Day 4: July 29, Yizhou to HeChe to Bashu

The night in Yizhou was only meant as a stopover. We didn’t have any fun and games planned for day 4, we just wanted to push on up the road about another 150km to Heche in our attempt to locate a minority village that had not become a large tourist draw.

We decide the night before that today would be a short ride and planned to be on the road by 10:00am. 10:00am came and with breakfast in bellies we hit the road to Heche. We hit Heche around lunch time and pulled into a restaurant for some food and some local inside information. Lunch consisted of the normal Chinese food fair and upon completion of consumption we started to pry into the local knowledge of the restaurant owners. We pulled out our maps and asked our questions and were told that there was a minority market in a place called Bashu. This Bashu place wasn’t on any of our maps and we were only given a vague idea of where the place might be, but we decided to put our trust in their words and headed off down the road another 80km.

breakfast



My wife Lisa trying to understand all the Chinese on the map



We pulled into this small town called Chehe (not to be confused with Heche) and asked where we could find Bashu. They told us to go back down the road we came and take the first left we saw. We headed down the road, took our first left and headed up a mountain. The road quickly got worse and soon was nothing more than piles of rocks and washed away mountain. This is what I was on the trip for. I love these roads and this is one of the great things about living and biking around China. The roads are bad, but that usually means you have the chance to make some nice discoveries and get to places not too many people get to visit. Most of the time the people you meet down these rough and beat up roads are welcoming and extremely kind to travelers.







As we made our way up the ever worsening road we got to see some great views of the valley below. Guangxi is really an amazing place. The views were stunning and the road didn’t disappoint . We arrived in Bashu to see the end of the minority market closing up. We quickly asked one of them if we could follow them back to their village. We were answered with a big thumbs up and followed them back to their homes.