Today’s ride takes us to the first large Chinese city of this trip: Chengdu. This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while; I haven’t been able to find proper hand sanitizer in the rural towns, I’m keen to be driven around and to wear normal clothes, and a break from the daily riding routine is welcome!

Today’s route in blue

Today’s route is about 340KM, with estimated time of 8 hours; the going is much much slower here in China vs in Malaysia or Thailand, where you can go 500-700KM in the same time. I attribute this to increased levels of traffic, much slower (observed) speed limits, potential differences in how roads are banked (a guess - just doesn’t feel the same cornering at speed here in China).

Throughout the day, we followed various rivers, cutting through rocky mountains. The landscape seemed like that from the ancient Chinese art with low clouds, turbulent rivers and dark green vegetation smattered across rocky cliffs.

Mountains hidden by clouds

Rest stop halfway to Chengdu

A fellow biker, travelling with lots of (drenched) soft toys!

At one point, we were riding through the clouds and visibility was only about 10-15 metres in front. There, we rode past a fellow motorcyclist who had an accident (although they were already up and ready to go by the time we passed).

Reaching the outskirts Chengdu, the final 60KMs were painfully slow. It took ~2 hours, with low speed limits, and plenty of traffic lights. Not looking forward to the journey away from town!

We’re planning to stay one day here, and I’ll get a service on my bike during this time.

Some stats:

• 341 KMs traveled
• 22L fuel added
• 1 unique interaction
• 30g coffee consumed

Altitude map of today’s ride

Route to date