Biking

It was really a redux of the trip one year prior. We would travel to Beijing with the grandparents, and next journey with them to Yangshuo. My parents loved the trip last May, and we knew that we would all enjoy the trip this year. Both destinations were child-friendly, and interesting to everyone involved. Either Dave or I had missed most destinations in Beijing which we were eager to revisit, and we both loved Yangshuo so much that we were happy for an excuse to return.

We made a few wonderful adjustments to our itinerary - notably staying at the Lee Garden Serviced Apartments in Beijing, within walking distance of the Forbidden City, which saved us loads of time and trouble. And also taking better advantage of the grandparents. Dave and I went for a hike with his Dad one day, a lovely hike where we could barely discern the path sometimes and felt lost in the middle of nowhere. And Dave and I escaped on bikes the second day. Because we wanted to push hard, we didn't bring the fancy camera. But the scenery was so lovely that any camera could capture the place beautifully.

We set off among the placid rice patties, followed small roads through tiny villages, waved at smiling locals and bumped over gravel and dirt roads. The hills stayed along the edge of the scenery and kept our ride absolutely jawdropping.

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After a bit, we seemed to have reached the edge of the rice paddies and the beginning of the hills. And these were serious hills, where the road comprised of seemingly endless switchbacks. Dirt and gravel uphill are not either of our areas of expertise. We were soon exhausted.




Still, we plowed on. What else could we do? We'd followed one road in, and that was the only road which would take us anywhere else. Our map had no apparent scale, and we had no idea how far from the hotel we were. But we sensed that these uphills were only taking us further from our destination. Still, the scenes laid out on the bottom of the hills were so lovely that we could hardly complain. That is, when we weren't struggling to climb a hill.

We had left the hotel around 3:00 in the afternoon. The sun began to fall around 6:00, and it was entirely dark by 8:00. We had no idea where we were, and the absence of electricity within site made the darkness easier to follow but the gravel road much bumpier.

We eventually hit a dead end. Our entirely dark path had grown smaller and smaller, passed angry dogs and families eating dinner. We had the chance to watch village life in its rawest form, people cooking over open flames inside their simple frame homes. Homes which compared more to barns in my experience, we could see people sitting on simple stools and stoking fires. Once the road ended, we stopped the first people we could find and asked for help. This person knew of the hotel, and for only 20RMB (about USD 3) offered to guide us back. We gladly followed him a mere 20 minute ride back to the hotel, arriving over 7 hours and over 60 kilometers after we had departed.