Saturday, January 07, 2006

Day 127 - Down the road to Jinghong

Start: Menghan (aka Ganlanba), China
End: Jinghong, China
Distance: 34 km
Time: 2'22"
Avg: 14.2 k/h
Max: 37 k/h
Total: 7664 km
Total riding days: 84
Riding hours: 1030 - 1420

An easy ride up the Mekong, but a little too much traffic for it to count as pleasant.

Cooked my lunch at a cable car station, from where you can be whisked across the Mekong in a fibreglass cocoon to go and see some monkeys. Not as interesting as my mattress in Menghan, which said:

"Happy Bony Bears. May you Succeed; Happy New Year."

All sentiments with which it is hard to disagree. Except perhaps the bit about Bony Bears. I should think a Bony Bear would be rather unhappy. But then what do I know?

At the post office, I pick up a bag of bikey bits from Decathlon (thank you, Michael) and a GoreTex cycling jacket from GoreTex (thank you, Samuel).

Jinghong's Xinhua Bookstore contains a minor miracle: a map of Yunnan with some topographic shading. Topographic shading was supposed to be a state secret in China, I thought, but here it was, on sale to the general public and the passing cyclist: definitive evidence that Yunnan Province contains HILLS.

Well, the secret is out now.

Sadly the shading doesn't really give away much more than that, but it is a start. I must eat more bananas to prepare.

No comments:

Post a Comment