To Litang

The first night after leaving Chengdu, I do not find a decent place to stay. The road is enclosed in between the mountains and where there would have been space to set up camp, people have their houses, gardens and land. I finally find a rope bridge that seems to lead to an unoccupied piece of flat ground. After pushing my bike over the bridge and up the slippery hill, I find a nice spot, where I can spend the night. Soon the night falls and I see some tiny lights. At first I think someone is coming from far with a little torch, but soon I realise they are fireflies, the first time I see them. Soon after it starts to rain, but my tent is set up well and all inside stays dry. After a while my shoulder gets cold and I find out that one of the seems in the tarp is leaking. Fortunately I can put my raincape over that part over the tent, which stops the leaking.
The day starts with one and a half hour climbing, before I reach a very long tunnel (Erlangshan tunnel) after which I go down for 15km. It is nice to go down, but frustrating at the same time, when you know later you will have to climb again. Still going down for me is the reward for climbing. After lunch I proceed to Kanding, but although not to far I have used most of my energy already and the almost non-stop rising road pushes me to the limit. At the end of the afternoon I reach the town, where I start to search for a budget hotel. After 2 hours of searching the cheapest hotel I found is 80RMB. May be for European standards not expensive, in China it would be my most expensive overnighting. I cannot find a cheaper one and as it already is dark (I do not want to cycle outside a city after dark) I go back to that hotel. It is very luxurious, I have my own bathroom and hot shower with water also coming from the side.
The next morning I continue with what I have been doing the day before, climbing. Five hours after I have left Kanding I reach the pass at 4298m. At this hight you cannot miss there is much less oxygen. everything I do, I'll try to do as slowly as possible to not get out of breath. I hang around the pass for a while. People want to be with me in a picture. It carresses my ego that people ask to be in a picture with me, so I am happy to pose. After a while it starts snowing, which is for me the sign to search for warmer places i.e. go down. Uptill now the road was pretty good, but halfway down the road gets to apalling quality, shaking my bones and bike. The shaking also makes my pedal problem reappear, but with the nail and a stone this is soon fixed. In the meantime I am surrounded by a group of women. Communicating is hard but I manage to get their address so I can send the picture by mail (I hope that the thing they wrote is their address). When I ask them where I can eat they point down the road, so I peddle on till I am in a town where they even have 2 restaurants and a guesthouse. I had enough for the day so I decide to stay for the night. After dinner I am invited to the home of an old man to eat some more. Always hungry I join him and finish the day with a bottle of beer.

My cycling buddies Chele and Enrique were headed for Litang as well. They had counted they arrived there the tenth, but I figure they might have miscalculated the distance too. On the 17th I cycle 10km when I reach a decent town. I have figured out that I will not reach Litang in the next three days if I keep on cycling so I decide to take a bus, to have some chance to hook up with Chele and Enrique. The only available spots in the bus are right at the end and I soon find why. At every bump, I am catapulted into the air. At several occasions my head hits the ceiling (40 cm higher than my head). The worse ones are the doubble bumps where, when landing you are immediatly are shot up again. The forces are that large (and the material that weak) that a seat in the row before me breaks under the pressure. Halfway I manage to secure a seat in the front of the bus, which makes the world of a difference.a> Late in the afternoon I reach Litang, with my kidneys still on the right spot.