Dali to Jinggu

It was back on the bike for some nice riding south from Dali. This post covers the first ~450km to Jinggu.

I rode out of Dali largely into the unknown. Beyond my lunch stop that day in Weishan, this part of China isn’t mentioned at all in Lonely Planet. Luckily I’m following the route of a couple of Kiwis (Mark and Hana) who came this way 18 months ago, and it was their blog and amazing photos that inspired me to take this route, and I’m glad I did! You can check out their blog here.

From Old Dali, where I stayed, it was a 15km ride to Dali City- a typical busy Chinese city that I just rode straight through. From there it was a 450m climb to 2400m up and over to the next valley. I made a bit of a mistake here- taking the smooth new road up the hill and the old windy, rough road down the other side. This is the opposite of how you should travel over climbs and descents! You want the old road going up (because it has less trucks and the surface doesn’t slow you down that much more anyway) and then the smooth new road going down (so you can use the smooth surface to go fast and make up for the time you lost climbing slowly).. But oh well, you live and learn!

Here are some photos from the morning’s ride to Weishan.

I had lunch at the town of Weishan, one of the standard, but cheap and tasty noodle soups that are found all over the place..

The rest of the day was spent riding beside a river down a valley to Nanjian. It was a nice little valley and the road wasn’t too busy.






The first bananas of the trip!

Coming into bigger towns the roads often turn into this sort of thing- straight with lots of solar powered streetlights – even though the towns don’t have streetlights themselves!



After 110km I arrived in Nanjian. This was the first time I stayed somewhere other than a hostel in China.. I went to the first place I found- a place with “Youth Hotel” on the gate. Turns out it was a very cheap place- only ¥20, which is about $NZ4! And it felt pretty cheap! But it did the job, and Indie got to stay in the room with me (as it has in every hotel except one).

The next morning saw an ~800m climb out of the gates over a range.

I had a couple of the scariest moments on the trip on this climb. I was slogging up the hill- sweating and panting when I heard the barks of a couple of dogs barreling out from a road with an angry look in their eyes! Shiiiiitttt! I managed to accelerate enough, heart almost bursting, to get away up the hill from them- enough to be outside of their range of interest.. Jeez it scared me though! The same thing happened further on, another two dogs from a house that was by itself a bit (dogs in villages seem to either be tied up or leave me along). This time I had my Clickstand ready and yelled and swung it towards them enough to keep them away.. By the time I met another couple of dogs I partly remembered a tip I’d read on one of the many blogs I’d followed before the trip that stopping is actually a pretty effective way of taking them on. With my Clickstand ready to whack it on the nose, the next time one came at me I rode on a bit past the house it was protecting and slammed on my brakes- standing up and yelling at it. It seemed to work, and while it keep barking and showing it’s teeth, it didn’t come closer than a few metres, and I was able to move on ok.


From the top it was largely downhill to Jingdong- a very busy town that I stayed the night.. This day was about 110km as well.


Piggies!!!








This room was $NZ8 (¥40) – not bad for 2 beds, a TV and my own bathroom!

I’m getting closer to the tropics now (Jinggu is pretty much on the Tropic of Cancer), and so it’s getting more humid. This is especially evident in the mornings where I’m usually riding through mist till 8 or 9am.

This day was a relatively easy day of just 79km and all of it downhill to Zhenyuan.


Near Zhenyuan I came across this large area of earthworks- a huge amount of fill has gone in! I recommend clicking through to the full-size picture and look for the van on the left-hand side to give some scale. Just the latest layer of fill is about 10-12m deep!

It took several attempts to find a hotel in Zhenyuan that would let me stay, but when I did find one it was pretty nice.

Climbing out of Zhenyuan the next morning it was foggy again. It was a great climb though- especially breaking through the mist passing hillside villages.

The road I was following wasn’t in my GPS. I knew it was passable thanks to Mark and Hana’s blog, and it was in Google Maps, just not in OpenStreetMaps (I’ve since added it in myself using my GPS track). Most of it was sealed, but I knew that the middle 30km section was unsealed. At one point I came to an intersection, and was slightly unsure which was the correct way to go. I flagged down a young guy on a motorbike and it turned out he spoke a little English. He helped me decide that the road I was going to take was the right one, a good thing. He then phoned his wife, who spoke really good English- it was the only decent English conversation I had in a week!

So the next 30km was on a pretty bumpy dirt road. It was really nice though, especially when I got to the pass and looked down into the valley I was about to descend through..

I had lunch in another busy town where I was quickly surrounded by men looking at my bike. Everyone seems to be intrigued by my GoPro mounted to the top-tube, and ask what it is.. “Video camera” is one of the words in my phrasebook that I’ve highlighted!
From there it was back on the seal and down the valley to Jinggu. It was a 126km day all up, with about 1000m of climbing. I was pretty worried about making it in time (day lengths are shorter in the tropics remember), but in the end it was ok.

So that’s the ride to Jinggu.. It was some great riding, and took me out of my comfort zone heading into an area where there’s almost no English spoken. For a while I’d I thought that the day from Zhenyuan to Jinggu was going to be my hardest day (possibly of the whole trip). Little did I know how the next day was going to put me on my arse!

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