where is the road? (29 march to 12 april 05)

Our arrival in Dali, at almost 2000 meters above sea level, surrounded by snow-capped 4000m peaks, will not possibly be forgotten... It is like all the elements around us had gathered to give us this sense of freedom and happiness one often gets when he/she feels so small in front of great beauty. As we are descending the 10 kilometers that take us from the top of the pass to the valley where this little town lies, in the heart of the "jade mountains", we fly passed the tall peaks, and the lower slopes that look like kids' drawings with their multiple colours and their various minutiously cultivated paddocks. The sun is magnificent and its light embellishes and gives perspective to the valley. The temperature is a small 10 degrees that catches our breath short but the air is so pure. The wind does not stop whirling around and singing and down at the bottom of the valley, at the end of the turns and hairpins lies the "ear-shaped" lake that gives the whole scene a quiet, peaceful, ceremonious feeling. We let our bikes take us down the slope, ride passed small villages and pagodas, children going to school and women in their multi-coloured costumes organising the markets and whatever else needs to be done (we also decide to ignore the monstruous work of destruction done by the Chinese who are in the process of building a new highway through the valley). This is it, we have got to Dali, our last stage before heading into the Himalayas. And most likely, our adventures over the past 10 days have contributed to the magic of this arrival.

First surprise when we get to China: after getting some local maps, we realise that our western-made maps of China are missing quite a few kilometers: a mere 1000km between the border and Lhasa! Some 400km between the border and Dali are missing! Never mind, with a bit of concentration, we start making sense of the Chinese hieroglifes, and can use the Chinese maps, more reliable, to travel. We will however soon realise that they are not 100% reliable either! Some roads drawn on our maps are somewhat futuristic...

As soon as we get accross the border, we realise the Chinese are at work: tens of thousands of men and women cut and hammer rocks, pour concrete, flatten the terrain, reinforce, tarseal, dig, carry steel and gravel... The new "pan-asian" road is starting to take shape, and it is more than impressive. The noise from the hammers hammering and the trucks (hundreds of them) honking their horns come to complete this spectacle that gives us the definite impression that Laos was in hibernation! Prisonner gangs are also at work along the highway, digging and transporting soil, under the watchful eye of not-so-funny supervisors dressed in their army green uniforms and red arm bands. We go through all of this like in a movie but do not disturb anything: what needs to be done needs to be done. Surrounding this soon-to-be highway, the hills are all cut, terraced, worked and planted: first mainly with tea and rubber trees - for kilometers!, and then, as we keep riding, rice, watermelons, potatoes... In China, we do not count in square meters (cultivated) or dozens of people (working) anymore, but in dozens of square kilometers and millions of people... The gigantic aspect of this country hits us straight away.

The building of this highway also means for us that the small, old road on which we are riding is over-saturated with trucks. And lots of trucks on a small road means lots of horn honking (our poor ear drums!), an unbelievable amount of dust and a very damaged road. And because the road is not wide, and that an incredible high amount of these trucks have mechanical problems (anything from a flat tyre to lost screws and nuts in the corners to the wheels going off the road in the corners and straight into the ditch), this creates traffic jams for miles! And the truck drivers seem so proud and/or stubburn that when they cannot quite cross each other on the road (in other words, when they almost collide), neither of them wants to be the first one to drive back to let the other one go... So we are quite proud to be able to cycle passed those lines of stuck vehicles, going nowhere. In the middle of this dust, traffic and high decibel level, a photographer (professional by the looks of his gear) gets out of his car, gives us some fresh water and takes photos of us, during the effort and posing on the side of the road, sharing with us a few minutes with smiles and congratulations...

We have arrived in the "green tea" country. People offer us cups of hot tea non-stop along the road. So, as we sip those delicious cups of hot tea along the road, the locals marvel at our bikes and, half-fascinated, half-intrigued, they try on our bike helmets... Given the density of population along the road, camping has become somewhat difficult. Especially when we know it is illegal to camp in China and that the country is saturated with police, everywhere. We keep our tent for the times when we are in the middle of nowehere in the mountains, and discover the local guesthouses down in the valleys. For 5 yuan for the 2 of us (US$0.60!), we get a bed, some tea and some grapefruit! As well as the pleasure - and discovery - to spend a few hours with the families running these guesthouses. This is the opportunity to improve our knowledge of mandarin, to drink more tea (it never stops!) and for our Chinese counterparts, to smoke those big vertical pipes, about 1 meter tall and 15 cm wide. We will even have the great joy to be awaken at half passed midnight by the local police, knocking with no restraint on our door. We don't quite understand everything that's going on. It is kind of surreal to be pulled out of our beds (and dreams) to get our passports out and show them to 2 official-looking uniforms whose mandarin directives are totally foreign to us. On another night, there is no fountain or shower to clean. Never mind, the young Chinese lady in charge of the guesthouse gets us to come to the kitchen, one after the other, heats up some water on the woodfire, and there, in the middle of the kitchen, shampoos our hair (twice!), cleans our faces and even our ears (!), before taking us to another small room/hut for the rest of the body. We do as instructed, as best we can... Day after day, we discover a people extremely welcoming, but also measure more and more how great the differences between our cultures are. More often than not, we let ourselves "guided" here and there and "instructed" to do this and that, adapting ourselves to the local environment and culture as best we can...

After that, 48 hours of thunder storms force us to stop: it pours with rain, and the thunder is so loud it feels like the sky is going to collapse! At the first ray of sun, we get back on the road to discover that our poor little road - being built (still the same highway) - has become a very muddy playground... But we have to get through, so we pedal hard, and push from time to time, in 30 to 50 cm of fresh mud. We ride passed several vehicles stuck in mudbaths... Our progress is difficult, unstable and we collect kilos of mud on our bikes... We camp in the middle of this, before carrying on the following day. We will find the tarseal again after several other kilometers. But not for long! Our nice 4-lane, tarsealed road that we had found again, with relief, only goes for 40 km! It then suddenly becomes a gravel 4-lane road, and gets worse and worse as we go. We keep asking if we are on the right road every time we get the opportunity and all seem to agree: we are heading in the right direction, this is the correct road. But where the hell is the road? Some of the bridges are not finished, and we get to go down some dirt tracks to cross the rivers and up on the other side. We become more and more worried as we know damn well that at some point, we will have to cross the Mekong river. But the closer we get to it, the more we get contradictory messages and signs from the road workers: no, you cannot cross the river, there is no bridge. Oh, no, please! We have spent too much energy and time getting this far, we decide to cover the last few kilometers, to at least make sure. If we have to turn back, at least we will not have to leave with the "what if ?" and the potential regrets... A 1-km unlit, extremely dark tunnel and 20km of descent on the other side of the pass later, we do find the Mekong river. There is a bridge: or rather, the bridge pillars are standing but part of the platform is shockingly missing! Never mind, we have not gone that far for nothing, and can see a road on the other side. We will find a local who will get us accross on his small boat, frantically finishing his bowl of rice. Relieved, we savour the moment: we haven't riden all these miles for nothing...

At that point, we were fairly sure we had ridden on every possible surface. How wrong... We still had to do our own version of Paris-Roubaix on irregular and cahotic cobble-stoned roads... Or ride on the wheat harvest lying in the middle of the road to split the grain from the straw... Mate, what a road!