What an interesting and sensational area Yunnan is!  Clean air, good pavement, careful motorists sharing the roads with everything else. It’s an economy moved by trucking whether gravel, bricks, fuel, or produce, huge trucks like twenty wheelers grinding up steep hills with water dripping onto the wheel hubs for cooling and making the pavement wet on uphills. Two stroke engines on small farm trucks stutter loudly by on the back roads. Scooters in the city are required to be electric to reduce pollution but took some increased alertness on our part when shifting our line. They come from behind, beside and at us on either right or left!

Every thing here is in almost unfathomable numbers, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. 

Some impressions: Cocks crowing at all hours, everywhere, chickens at every house in the countryside, the cheeping of chicks behind walls as we cycle past, the evening siren of cicadas, culverts and concrete, mobile cement mixers at endless building sites, cinder block creation and construction, chewing into mountain and hillsides to truck the soil to cities and lowlands, industrious people all with a task, many with smartphones as they walk in town or drive by on scooters.  Many video us as we roll by or come over for selfies with cyclists. Banana trees cover vast mountain sides and are brought out to the roadsides for boxing, where long trucks deliver the cardboard and then haul off them to markets.  Tea terraces cover whole valleys, and hillsides, as well as rubber trees. The valley bottoms are covered with small fields growing produce, divided by earthen or concrete berms and often irrigated by springs. Ginseng grows on high hillsides under cover of black shade cloth. Again, it is boggling to consider the toil needed to prepare the ground, plant, tend and harvest all this, often by hand with spades, rototillers, or using water buffalo or cows to plow. It seems one must consider the sheer numbers of people here who work to feed themselves.

And the food!  Every supper we enjoyed at least eight dishes prepared differently through the trip, and dried red chilies are a feature of the region, till many of us requested a decrease for our unaccustomed palates. Chopstick skills improved.  Eight of us sat at three round tables with a rotating lazy Susan, on tiny stools for lunches or outdoors. 

The plazas are alive in the evening with dancers, children out with parents, people exercising at public equipment, shopping and strolling along the swept and landscaped walks. We saw much attention paid to beautifying the cities, but the countryside is lagging behind in terms of sanitation and infrastructure. There is so much to do and the country is so huge! We resigned ourselves to squatting toilets and carrying tissues and hand sanitizer… Three cyclists went down with varying injuries with only one unable to continue riding but choosing to stay with the tour and enjoy the experience. 

From Larry Wilson:

The cycling tour is over today. What a trip it has been, with our guides, our drivers all attentive to our needs, and our group of twenty two riders a compatible lot. Thanks, Jude and Max, for leading us to this memorable adventure. 
Barb

Second last ride day. 

Nice 500 meter descent out of overcast Pu’er. Many groups of teenage students were walking down the road at 09:15 – a good choice for exercise, allowing some socializing before starting classes. Bernie engaged them and had some fun. There were many tree nurseries where even seemingly ancient trees had brick surrounds that were puzzling. It’s not like one could move and replant these.  The construction continues at a rapid pace – two arches of semi- completed tunnel were seen high above, then multiple enormous stanchions are rising to complete a bridge to completely eliminate descending into the valley.  Many were delighted to chat through Yang Yang with a group of four Chinese cyclists on loaded electric bikes. 

There was some directional confusion at this Y junction, the rain started and not everyone had their rain gear so the fast riders added an extra ten kms and cycled without their rain gear till they caught up to the vans.  There was a long section of road winding through mixed forest that was similar to Highway 7 on the north side of the Fraser Valley, running parallel to the four lane divided highway. Similar except for the bamboo…  Sadly, no animals were spotted except for the first dead dog on the road. Lots of birdsongs though. 

Several members took the van due to GI issues and more elected to stay dry and get warm. 
The 500 km ascent was on wet road with cloud rolling in to drop the temperature to 13°. Lovely riding.  Did I mention we were riding in rain?

We were all happy to shower and change before gathering nearby the hotel for some egg fried rice, soup and beer. Or tea. 

The beds were like planks again but not everyone noticed. Pork or vegetable steamed buns and noodles were eaten at low street tables next to school kids wearing backpacks and having their noodles for breakfast. Lots of photos were taken by delighted locals and us. 

It’s been interesting to see the changes in the women’s clothing as we move through the mountains, from elaborate embroidery to rich velvets and long red fringes hanging from the hats. 
62 km technical ride today with an 18 km uphill on gravel, averaging 6%… some elected to leapfrog that and take the van, and some rode the whole route in temps climbing to 24° and higher. 

Some riders reported seeing a man singeing hair off a dog on the road out of Daheishan- sounded really cruel till I realized it was meat prep like plucking a chicken.  Dogs are pets here as well as food. 

Starting up on the gravel we looked down on a river that flows to the Mekong. The houses are built on the road but clinging to a cliff, often ‘single wide’ or one room in depth.  The trees planted on the hillside are rubber trees. Not fat trunks as I always imagined them to be, but tall, white and stately. 

Just when we climb so high and deep into wild jungle we come upon cinderblock homes and roosters crowing and farm equipment, men and women carrying hoes on their shoulders as they walk to their terraces or small roadside plots. 

We are getting into tea growing country. One woman was tending 3×4’ screens of black fibre that we cleverly realized was drying tea leaves. The parallel curves of the green tea bushes around the steep hillsides are lovely. 

Our second police check point near the top of the ride went well with some jocularity between our Chinese speakers Larry and Yang Yang, and the young smartly dressed police. 

Then it was mostly downhill on the always snaking S curves, past almost continuous shops, storage huts, construction materials, fields, cliffs, lush green growth – you get the picture. 
Gasoline price here is 6.94 ¥/L. 
Filling one van cost 365.11 for 52.61 L

Some ride stats from Max:

• 61.0 kilometres
• 1554 meters elevation gain
• 946 meters elevation loss

More climbing today, 95 kms and over 940 meters ascent ahead. Misty out of MiLe. 

We stopped for oranges. The vans are kept stocked with fruits and snacks. 

This fieldwork continues forever. Never gets boring. We say Ni hao and they say Hello to people walking along the road or standing at a shop watching our progress. 

Big fast descent in late afternoon and we are waved to stop – cyclist down. Terry Chalmers slipped on some gravel on a tight turn and needed to go to hospital for X-rays and wound care.  The service was efficient and affordable. 

Doctors, Terry, guide Wen Chun in back, nurse Barb and Larry
Terry cracked some ribs, fractured a clavicle and lost some skin but was a trooper through it all. She thought of going home as unable to ride, but she and Max decided she could enjoy the rest of the journey. 

We drove out of Kunming and found the karst area hugely popular and wonderful, with great infrastructure and people moving. 

Onto our bikes for 50 kms. We make a crowd, with 22 riders and three cycling guides, two support vans and one bike truck. That’s leader Larry Adamson filling us in. 

Farming covers the countryside. The cornstalks are piled high by the roadside but the purpose of this remains a mystery. China has invested in clean energy and we saw wind generation. 

Talk about being novel. Smartphones are seen everywhere here, we are videoed along the road, through towns and villages, and in the restaurants. 

The owners and the chef wanted photos. Good natured fun. 

Some call it Culture Shock. Leader Larry, and English speaking guides Wen Chun and Yang Yang explain what they can to 22 people who are rarely facing the same way or can’t always hear. 
It is another novelty to have a westerner speaking fluent Chinese. We are functionally illiterate and unable to communicate anything at all, thus we depend mightily on our guides. 
Before we ventured out on our city tour in Kunming, Larry sketched road rules. 

People and goods are on the move here in numbers we can barely fathom. City roads are wide with motor cycle lanes carrying mandatory electric scooters suddenly appearing beside, in front of and on either left or right, carrying cargo, families, without helmets, talking on cellphones. Pedestrians often prefer this lane too, as well as hand carts and the street sweepers clearing leaves and debris using hand tied palm branch brooms. Add to this mélange that vehicles turning right into the Main Street consider they have the right of way, so do not pause or check left. Volume and this seeming chaos dictates caution and traffic moves carefully. So it somehow works. Western Cyclists become wary and aware during our orientation to the roads here. 

Roads and highways are awesomely wide and landscaped, traffic lights occasional, light posts are artistic, sidewalks are twenty feet wide. Both are lined by tall trees and mass plantings of colourful bushes. 

Cars in the city must be no older than ten years, and the preferred choices are SUVs, white, black or grey. Imported Luxury cars are taxed at 300% higher rates, but there are lots seen. 

Oh, and parking is taken wherever one can find it, on either side. 

It is baffling and appreciated to find order in seeming chaos… Drivers have been considerate as we weave through the streets in our long line, drawing attention, smiles, thumbs up, and smartphone videos.