Seriously? It’s five? It actually feels like the right moment to turn around and have another nap before getting up. But up we get, pack and hit the road before 6 am. A nice morning ride, flat, little traffic and not hot at all. Like, only 27 degrees and moon instead of sun in the sky. Rice paddies all around us.
Awesome. This could be like all day! Wasn’t of course. It got hot. It got steep. It got city-ish. Okay, at first, the city-ish part was great as we got fried noodles, soy-milk and mantou at the side of the road for energy as well as really well maintained public toilets for the morning routine even before we reached the city of Hezhou.
It felt like we were climbing so much – I couldn’t believe the downhill wasn’t there yet. Niklas claimed we had a gradual downhill but too much headwind at some point but I still claim it only looked as if but wasn’t. I was tired, exhausted, dehydrated – and then the road was blocked. A short look on the map – as well as all the motorcycles and cars turning off the street – showed us which way to go or… to climb. Well, at least it was beautiful and idyllic. Oh – and uphill. At the end of it was a look-out-point. So we would get water there and probably go up and have an even better look-around. But no – it was closed. So, no (extra-)view and no water.
***
“Nah, we just get water at the next village” I said after having a look at the map. We just had lunch as well as my bag fixed in Butouzhen and the next villages were marked on the map. So no problem there and we still had a bit in our bottles. We set off – and the road was closed. … The map indicated we had to go the long-way-round and no villages until the very end. I checked with Huan, who we sent pictures of the road-signs, if we really had to go around. But since that’s what the signs said (“Drive slowly” as well as “Road blocked”) and ALL the motorcyclists went around, we eventually did the same.
Appears to be a perfect road…
Of course – it was even more idyllic than the first turn-off. It would have been perfect for camping. If it was just a few hours later and we had just a bit more water and a bit more food.The road was in exact the condition, you would expect a small road to be that’s been used as a major road since May. Not-so-pristine. That and the (up-)hillyness of it – and we needed an hour for these 5k.
Please mark the road conditions we had instead.
When we finally got back to the main road, we couldn’t make if the road was really blocked by roadwork or if there were just these signs. It looked perfect and new from what we could see and a car emerged from there, right there and then.
After 12 hours on the road, we made it to Xinduzhen. I was exhausted, Niklas high on endorphines. We spent our last cash on the nicest hotel I could find, feeding Niklas some cake and me a fancy-pink-pitaya-drink, getting some souvenir tea for Niklas and a hair-wash for me.
Such beautiful, intense colours!
Before we dragged on to the next ATM. And the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. They wouldn’t take Niklas credit card and we just spent our cash on all the above mentioned essentials…
Eventually, we were successful and I fell into a deep slumber.
The roadworks we followed for kilometers and kilometers in the morning
The view you get for all this hard-work!
Shanghainese-style eggs with tomato and a lot of sugar. All gone, eaten by half-starved-me in 15 minutes during the end of the day.
