Chengdu, my first point in China. Ah, its just another city, the drivers here are 10 times worst than KL drivers! While walking to my hostel from the airport… i saw 1 car accident. The next morning, when heading for breakfast, another one! Lol! I went to the only mosque in Chengdu, and around it is full of muslim restaurants. Theyre the Hui, the muslim chinese. The Hui girls?  Jawdropping!! .. hehehe…

I then went to Emei Shan, 1 of the famous mountain in China, south of Chengdu. Not as good as I expected. Its overrated! Bad weather, very cloudy. I could see nothing!… since it was so cloudy! So crowded and expensive!! Only stayed there for a day, then went back to Chengdu.

When I was back in Chengdu, I bought a bike in a Giant bicycle shop. Took me nearly 4 hours to purchase the bike and the equipment, since I dont speak good mandarin, and they dont speak English. It was tough. In the afternoon, I was lucky, I met 2 nice chinese girls while buying lunch in a cheap restaurant, Tanya and Gina. They then told me theyre free over the weekend and plan to take me out. I agreed and we spent time together over the weekend around Chengdu. Theyre very helpful, teach me things, some basic Mandarin and important information about China. They told me that I’m one crazy Malaysian and they want to meet me again, maybe will visit Malaysia next year once im back to KL.

My cycling route mmmm….

Ive to skip Lijiang and Zhongdian (shangrila). Yunnan province is badly flooded now as the bad weather, really bad weather. thousands of homes and crops were destroyed! maybe u guys could read it in our malaysian news too i guess? and ive to change my route. ive always knew that to get to Tibet illegally is tough.. but it was doable. but since the past 2 months, the chinese PSB is now so strict and ALL mat sallehs who tried to cross the tibetan border were caught. none got thru…. even when they tried to sneak in thru the mountains! now… im planning a new route. Instead of starting from Litang, Ill be starting from Chengdu, and will cycle all the way to Litang. That will take roughly around 700 km thru the mountains! I will take the western Sichuan-Tibet highway to Litang, and i will pass a few over 4000m of altitute!… and i will never take this lightly! The duration? Hmmm maybe 10 days… i dont know.

And since i cant enter the Tibetan Autonomous Region, from Litang, I will take the northern Sichuan-Tibet highway all the way into Xining, Qinghai province. So basically thats my new route now, and from there maybe i will pedal all the way to Urumqi in Xinjiang province, then Kashgar, then ride along the legendary Karakoram Highway, all the way into Khunjerab Pass, the gate into Pakistan. I hope to reach Islamabad by Ramadhan…