Bit tired this morning and the banging from the market woke me at 5am, tried to stay asleep but that just made it worse when I did try and get up, through everything in my bag and headed down stairs for Omelet and sticky rice, felt the need to feed before another day of cranking up the hills, had a look at the map and the days plan was for some small up and down to start with then drop down to 1000m and back up to 1400m then the big drop of 1000m down to 400m and then the climb of 800m and the final drop back to around 300m. What a day at the office.
So started with a bit of a downhill which was good but then the climbing started again, at this point I ran into the English girl again, she had made it up the hill and stayed in a place just at the top, which I thought was pretty good considering she was walking up the hills. So after a quick chat I was off again and away, cranking up the hill again, it went down 100m and up 100m a lot to start off with. That is vertical meters not distance covered, some of these hills climbed for quite some time.
So my speed was around 5-10km/h on the up hills and pretty quick on the down hills, I finally did the first big drop around 10:30, 500 vertical meters equated to a 5 minute downhill ride over, swing my way through the bends along the sides of some pretty steep hill country. Stopped at the bottom and had a drink and got some fried meat strips which were pretty good I must say. They dry and marinade the meat then fry it to warm it through, I think this must have been marinaded in a fish sauce.
The only problem with going down is not I had a 500 meter vertical climb back up to 1400m, so the slow hall begins, on the way up the hills I came across an old guy walking down carrying a large amount of leaves, for a start I thought he was doing the finger at me, but it was the thumbs up, he must have arthritis in his hands because his index finger was sticking out. Well he still could have been giving me the finger but I like to think otherwise, he was smiling too.
So the ride goes on and on the never ending up hills, I arrived at Kiu Kacham at around 1ish and had some lunch at an overpriced restaurant, well for what it was anyway, sticky rice and boiled chicken, my favorite, It seemed like I had been eating lots of sticky rice lately. As I finished my lunch a Minivan full of tourists pulled in so I got one of the guys to do some photo’s of me riding by and we had a bit of a chat, then it was time for off, a bit of climbing the a big down hill run.
The downhill, 15km with a vertical drop of 1000m, it was magnificent, I passed motorbikes, trucks I only had one car pass me and that was at the top, I swung down through the never ending corners, brakes on for the sharp ones, cutting through other corner to keep a straight fast line, came into one corner a bit fast, came out a bit wide to see a truck crawling up the hill, manage to get back on my side of the road before I flew passed the truck. I would say around the 15-18km mark my arms got a bit tired from braking and holding the bike straight, but I managed to battle on and keep the same momentum going.
After what seemed like an age I made it to the bottom, now it was time for the last big climb of the day, because I had lost so much altitude the temperature had climbed as well, so not only was it going to be a 600m vertical climb over 15km it was also going to be hot, I cranked on the paddles and started my ascent. About 10minutes into the ascent the guys I was talking to at the top passed me by with yells of encouragement and then they were gone in a cloud of diesel smoke.
For the next 3 hours I climbed, sweet dripping, legs cranking, slowly winding my way up the hill, trucks past bellowing there smoke, cans and motor bikes raced passed and I crawled up the hill, always moving forward just very slowly. As I crawled, you’re getting the theme here I hope, slow going, a big black scorpion crawled across the road passed me, it was about 3 inches long , sent a shiver up me spine.
As I approached the summit I took some photo’s of the road I had just travelled, off in the distance you could see part of the road I had come down as well, at the photo stop I noticed that a bar on my trailer had broken, thanks Phillips trailers you could have made it a bit stronger, so I tried it up so hopefully it would not stress other parts of the trailer and cause a major break down. First problem in 2500km or there abouts.
As I finally got to the top the clouds had come in and were turning black over bill mothers, or for Lao Viengs mothers. The thunder started to crackle in the distance and I could see rain moving down the valley where I was heading, I’m going to get wet again. Down the hill again, another good run and then racing passed small villages and on towards my goal of Luang Phrabang, I thought from the map it was mostly downhill and lucky for me it was, by now my legs were shattered and did not have much left in them. I had to walk up a few hills as I could no longer ride, lucky with this town the last 10km was down hill so I rode into town.
My right knee had swollen up and my left knee was complaining by the time I arrived in town but I was here at last, the rain I had mentioned earlier had court up and I was soaked by the time I found my guest house, but I was there and that is all that mattered. Food and sleep is what I needed anything else could wait till tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment