We got a bus from LuDing without much hastle thanks to an unexpected meeting with a young man who spoke english and are now in Cengdu. It would not have been a fun ride with the traffic, narrow roads etc.(saved a set of brake pads anyway!) but it was quite the canyoun. Checking on possible atlernate routes in Ganzu province as we work our way to C Asia.
Checked into trains and bus to get north to Guangyuan and can take a train for 5 hrs for about 50 yen so the plan now is to get up early and ride thru this city of 13,000,000 to the north train station and take the earliest train we can north. We checked yesterday with the US and Chinese consulates here in town and no one seemed to know for sure that the area was or was not open. We interpet that as it is open and we'll plan to ride from Guangyuan thru SW Ganzu (a strong Bhuddist area but also supposed to be quite scenic, towards Lanzhou and into the Hexi corridor for a bit before catching a train again to Urumqi. From there we get our visa to start us in Central Asia.
The Hexi Corridor is thru which all the invading armies entered China and the Chinese went west for their conquests. It's just north of the Taklamkian (sp) desert but supposed to be some really interested scenery and mud villages, carvings on the walls and lots of stuff dating back centuries. We'd like to ride NW from Urumqi but not sure what crossings are open to foreigners so most likely we'll have to cross at Korgas.
Chengdu is actually a pretty nice smog choked city, we walked quite a bit yesterday getting road maps for Gonzu and Xiaxing provinces to the north, the US embassy and just around. We thought about leaving today but decided we needed a day to do nothing except email and clean the bikes/panniers. Found an internet cafe but the computer won't recognize my cammera so will try later tonight on a computer from a Swiss couple we met here taking photos all over China of male hairdressers (they all have quite the hairdo's.).
Anyway all is well and we are lookoing forward to continuing on the journey tomorrow.
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