A New Tour - Sichuan, Eastern Tibet cycling holidays banner image

A New Tour - Sichuan, Eastern Tibet

16 June 17

Cycling in beautiful solitude

A sneak peak at a whole new tour

So many images and impressions are swimming in my head at the moment that it’s difficult to believe they are all from just one tour. It has taken me some time to calm these swirling fragmented images and organise them into some semblance of a tour description, but I am getting close, and am rather excited about it.

If you're after advice on a cycling route you need to ask a cyclist. Fortunately, this fellow turned up on cue with some sound advice

Into Tibet

Lijiang is a much-visited tourist haunt in the very north of China’s Yunnan Province. Many visit this town with good reason - once away from the tourist hordes its cobbled streets are a delight to explore. Few though head north from here, quite likely because what lays ahead is a little daunting. On the southern edge of China’s Tibetan region, the area north of Lijiang takes one into a land of immensely high mountains, dry dusty valleys, forests of pine and rhododendrons, pastures where yak graze, villages of wooden houses, and the traditional fortress-like stone mansions of the Tibetan people. Nomad camps are populated by motorbike-riding cowboys (yak boys?) and guarded by roaming Tibetan Mastiffs. And so with much excitement Echo Lee and I drove north from Lijiang to explore PaintedRoads’ latest Chinese adventure. 

Tibetan house and barley fieldTypical Tibetan architecture

Wot, No Bikes?

For the first time ever a PaintedRoads tour has been explored by car rather than by bicycle. Having made such a statement I shall state that it is not exactly true, as I have explored the region by bicycle on more than one occasion (see pics from the previous blog post). What we were doing this time was going over ground previously ridden to see how things look in 2017, and to see how best to piece together the collection of routes we already have. Taking the car proved to be wise as we backtracked and amended the route on enough occasions to cover 1700 kilometres in order to put together a 900KMS tour.

Our research vehicle

A Little Bit Of Yunnan

Early on in the tour is the dramatic little town of Bao Shan. Perched precariously atop a rocky outcrop high above the Yangtse river this delightful little spot has narrow flagstone streets where ponies are the only transport.  Were it not such a choir to get to and from, Bao Shan would be a major tourist hotspot, however it is not easily accessible with the result that during our visit we were the only tourists in town. But a journey is what we are all about, and so the dramatic bicycle ride into town combined with the river journey away is perfect, and the dearth of tourist is a delight as we wander the streets.

Bao Shan perches high above the Yangtse river and is home for one night

Lugu Lake, our next port of call, is a beautiful body of fresh blue water right on the Yunnan/Sichuan border, and a fine spot for a rest and acclimatisation day before we head into the Tibetan world.

Lugu Lake, the site of our first rest/acclimatisation day

Into Tibet.

The last time I left Lugu Lake on a bicycle was ten years ago, and the way we chose back then was so vague it took us two days to find our way into Sichuan. Today the road is better, it is sealed, it is quiet and it is immensely beautiful. Two days after leaving Lugu Lake we find ourselves heading towards our first 4000-metre pass via our first climb in excess of 35KMS. The surface is super, and the gradient is kind, gaining just over a thousand metres during those 35KMS. But the air is thin, and one must never underestimate the effect of altitude when cycling.

Altitude

And herein lies one of the beauties of this tour, although it is by all accounts a high altitude tour we have the benefit of sleeping notably lower each night that the day’s highpoint. This is a great feature to ensure safe and comfortable acclimatisation to altitude. 

The only night we do not sleep lower is our overnight at Baheng Pasture. This is the midway point for our two-day off-road section, mostly gravel tracks, but with some rocky stuff thrown in to keep us on our toes. The pasture is a beautiful spot situated a tad below 4000 meters, and the following morning our first hour or so takes us to a beautiful pass that offers stunning views of snow peaks and a forty-kilometre descent on a white gravel road - strada bianchi, fantastic stuff.

Bicycle touring Sichuan province China

 

And In The End

As always when exploring a route there are highs and lows. The lows are generally when a part of the planned route doesn't work out for one reason or another, which in the case of this tour was the originally intended ending.

Chengdu was initially pencilled in as the end of the tour, but as we explored it became acutely apparent it was just too far to fit into a realistic time frame.

So we drew things a tad closer to the start with the lofty town of Litang, which according to sources is the highest in the world. Cycling to the world’s highest town has quite a touch of drama, doesn’t it? It gives a wonderful element of romantic adventure, people would like that we thought, and so we went to Litang. This was an option that seemed quite splendid until we reached Litang, where we discovered that a decade after my first visit this dusty Wild West town remains a veritable dump. It has beautiful evening light, and we found a great hotel, but a tour must end on a high, and Litang, although lofty in altitude, does not create a sense of euphoria when, after a tough two weeks cycling, one rides into town. Litang also lacks a good infrastructure for departing the tour, and so with a flourish of pen, we crossed Litang off of the list of ending places and refilled the car with fuel.

Three cycling day’s east of Litang is the town of Kanding, the final Tibetan town before dropping to the provincial capital of Chengdu at a lowly 900 metres above sea level. We set off to Kanding crossing valleys and passes and high plateaus on a road that a decade before had been bereft of traffic. Now, alas, dreadful internal combustion powered vehicles blight the road with fumes and noise. The road has no shoulder, and the traffic, whilst not exactly an endless stream, was to my mind too heavy to make for an enjoyable three days riding however beautiful the vistas may be - “this will not do” went the cry.

One of the hotels we will be using on the tour

Backtrack

And so we backtracked to the ending I had favoured secretly from the start, Shangri La. It was to my mind, in all ways but one, the perfect finale to this tour. To end with a dramatic ride across rugged wild passes into a beautiful Tibetan town with character, fine food, good locally brewed beer, and an airport was surely a winner. And so we looked. 

It was a road I had ridden back in 2007 when it was empty, very empty. It was also remote, it was high, and I was keen to see it again.

Now it is remote, high, and empty. It is sealed in places and not in others. We also found the finest hotel of the tour along this route, which came as a surprise as finding accommodation was a big concern. 

Typical for this tour, baron brown walls, a blue and white ceiling, and a carpet all hues of green

All but one?

I said that ending in Shangri La was a perfect finale in all ways but one, and that one shortfall is an imaginary shortfall. Unfortunately, a lot of things in life are imagined but believed to be true. I expect that many people will tell you that Iran is a dreadful country to visit, that it is a nation of dastardly characters all out to slit your throat. You will, however, only be told this by people who have not been there, it is imaginary, it is untrue, but it stops people from visiting. Likewise fitting Shangri La into this tour can cause the imaginary problem that because Shangri La is the start point for our Yunnan tour the Sichuan Tibet tour must be similar, it is not. It is in actuality very different. Shangri La is the edge of the Tibetan world. In the Yunnan tour we start on the edge of Tibet and travel away, we drop lower and towards SE Asia. The Sichuan tour is high, and it is, for the most part, Tibetan in culture, in architecture, in scenery and smells and textures and taste. Shangri La is a fitting and very suitable end, a lovely place to wind down and relax, to wander the cobblestoned streets, to drink good coffee, and to enjoy a fine craft ale. 

Architecturally this tour is divided with the earlier days seeing bare stone houses that give way to white painted abodes as we move on 
 

This road is so new it doesn't even appear on digital maps, fortunately, we stumbled upon on and it fits perfectly in the tour

 

Shangri La

Anyone who has been on the PaintedRoads Yunnan tour will be only too aware of how delightful the little town of Shangri La is. Fly into Shangri La from the low lands and it feels high, Tibetan and exotic. Cycle into Shangri La from Sichuan and it feels low altitude and more regular Chinese. It also has all the little luxuries one will no doubt have missed during two weeks of high altitude adventure cycling, cappuccino, apple pie, pizza, strong beer. It also boasts an airport but an hour’s hop from Chengdu and Kunming, and a lovely comfortable little boutique lodge we have been using for the past few years. 

A small town as we head towards Shangri La

 

Anticipation 

Oh, I am looking forward to this tour. It will be the 2018 Lab Rat Run beginning in Lijiang on June 2nd next year, and finishing 16 days later in Shangri La. Full details soon. 

Yaks graze in a high altitude pasture

A Buddhist monastery along the way

High passes are always crowned with prayer flags through which the wind blows and sends incantations to the heavens. This pass sits at a lofty 4250 metres

The streets of Tibet

Yak pastures and pine trees at four thousand metres

The road into the village of Longsa Pasture, the highest night of the tour

Monastery

Yep there's even cactus 

The streets of Bao Shan

Many of the roads are perfectly sealed and bereft of traffic...

some are not sealed - this deserted gravel road descends for forty kilometres into the valley below...

where these fellows reside