So from the First Bend I embarked on a four-day journey through the grasslands and mountains of northern Sichuan to get to the provincial capital. My last view of the Yellow River was when passing through Tangke (唐克), a scruffy riverside town that had little to recommend it. I made a detour across a bridge over the White River (白河, Baihe) for a few kilometres to the west of town to see what the road looked like going upstream.
After passing a large field of rapeseed it petered out into a dirt track that ran through farmland flood plains. The river here changed its course frequently. On the map I could see ‘ghost’ loop images indicating where the river had previously run. The route upriver looked desolate, especially in the rain.
As I descended, I left the grasslands - and the Yellow River - behind me. After one more climb to a tunnel through the Qionglai mountain range, it was downhill all the way from there to Chengdu. I took the road down to Heishui (黑水), following the course of the Black River, which was in flood. The Aba Tibetan houses here were built of stone and looked like chalets from the Alps. To the south were the famous peaks of the Sigunian Range and I bypassed turnoffs to see glaciers and more Long March monuments.
From Maoxian (茂县) the road south passed through Wenchuan (汶川), the epicentre of a 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 69,000 people. When rebuilding the roads devastated by landslides, China’s civil engineers had created a new route using a series of tunnels through the mountains. Four of these were more than two kilometres in length, and one was a whopping 4.7 kilometres. There was only a narrow shoulder and some sections were unlit, which meant pedalling in complete darkness with just a weak bike light to illuminate the way ahead.
The road was wet and there were ruts and potholes in the surface that were hard to see and threatened to unseat me. Not to mention my worries about carbon monoxide from exhaust fumes, it was terrifying to have three or four trucks approach from behind you. When I saw the headlights I would pull over and huddle in as close to the tunnel wall as possible until the monsters had roared past. I dropped my precious hat somewhere in the tunnel and was too scared to go back for it.
My journey to Hongyuan (红原) took me across Tibetan grassland plains beside the Bai river. The rainy season had set in and I became accustomed to pedalling in the wet. Along the roadside there were many more Tibetan tourist businesses, all offering the same range of horse rides, ATVs, honey for sale, yak meat barbecues and rows of cabins and tents. There were Long March memorials, Tibetan Buddhist chortens and car wrecks displayed as public warnings against traffic accidents (‘9 out of 10 crashes are caused by speeding!’’).
Hongyuan was a mess because the entire main street was closed off for reconstruction. I squelched my bike through a muddy diversion and found a room in a tatty Tibetan run hotel with a friendly receptionist.
On the second day of cycling through the rainy plateau south of Hongyuan I pedalled up a long incline to a 4350 metre pass called Chazi Liangzi (查真梁子). The signs proclaimed it to be the place where the watershed of the Yellow River met with that of the Yangtze.
“Standing on the ridge and looking down you can enjoy the two very different landforms of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River at the same time, and enjoy the two different landforms of mountains and grasslands,” it said.
Sure enough, there were mountains ahead, albeit covered in rainclouds.
As I descended, I left the grasslands - and the Yellow River - behind me. After one more climb to a tunnel through the Qionglai mountain range, it was downhill all the way from there to Chengdu. I took the road down to Heishui (黑水), following the course of the Black River, which was in flood. The Aba Tibetan houses here were built of stone and looked like chalets from the Alps. To the south were the famous peaks of the Sigunian Range and I bypassed turnoffs to see glaciers and more Long March monuments.
Here was tourist infrastructure: the road had cycle paths in some sections and Heishui town had boutique hotels: but I was not yet home and dry. The rain continued the next day and the river was in even greater flood. The road south was blocked by landslides due to the rain and I had to wait an hour in a line with a lot of impatient Chinese car drivers for a bulldozer to clear a way though.
After the tunnel ordeal I arrived in Dujiangyan a nervous mess, spending the last few kilometres yelling at cars for being too close when passing me. Perhaps it was the anticlimax of no longer having a goal after three months of following the river - I needed a break.
When I joined the busy highway that linked Jiuzhaigou to Chengdu the real traffic nightmare began: it was a narrow twisting road with no shoulder and many blind corners. I spent so long pausing to let passing traffic go past that it took me two hours to cover the last 30 kilometres into Maoxian.
With the rainy season now providing a steady daily downpour the Min river en route to Chengdu was in full flood. The highway made numerous crossings of the river whose waters piled up in alarming surging waves against the bridge supports, and I worried this would lead to the road ahead being closed.
What I should have worried about were the tunnels.
From Maoxian (茂县) the road south passed through Wenchuan (汶川), the epicentre of a 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 69,000 people. When rebuilding the roads devastated by landslides, China’s civil engineers had created a new route using a series of tunnels through the mountains. Four of these were more than two kilometres in length, and one was a whopping 4.7 kilometres. There was only a narrow shoulder and some sections were unlit, which meant pedalling in complete darkness with just a weak bike light to illuminate the way ahead.
The road was wet and there were ruts and potholes in the surface that were hard to see and threatened to unseat me. Not to mention my worries about carbon monoxide from exhaust fumes, it was terrifying to have three or four trucks approach from behind you. When I saw the headlights I would pull over and huddle in as close to the tunnel wall as possible until the monsters had roared past. I dropped my precious hat somewhere in the tunnel and was too scared to go back for it.
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