Day 22: Aug 16, Dali to Yuanyang Ti Tian

Another night gone by, we were lucky to be able to experience something as wild as the Fire Festival in Dali. It was something that I’ll never be able to forget and was worth the craziness and implied danger. In short it was scary as hell, but also pretty fun.

Today we woke up at 8:00am and planned to be on the road by 9:00. Our goal for the day was to cover half the distance from Dali in the north of Yunnan to Yuanyang County in the south of Yunnan. Marcus and Lynn had decided to ship their bike back to Guangdong, so they could get some rest and enjoy the train ride home. From now on Lisa and I would be on our own. We were also getting tired. Bike problems and police problems and more than 20 days on the road had taken their toll on us and our bodies. We talked about it and decided the only way to get home was to ride home. We left on the bike and we would arrive back at home on the bike. We said our goodbyes, packed the bike and started on the road south.

The road was rough. I was amazed at how bad it was and I was amazed at the fact it didn’t get better. We were about 350km out of Kunming and about 440km from our desired destination for the day. As the roads got worse our spirits were low and our goal seemed unattainable. We pressed on and by 5:00 we were still about 4 hours short of our destination. Lisa and I agreed that we would stop around Kunming and get on the road early in the morning the next day to make it Yuanyang County.

We pulled into Anning just outside of Kunming as the sun was cresting the mountains. Luckily we spotted a small hotel on the way in. We grabbed a room and hit the bed. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be another long day.