Home » China » Yunnan Province; China

MURRAY'S DIARY for the complete story.

Yunnan Province; China

Mar
2004-09-14 15:37:29

Displayed times (last time: ) Rating 4/5

Rating: 4.00 out of 5.00. 1 members have rated this article

make soak you to your tows. We have started cycling in Kunming heading south for Laos three days ago, this part of China is very beautiful with quite steep mountains and scenic views over endless rice fields. Unless it’s raining and clouded the whole day... In fact, we could be in Africa or anywhere else while cycling in these huge clouds that are accompanying us for the last few days. Our views are foggy and we can not look for more than 50meters into the future. Sounds and noises have gone woolly in the fog, we only know where the road is going if a lorry in the distance is using its horn. ‘We are going down again!?’, but who knows the road will go up or down after 50 meters, it’s a big mist(ery).

It is very busy on the road because the road we are cycling on is under construction. Some of the lorry drivers use their horn just one turn before it gets close to us and a second time just besides us. They even have two horns, one for in villages or passing cars and a loud one when they want to encourage cyclists. We met some cyclists who are cycling with earplugs in their left ear (we’re cycling on the right side of the road here).

This road descended for the last 20km and because we could not predict this, we have just gone down in our soaking wet clothes getting colder and colder. We do have and use all of the highly waterproof and breathable raingear, but it is still quite a job to put everything on (and off, and on, and off everytime it stops and starts drizzling). The humidity gets higher the more we cycle to the south, and we neglect to protect ourselves from the rain... with this humidity you are soaked anyway. Our booties are no longer waterproof so we have to cover our feet with a plastic bag in our booties, never thought we sweat so much. Raymond has an extra annoyance during rainy days: his panniers are no longer waterproof and so he struggles with plastic garbage bags. Only at the end of the fifth day from Kunming it stops ...