Chengdu – Beichuan – Maoxian

23rd May 2014        15-29’C          305km
Chengdu – Beichuan – Maoxian

The Chengdu traffic gods went easy on me this morning on the way out of Chengdu. 2hrs of stop-start traffic and traffic lights wasn’t anywhere near as challenging as I had expected and mentally prepared for.

When we stopped for lunch, a small crowd surrounded the bikes and numerous photos were taken by both audiences.

I stopped for fuel just outside town, and watched the guide car drive past, assuming they would stop at the next turn, as we had agreed, but they didn’t stop and as a result, I ended up lost.  The GPS didn’t even know the town, nor the road I was supposed to be on.  I had dual-language paper map and showed that to a few people, but nobody knew how to get to old Biechuang.  In the end, I hunted for a truck driver and found one who pointed me in the right direction.

I reached a point where the road entered a factory, that looked like a steel mill, the security guard let me ride around the gate and for five minutes I rode through the factory amongst forklifts and workers carrying tools until I reached the exit gate, where security looked at me weirdly but let me ride around the gate again.

When I saw a middle aged lady in a shack watching TV, I stopped to check I was in the right track, she looked at the bike and indicated that the road ahead was very narrow for motorbikes. So I continued on until I reached a bridge that had been damaged in the Sichuan earthquake. Concrete barricades had been built at each end of the bridge to stop traffic and looked only just wide enough to fit my bike through. I removed both panniers and carried them across the bridge to the other side, then maneuvered the bike through the small gaps. On the northern side, the gap was so tight that I need to wiggle the handlebars to get through. The bike stood up in the gap without the stand for a photo.

I reached the town of Old Beichuan. Beichuan was completely destroyed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the town remains as it was after the quake.  50,000 people lived in the town prior to the earthquake, those that survived the quake now live in a newly built town, in a safer location some kilometres away from the old town. Walking around the deserted town, amongst the ruined buildings and bent street-lamps, I felt strangely uncomfortable. Normally these types of places would not affect me greatly, but this place upset me.

I continued on towards Maoxian, arriving at 7pm, reuniting with the rest of the guys at the hotel.

After dinner, I was out walking to buy a bottle of water, when I was stopped by a group of 6 people drinking beer and eating snacks on the street, they insisted I join them, so I sat down and spent the next few hours somehow communicating in bits of Chinese, English and toasts in Tibetan. All round an interesting day and a nice evening.