about to come. On our way we passed the Golden Pagoda, a newly rebuild temple complex. Entrance fee was steep, but included English speaking guide, and except a handful of tourists and some locals the place was empty. It was exactly how you would imagine a Chinese-rebuild temple complex to be.

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In Lijiang we decided to stay in the ancient part of Shuhe, according to our travel guide ‘the less touristic part of Lijiang’. Oh my, if that is the less touristic part…

The town itself is nice, but naturally many Chinese tourists linger through the alleys with many Chinese-style shops, every restaurant has their own live music just inches from each other and wherever you sit you have this mélange of popular Chinese songs. And Chinese-wedding-picture photostudios.

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Next leg took us to the Tiger Leaping Gorge (hu tiao xia), an absolute astonishing gorge and an equally spectacular ride along it on, and an even more spectacular hike on the high trail.

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"Ride me!"
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Definitely a place to stay some additional day(s) to explore the trails, but we were unlucky with the weather, so we decided to keep going...


Damn, this takes forever...

[JayDee]

When we started in the morning it just rained slightly when we followed the Yangtze, but as we climbed through Haba mountain on the back road to Shangri-La it got colder and colder. We wore all the clothes we could underneath our bike apparel, but the gear had flaws: My good-weather gloves did not combine well with my makeshift waterproofs (chemical rubber gloves), and I occasionally had to stop to get warm hands.

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Looks stupid. And it was.


It stopped raining before we reached the White Water Terraces, so we stopped and climbed the hill in our gear. Well worth it! The terraces are a phenomenon, but wait till you see the spring… entrance fee was reasonable, which usually indicated something worth seeing.

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Then more rain. Up at 3500m it was cold, wet and visibility poor. I’m sure at good weather the views were awesome, but we had none of that.

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Good times!

The road further to Shangri-La was good and dry (even though still cold, and occasional rain) and a good, fast road led through the area of the pudacuo national park, with ponies galloping through the prairie (may have been cows). A good ride, despite the poor weather conditions.

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In Shangri-La (former Zhongdian) we stayed at ‘Kevins Trekker Inn’, highly recommended. If you are travelling by bike, you can conveniently ride inside the gated courtyard and park it next to Kevins battered Hongyang. From the best rooms you have a view right over Shangri-Las’ old town.

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It was still cold, and as usual up there the rooms had no heating (just heating blankets), but we have good memories of the evenings next to the stove, with the huge dogs warming the feet, map in the hand, discussing possible routes with Kevin. If you wonder how a road is, it’s worth asking him, he has probably been there.

[JayDee]

Shangri-La was worth seeing, especially the Ganden Sumtsenling, even though it was highly commercialized and admission was steep. But after two days of cold rain, eating yak-meat and looking at Tibetan things we had enough (the cold was the worst), so we decided to move south again, where the weather would be better. After all, a two-weeks holiday is not a long time…

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On the day of our departure the weather was ok and we decided to take the highway G214 200+km down south, to stop at Shaxi. The highway was good and fast, but dangerous despite its thin traffic. Some Chinese drivers went fast, and suddenly stopped to look at something, swerved left and right, tourist buses overtaking each other in narrow curves, etc. Generally, wherever Chinese tourists travelled on their own car on the mountain roads, it got a lot more dangerous than it usually is already.
The view after we left the city was stunning - white-capped mountains, green valleys.

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Yep, wrong turn and slightly lost.

You could see the environment change with every kilometer loosing elevation. When we left the national highway to go to Shibaoshan/Shaxi we were surrounded by vegetation again, with the occasional goat/cow/ox/farmer on the street (actually those were everywhere).



respect for those who keep reading, but it's ok if you only look at the pictures

[JayDee]

Shaxi is the place you want to go. A relaxed, charming old town with classic guesthouses. We just met another handful of tourists, even though I’m sure it gets more crowded sometimes. We had clear blue sky during the day, warm sun, and at night a starry sky you are not used to anymore after living in one of Chinas major cities for a while. Maybe the place we enjoyed the most on our trip. I could have spend a week, just sitting in front of the Old Tree Café, drinking and eating myself through the menu of that lovely old couples’ place… but I didn’t have a week (unfortunately).

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Another Highlight right next to Shaxi is Shibaoshan. A mountain that contains multiple temples and grottoes, built into the stone. The fun starts already with the ride up there from Shaxi and around the mountain.

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We arrived too late, so the locals decided to forget about the entrance fee and just let us do what we want. Being the only visitors at a temple build inside the mountain at the late afternoon gave the whole thing some Indiana Jones-flair, extra points for monkeys and waterfalls. Even if you try to limit the amount of temples you intend to see, like us, this should be on the list.

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...

[SabineHartmann]

I love your RR!
Beginning of January 2014, they will replace both my hips. The next possible moment I will jump on my BMW 650 GS and bring her on the road again. Everybody needs a Target and your ride is one of mine

[JayDee]

From Shaxi we moved on to Dali, taking the backroads following the Heihui River south. You can never be sure about the quality of the country roads on the map, but asking locals for guidance works. This country road was good, and the landscape was, eh, ‘picturesque’.

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Moving to Dali via Xiaguan afterwards was a slap in the face (with a wet towel) in comparison… Dali itself appealed to us, even though I’m still mad that we paid that entrance fee to the three pagodas. But if you have time to spend, spend some in Dali. Good food, a busy old town, a good mix of travelers. Go hiking, climbing, kayaking (climbdali.com) - or don’t. But don’t waste any additional time in places like Lijiang, if you could waste it here (or in Shaxi).

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We pressed on to get to the other side of Yunnan, taking the S224 to Nanjian and further the S222 to Zhenyuan, where we stayed for the night. The ride was good, as well as the roads.
In the middle of nowhere I passed an unplated Benelli, waiting in front of a ramshackle shack. Some kilometers later, another rider with a Benelli and bag on his bike passed and waved. With this route we followed the ancient Tea Horse Caravan route, but so did many other local tourists in their cars. Paired with grimy public busses driving like madmen wiggling up the winding roads, you had a quite unsafe mélange of people who had the knowledge and simple-mindedness of a 12 year-old regarding motor vehicle operation, which damped the fun a bit.

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Arriving in Zhenyuan was strange. Half of the city has just been built and was not yet inhabitated – we arrived in that half, passing empty apartments, empty shops, big empty streets. You may expect zombies running after the motorbike any time, until we hit the old town.

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Helloooo?


A typical, white-tiles-on-the-outside small town, and I could understand why they were building a new one that looked quite good. We stayed in the newest hotel, which was very good and quite cheap, but had its flaws: It was so new, that it hadn’t been fixed yet after it had been build. 50% of the room did not work, or fell apart after touching it. In our first room the door lock didn’t work, and after the maintenance guy took it apart he was not sure how it was supposed to be assembled again, so we had to change to another room. The new doors’ spyhole fell out, the shower could only provide hot or cold, and afterwards water appeared everywhere, since neither the cabin, nor anything else has been sealed. But this impression continued in the new town, it seemed finished but not fixed yet: Traffic lights were not working properly, the green man in the walking light was upside down and some concepts may have looked different on the blueprint. But the people were very friendly and happy about the new part, with a huge basketball arena (bearing the Olympic rings) and a big plaza in front of it, with probably 50% of the mature female population dancing to “gangnam style”.

We had dinner in a little hole-in-the-wall place, run by a young man and his mother. He did all the talking, because she didn’t understand mandarin very well. When I told him we came by bike he already knew about the black bike with the Beijing plate… obviously not many secrets in that town. After a short while a crazy Chinese woman arrived, talking to us very excited that we are the first foreigners in the town, and she wished there would be more, but couldn’t understand why no one else ever came. At the same time, she took around 3000 pictures of us eating very spicy food. Then she moved to the young man, who was about 1m away, and asked him if he was excited too, and if he was going to charge us more. That was astonishing. Just seconds before she was talking to us in Chinese. And then she turns around and talks about us, as if we couldn’t hear her. The guy seemed to realize the idiocy and answered a bit ashamed that he wouldn’t (I think he overcharged 10 kuai at the end, but I take that as a service charge for him to run to the store to buy beer for us). She kept pushing him to do so, because white people who look like they are wearing the same clothes for a while and were eating in the smallest eatery in the perimeter are known to have a lot of money, then she waved us friendly goodbye and left. Everybody was relieved, and the guy told us that he lived in the north before, as well. He studied something (didn’t understand his major) and was working in another city for a while, but returned to Zhenyuan, probably to support his family business as those things go. But except that there was nothing to do for a guy with his education in the area. He seemed smart but was trapped in rural China without a chance to prove it – except overcharging the first foreign visitors of the city for 10 kuai.

We kept going the next morning, crossing over using the S307, following the Jiasa River southwards.
Again, the road was picturesque, again there were some “Tea and Horse Caravan Scenic Spots” and the streets were swarming with Chinese tourist drivers, trying to maneuver their vehicles on the winding roads. #

I put them into two categories:
There were The Fearful, not exceeding 30km/h, stopping erratically, and froze incapable of action at any obstacle.
And then there were The Fearless, who adopted their driving style from the Playstation, pretty much every corner out of their estimation, stopping preferably at the end of a long turn to take a picture of something.

You better keep your distance from them – this is as dangerous as it gets. If they spot you, both can convert instantly into the third type: The driver switches to hot pursuit and from the passenger window emerges a telescopic camera lens, aiming at you, while the passengers cannot believe their luck to catch one of this seldom species in the wild. The driving profile changes from “I have no idea how to turn my car” to “plain crazy”. Yes, I like action too, but this was a rather annoying part.
As a natural reaction to the local driving skill you will find after each inclination a car parked on the side of the road with someone throwing up in the bushes. Unfortunately, never the driver. After passing the ridge, the tourist drivers get less and the road gets more rural...

[JayDee]

Without warning, it happens. We were in for a long left corner, with a black VW Tiguan SUV in the oncoming traffic on the two lane road. He already entered the curve in the middle of the road, but I expected him to turn sharper as so many did before once he saw us. Anyway there was enough space for two cars, and even more for a car and a motorbike. But not for long. For a reason I probably will never understand he drifted further outwards, aiming straight at us. Neither we nor the car were particularly fast, I’m sure a brand new Tiguan can turn sharper than that. Anyway, this one couldn’t.
I tried to evade in the last minute, leaving only the little strip covered with dirt and gravel before the ditch, that I didn’t want to hit neither. The bike immediately lost its grip on the dirt, low-sided and hit the ground, and off we went. I was sliding downhill, mainly on my hands, my head and my GoPro case, Fides landed safely on my back and just tumbled to a stop some meters away from me. The SUV sped off. Fortunately we believe in ATGATT and good quality gear and were not hurt. Just my left thigh looked like I tested rubber bullets in a Jackass movie. My GoPro camera case sacrified itself and will never be waterproof again, but the camera was just fine. I checked if I recorded the accident and maybe the guys plate, but the battery just went flat some corners before. When it rains, it pours.

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My great 4 months old HJC rpha max helmet took a hit and calls for replacement. Fides’ left Vanucci boot is chaffed you can almost put a finger through, I don’t know why but it looks like it touched the chain, however. The bike… well it looks exactly how you would imagine it to look after sliding on the ground, but except the left turn indicator and scratches everywhere nothing is broken. A few centimeters more, and the bike would’ve fallen into the ditch, just the weight of our luggage kept it on the road. While we were collecting ourselves from the street, the bike lying on the ground like a stranded whale, two other tourist-cars passed. They slowed down and rolled down the windows, people took some pictures and somebody waved and screamed “Helloooouuuu!?” (seriously?), then they sped off.

Sometimes China doesn’t make it easy to like it.

Just a little farmer on his moped stopped to help me pull the bike away from the ditch and pick it up. I told him what happened (slightly enraged), but he just shrugged – that happens. You are fine, motorbike still drives – nothing to worry.


As all of us, I always knew there is a higher risk for accidents in this country, and that it may happen. But this – I didn’t see that coming. And what eats me the most about it is that there was absolutely no reason for it. Driving like that was not necessary and didn’t make sense. It was just wrong. But this is China, the guy drove on and again there are no consequences, only for the victim. I wonder, what was this guy thinking? What were his friends saying? “Dude, you nearly hit that motorcycle, now they crashed.” –“Not our problem.”? I can’t imagine. And I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if it wouldn’t be two foreigners with high-tech gear, but a peasant family of four with linen clothes on a farmer-bike…


Anyway the bike pretended as nothing happened (“Wait till you see yourself in the mirror, two-face”, I thought) and still rode great, so we kept going. With my helmet I looked like Gerard Butler in 300. I was thinking if I should go faster, to get off the road as soon as possible, or slower to be safer and decided on normal-slow. When we were passing the next village in snail-pace, we got almost hit by a farmer who was shooting out of his driveway, almost landing in the ditch on the other side of the road. From then on, the accident-theme kept following us throughout the trip…

To match my mood (or just to make fun of me), the god of misfortune sent rain, so we stopped at the terrible town of Yuanjiang in some “Grand Hotel” for 100 Yuan per night. At Yuanjiang the local specialty were trucks loaded with billboards, blaring advertisements through a bad PA system. To avoid locational (dis)advantage, all of them drove lined up and down the same street, to make sure nobody understands anything. I bought some icecream at the store to cool my leg and we had dinner in a small restaurant. I was wondering what I should have done different to save us from the crash, while my girlfriend was just happy we didn’t stop in the windshield of a VW Tiguan...


Next day we moved on to Yuangyuang to stay at the titian rice terraces. As usual, Fides was instantly in a good mood again (just like in Cambodia, when she dropped her bike in the middle of nowhere near the Thai border and sprung her ankle with the next hospital hours away and I had to get the girl there and somehow two bikes back to Phnom Penh. We always have fun) and tried to make friends with every baby-animal we encountered.
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I was still upset. The first kilometers I rode mechanically, before I remembered the farmers’ advice to just brush it off and just keep going, loosing up a little.

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[JayDee]

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...

Arriving at the terraces there was a big visitor center and a small parking lot, with cars lined up on the road for kilometers. I went to buy tickets at the visitor center and asked one of the guards if we could continue by bike. He said normally not, but if they inside say it’s ok, it’s ok. The tickets were ridiculous expensive. I asked why, and the woman said it includes the bus. I mentioned we don’t need a bus, we are traveling by bike and already booked our accommodation at the village of Duo Yi Shu. But the regulations changed, we had to travel by bus and leave the bike on the parking lot. So I bought the tickets including the bus, told the guard “she said it’s ok” and moved through the barrier, fast.

We stayed at Jacky’s Guesthouse, directly in the heart of the tiny village and with an awesome view over the terraces. But Jacky and his friends were upset – the new regulation was in place since 6 days and cost the villagers a lot of their business. Previously, the tourists would drive through the villages, eat here, buy souvenirs there, have heir SUVs cleaned and maybe stay overnight in one of the guesthouses. People without a car would hire local tricycles and minivans to get around. Now, they had to pay a steep entrance fee and were transported from viewing point to viewing point by buses racing through the villages following my honking advice, and then back to the parking lot. From the entrance fee the villagers don’t see anything, it is entirely controlled by a company with the intriguing slogan “Expo Tourism”. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the chaos when all those cars were pushing through the narrow streets.
We travelled from viewpoint to viewpoint by bike. But we were not allowed to park the bike on the parking lot, where now only company buses were parking. The guards would rather die than let you park your bike there, this is how I imagine approaching a US-checkpoint in Iraq with unsuitable speed…

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After our time in Duo Yi Shu we went to Jianshui, a small town supposed to be worth looking at and at the perfect stopover distance on our way back to Kunming.
Leaving the terraces we again encountered the problem with roads full of tourist drivers creating dangerous situations. And each and every one of them threw something out of their window. This ignorance makes me sick and regret spending my holidays in China. I’m not an environmentalist, but I’ve seen this during the whole trip: How can you take your children out to see your countries beautiful natural sceneries and then teach them to throw your garbage out of the window? Why an empty plastic bottle can not stay in the car until the next stop? And why the f**** does every car need Mickey Mouse seat covers anyway?


Jacky advised to detour via Gejiu, since the direct road through the mountains was very bad. The road to Gejiu was good, fast multi-lane highway through the mountains. Gejiu was heaven-sent and showed us things aren’t so bad – we could be living in Gejiu.

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[JayDee]

We exited Gejiu passing children playing in burning garbage piles, and that picture kind of stuck.
It was a nasty place and we were glad to get out and move on to Jianshui.

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Jacky was right, the road to Jianshui was good – if you drive a car and can take the brand-new Expressway. The highway was shit again, bad road surface and therefore terrible slow.

We arrived in Jianshui at dusk. My previous observation that Jianshui is a place “worth looking at” was shared by million (at least) Chinese tourists that day. We tried the youth hostel, but it seemed to be closed since a while. W tried the decent hotels, but everything was fully booked. We tried the truck stops. We tried the nice hotels, tried in the inner city and next to the highway – everything was fully booked, and at every place another guy with his family in his car stormed in to ask for a room. The only room we could organize was a suite for 800 CNY so we took it, and were at least happy about a good bed and a working shower. And they promised "western breakfast"!

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Western Breakfast - just like home.

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Jianshui was ok as a stopover, but we had seen a lot of pseudo-old building already at that time.
Next stop was Kunming, to close the loop. We rode the direct way up to Tonghai, passing brick factories and the less picturesque villages of this country, that reminded me of the surroundings in Tianjin: Too near to the city to be not influenced, too far away to thrive from economic benefits.

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