Here I stand.. on the top of a mountain. Lonely facing the cold wind.. if not my love would be with me.. and Ava of course. Jinlun is her name. And key to our freedom she is. As we were struggling to plan the next steps on our journey, we heard of man travelling by two wheels. His journey through China was almost over, but the motorbike was calling for the next flies that might grace her adventurous life. The decision wasn’t an easy one, with obvious risks, but eager to see where fate might blow us we left the world of guide books and tour buses and stepped into the undiscovered. After a couple of nice nights with our mysterious, slightly alcoholic friend, and a lot of good stories and essential advice for the road, we swapped our crisp notes for the keys to a motorbike tour through Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.With the start of a brandy dependence and a slight lung infection later, we say our sad goodbyes to our good friend, and to the town of Ya’an, a pivotal place for our journey. After managing to fix our 2 backpacks to the back of the bike with enough bungee cords to jump the Brooklin bridge, we at least blend in with the rest of the typically overloaded Chinese vehicles. Finally ready to set off, we nervously hit the road, making it out of the city and into the deep green terraced landscape. Its not long before we catch up with the rain of the previous days, as we become part of a snaking tailback from a landslide a few kilometers into the gorge. With this, we are forced onto even smaller country roads, where our pale skin (and big noses) have a similar effect to that of a friendly ghost, sending people running into their homes in shock or disbelieve. With the shouts of “foreigner! Foreigner!” we decide that we have finally escaped the grasps of China’s colossal tourism trap.
Crawling across the middle of nowhere, with a few hundred SUV’s from the city accompanying us, we finally see the landslide on the far side of the valley, and soon after are happy to get back to the main road. After a whole morning of driving with only 12km to show, we admit to feeling a little daunted with over 2000 km still ahead. Expecting to cruise on smooth tarmac, we find ourselves navigating a minefield of potholes, murky puddles and mud, left behind by the last few hundred landslides that graced the surface of this clearly well placed road. I think Ava would agree that the experience was a steep learning curve, when she had to get off and walk beside the crawling lightened load, as I tried desperately to keep the bike moving on two wheels. Eventually it smoothes out, and we find ourselves basking in the joy of the long empty road, wind through the hair and a much reduced fear of death or fatal injury.
After a harsh introduction, we soon forget our plans of milage and destinations, and begin to enjoy the roads for what they are. With this, we eat up the distance southwards, through lime green ricefields, valleys, isolated ethinic villages with painted houses and mountains. But it is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, as we see China’s destructive power on its environment, with butchered landscapes, Submerged forests (and no doubt villages) in the wake of the latest dam projects and barefooted children foreging in the rubble of wasteland. Inbetween it all, life goes on, as villagers use the newly tarmaced road for drying the latest tea harvest. Every metre of land is used in a complex jigsaw of local farming. A land of contrast presents itself as a young girl heads for the road in her high heels, destined for modernity. Everywhere old meets new. Combating the hardship of the last centuries, but providing a ruthless alternative of pure economic development.On more than one occas
ion, we found ourselves sharing our route with gigantic quarry sites, as overloaded trucks crowd our path, pounding the tarmac to gravel in front of us with their wheely claws. Like snails, crawling the mountains, they leave a trail of slippery wet road, from hot tires demanding a constant stream of water to prevent the rubber from burning. These fearless trucks, that run the road countless times a day, were a gauntlet to pass. On the last bend before the crest of the mountain, our trusty steed grinds to a halt, her own engine steaming under pressure from the constant accelerating and breaking around the elephants on our path.
We soon find ourselves heading up in elevation, as the air (pollution) and the traffic thins. We follow the river up towards its great mother, the mountain lake straddling the provincial border- Lugu Hu. After a night in a migrant worker village, in a room so dirty and insect ridden that we put up our tent on the bed, the canyon opens out. Unbelievably the dirty brown river (roughly the same colour as the one in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), leads towards a huge perfect mirror of a lake, the white surface merging with the sky to create a seamless horizon. We find ourselves within one of the last matriarchal cultures in the world, elegantly clothed in their traditional dress. Here the women rule the roost and men obey - A peaceful society for once.
