First Bike Tour

I was dragging two bike boxes through an air terminal in Guiyang, China and scanning the crowd for my friend. Guiyang was our meeting spot for the beginning of a three week tour of southern China. The plan was to spend two weeks riding southeast from Guiyang to Guilin where we'd spend the last week hanging out and seeing the sights. We both did a fair amount of mountain biking, but neither of us had attempted anything like this before.

She was easy to spot, the only westerner in a sea of Chinese. This would become a common theme for much of the next three weeks. We were quite the spectacle every where we went, two westerners on bikes. She had arrived the day before and arranged a couple spots at the hostel in town. That would also become a common theme for the next three weeks - she knew a decent amount of Chinese and I knew nothing. She made all the logistical arrangements, ordered food, etc. I made sure the bikes worked...

We set off the next morning from the hostel on our mountain bikes laden with rear racks and panniers. It was the first time either of us had ridden with a load like that. We worked at getting used to the new handling characteristics of our heavy bikes while not getting run over in the heavy traffic - this was either going to be the best idea we'd ever had or the stupidest. At the moment I was leaning toward the later. A very long story a little bit shorter: our itinerary went out the door on day two when both bikes broke down. From there we just started winging it:

Longli -15 minutes of fame as a karaoke star. A girl got up on stage and gave me the flower

Kunming - I failed at my job so we had to head here to get the bikes repaired. This incident is what sparked my interest in learning how to build wheels and repair bikes.

Lijiang - a curious kid checking out our bikes

Tiger Leaping Gorge - mudslides had closed the road. Crossing the mudslides was a bit sketchy but there was no traffic! Pictures can't do that place justice, absolutely amazing!

Kaili - we were told there was a place to do laundry up on the roof. We ran into this guy and his family up there. He was really happy to talk and tell us about the area and places we should visit.

Longji - Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces. 

Li River

Guangzhou - walking through the park we heard some music and went to investigate. Pretty soon I found myself caught up in the middle of it - not exactly by choice

It ended up being nothing like we'd planned or expected. Instead of two weeks on a bike and one week hanging out, it turned into three weeks of mixed bike and bus rides through places we had no idea we would go to. Again and again we saw amazing scenery and met the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. It was incredible and fully converted me to the idea of bike touring. It wasn't the easiest form of travel, but I'm convinced it was the best idea we'd ever had.