Trip report: up the Nujiang, down the Mekong, on a folding bike

Just back from a two week trip in Yunnan, exploring sections of the Nujiang and Mekong rivers by bike. 

I picked up my Dahon Jetstream 20 inch wheel folding bike from where I'd left it in Kunming's Upland Hostel, and took the high-speed (300km/h) train to Baoshan. My route was north along the river to Gongshan, with stops at Baihualing (百花岭) birdwatching centre, Liuku (Lushui) and Gongshan. Then over the newly-built De-Gong highway to Deqen via Dimaluo, and then exploring the Mekong gorge southwards towards Cizhong.

There was no real goal to this trip other than to have a nice New Year break away from the Australian summer holiday crowds.

I travelled light, with just a simple 45L backpack strapped on the back of the bike - no camping equipment. I stayed in local hotels and guesthouses that I booked via WeChat (Weixin), which generally cost around 120-150 kuai a night.

The hardest bit of the trip was the first day from Baoshan to Baihualing, which involved quite a bit of up-and down with overall ascent into forested hills to Pupiaozhen, then a steep descent some 1500m to the Nujiang [and a police checkpoint, at Lujiang]. 

From the river I biked up the main highway to get to the small village of Gangdang (岗党) below Baihualing, where I hired a local driver to take me and my folded bike up the 1000m or so into the forested Gaoligong mountains to Baihualing. 

Birdwatchers will know this place well, the 'environmental tourism zone' of 百花岭生态旅游区 (Baihualing Shengtai Luyouqu) is well organised with many hides where twitchers with telephoto lenses can observe many rare Asian birds feeding at prepared food and watering holes set up by local farmers. I stayed a couple of nights at the posh Lingzhi guesthouse with an idyllic setting, just as an excuse to be somewhere different for New Year's Eve.

I tried a day of birdwatching in a hide, but after three hours I must admit I'd had enough, despite being a former member of the RSPB and the Young Ornithologists Club.  The forest trails I used to return to the guesthouse were nice enough, though. 

Baihualing Tip: if you come here, bring  most of your supplies: there is only one 'supermarket' in the village with limited stocks and it's a 2km hike up the road from the Lingzhi guesthouse.

Day 2 I biked up northwards on the highway along the placed Nujiang in beautiful winter sunshine.  Passed a few holiday resorts and this was definitely 'coffee country' judging by the number of places offering tasting. The traffic wasn't too heavy and for some reason many of the new roadside building are done in mock Thai/Burmese style. Had to negotiate a couple more police checkpoints before Liuku, at the places where the roads from Baoshan/Dali meet the Nujiang bridges.

Liuku was a pleasant stop - it seems to have an ideal climate and friendly people - as well as good infrastructure. I stayed at the Liushui Jiangzhi Panjin hotel which has a perfect location next to the bridge and river, and reasonable prices (190 kuai).

Day 3 I skipped the long 400km pedal up the Nujiang valley to Gongshan via Fugong because I've biked this before in the opposite direction, on a Brompton. For 150 kuai I shared a private van to Gongshan from outside Liuku's bus station. One of the advantages of a folding bike - chuck it in the back of a car and skip the boring/difficult bits!

I stayed at the Lavande Hotel in Gongshan, where I made a last minute decision to avoid the Dulong valley, which I already 'did' exactly one year ago, but on foot/hire car. Instead, I decided to try cycling up to Dimaluo to check out whether my old Tibetan host and trekking guide Aluo was still around. I'd previously hiked over the main range in a 3-day trek from Cizhong to stay at Aluo's lodge.

Day 4 was a pleasant surprise as I discovered there was a dedicated cycle path tacked on to the highway all the way north from Gongshan. I followed this empty track, marvelling at the riverside scenery. It was about 35km to Dimaluo (迪麻洛), which took me through many interesting small villages and riverside settlements. I saw no other bikes [or tourists] on the trail, which must have cost a fortune to build. 

Apart from a few places where it was blocked by parked cars, it was a great trail. At one point it separated from the highway and switched over to the other side of the Nujiang, which was even more impressive, scenery and vibe-wise.

Arriving at Pengdang bridge (捧当大桥) at lunchtime I had some great noodles from a roadside stall, then began the grind up the 8km of switchback road leading up to Dimaluo. The road was good and the gradient not too severe because this was the start [or end] of the Deqen-Gongshan Highway (Degong Gonglu, 德贡公路). A feat of engineering that links the Nujiang and Mekong (Lancang) river canyons by crossing the Hengduan mountains. 

Before the highway was built, travellers to Gongshan and Bingzhongluo had to drive 400km up the Nujiang valley from the only northerly access point at Liuku, and then double back to return. With Dimaluo only about 70km distant from the Lancang (Mekong) as the crow flies, it made sense to build a 'short cut' highway over the Peacock Mountain pass  (孔雀山垭口, Kǒngquè shān yākǒu) of 4500m. Until recently the only direct way over the mountains between the Mekong and the Nujiang was to hike over the 4000m+ Sila Pass, now known as the Selalaka (蛇拉腊卡垭口), as I describe in my blog from a decade ago.

But now the Nujiang-Mekong (De-Gong) trans-mountain highway has been completed and the road is now a modern tarmac and concerete dual-lane highway all the way, including a 1km tunnel that cuts through the final mountain ridge.

I found Aluo's lodge in the small village of Dimaluo, which is now the western entry point to the De-Gong highway. I first visited about 15 years ago, when Aluo hosted guests in his wooden cabin which acted as guesthouse and an informal trekking guide centre.

Now his guesthouse is a bit grander and more upmarket, but still Tibetan and Catholic in character, with a crucifix and yak butter tea in the  breakfast room. I was the only guest that night and shared dinner of hotpot chicken with his family. Over dinner Aluo said the highway had not brought as much tourist trade as he'd expected. The new Chinese breed of independent SUV 'self-guided' tourist tended to whizz through from Bingzhongluo en route for Deqen, without stopping overnight at Dimaluo. 

He also made an interesting point about the government being generous to local minority communities. By providing financial benefits that equalled 70% of their expected household income, these subsidies encouraged rural households to plant more tress and keep the environment clean. But conversely, this meant that they no longer had any incentive to plant and grow crops. He showed me a cabbage that he said was 'imported' from Baoshan area because local cabbages were in short supply and cost three times the price. 

Similar to a rant I heard from a Dulong farmer, Aluo said many poor rural kids were now getting good educations, with many going to university in major centres. However, on graduating they did not want to work in the fields or do manual work. This meant rural kids and communities were losing the traditional crop-growing and livestock rearing skills that had been passed down for generations. More kids should be sent to vocational schools, he argued.

Day 5: After a leisurely Tibetan breakfast of mantou, pickles and yak butter tea, I waited to be picked up by a driver organised by Aluo to take me over the De-Gong highway to Deqen. Before I left I managed to take a look at the local Catholic church, which in 2008 had been a simple but beautifully crafted wooden structure. Sadly this had been demolished in 2016 and replaced by a larger and more utilitarian  concrete structure. The previous church had been draughty, leaking, rat-infested and hard to maintain, the locals told me.

2025

2008

The drive over the Hengduan divide to Deqen was a white knuckle ride thanks to a maniac driver who seemed to accelerate rather than brake around the twisting, switchback road loops up in the forested highlands. And even with sunny clear weather there were patches of ice and snow along the higher stretches of the road.

So I was relieved when we made it through the summit tunnel and began the equally long and twisting descent to the Mekong, into territory that was more culturally Tibetan compared to the mixed Lisu/Naxi/Nu/Tibetan of the upper Nujiang.

After twisting down the long narrow gorge of Yongzhi (永支, aka Lonjdre, which Joseph Rock dramatically described as "a veritable corkscrew up a weird black chasm" into the depths of the canyon), we finally hit the Mekong river. In contrast to the green and fertile Nujiang, the upper Mekong is barren and brown-ish grey for much of its length. The only few patches of green were rice and maize terraces at river level.

The driver dropped me off in Deqen after a long haul back up from the river. I cycled 10km to Feilaisi along another new and unused section of separated cycle path. With the altitude now around 3300m, I had to go very slowly because I was affected by altitude sickness.

I booked into a slightly tacky roadside hotel at Feilaisi, which has now seen hotels and restaurants mushroom to meet capacity demands of huge crowds that come to see the sunrise breaking over the mountain. I was one of them and had selected this 'tacky' hotel because it had a grandstand view of the mountain, over the heads of the thronging masses of the observation deck.

The service at this Tibetan-run hotel was a bit take-it-or-leave-it, which was exactly the market situation given their monopoly on ringside seats for the sunrise. I was out of breath just climbing the three flights of stairs to my room, and almost overslept.

Day 6 saw me up before dawn, setting up my time-lapse iPhone camera in the window before turning to more routine matters such as making some coffee and packing my bag. Sunrise was at around 8am, and I managed to capture a nice transition from dark skies to golden and then bright white sunrays on Kawakarpo.

This was not planned to be my final day 'on the road' but it turned out to be. The original notion was to cycle down the huge descent to the Mekong, then continue south about 50km or so to reach the Catholic church at Cizhong - now a major tourist attraction. I've visited Cizhong at least twice previously and had no great desire to make a repeat visit. But I saw it as a convenient stopping off point for onward travel south towards Weixi.

As it turned out, I decided to call it a day after finding myself exhausted from the after-effects of altitude sickness later in the day.

But first I backtracked along the cycle path to an almost deserted observation deck, where I found a makeshift tent camp belonging to a Chinese touring cyclist. Shivering in his thermals as he emerged from his wigwam, the guy told me he was heading to Tibet to spend 'new year/spring festival' there. He reassured me that it was downhill almost all the way to Cizhong and wished me well on my trip in the opposite direction to him.

However, I found the steep descent to the Mekong was no freewheeling fun time. The 'short cut' rural road suggested by the Gaode Map app cycle route turned out to be an exhausting exercise in gripping the brake handles and trying not to let the bike run away. I must have worn out the brake pads as i had to keep adjusting them to maintain any stopping power.

I was glad after an hour when I finally reunited with the main highway just below Deqen, and the gradient was much less dramatic. This WAS freewheeling heaven, and also increasingly photographer's heaven too. The white triangular peak of Miyetzimu (緬茨姆) mountain peeped over the horizon and made an awesome backdrop to my ride.

It took me a couple of hours to 'cycle' down to the first village of Yunling (云岭), down through the rocky barren cliffs until I finally caught sight of the Mekong far below. It was a curious bright green/turquoise colour that could almost be nuclear pollution rather than glacier meltwater. Suffice to say this scenery that had me stopping to take snaps after turning each of the many corners of the cliff-hugging road.

I'd been along this route on a bus before and it had been frustrating seeing such epic views without being able to stop and photograph them. Now I could, and I did. This must surely be one of the most scenic highways in the world, and it's a mystery why the Chinese don't publicise it more.

However, I found the occasional level or slightly uphill sections of the road to be extremely tiring, like pedalling though treacle. By the time I cycled into Yunling, I decided I'd done enough pedalling and would spend the last four days of my holiday visiting family in Guilin rather than grinding out the kms along the Mekong. I found a roadside restaurant that did rice noodles and organised a van ride back up the hill to Deqen with the nice Tibetan lady who ran the place.

While waiting for my van ride in the space of about 20 minutes I was able to get on the WeChat app and organise almost all my travel and accomodation arrangements for the trip to Gulin: train tickets from Dali to Kunming and on to Gulin, and hotels in Dali and Kunming.

Once back in Deqen I was able to get the 3pm to Dali/Xiaguan, which arrived around 11pm - and that was the conclusion of my longer distance cycling trip for the holiday.

I did use the Dahon again in Guilin, but that was more for day trips to places such as the Ming princes' Mausoleum at Jingjiang Wangling (靖江王陵).

Gear details: for any would-be folding bike tourers, my kit was pretty simple.  I wore a Fjallraven Skogso jacket which is a cotton mix that is very breathable and windproof, but not very waterproof - showerproof at best. I prefer this to a hard shell, as it is much better ventilated and not sweaty when cycling. If it really rains I throw on a waterproof cycling poncho. I combined this with a merino long-sleeve thermal top that is warm when it'c cold and vice versa. The bike is a Dahon Jetstream P8 folder, which I modified with a 9-speed hub and smaller (39T) chainring to give me a bit more range and hill climbing capability. I found that a 45 litre backpack and a small (15L?) Decathlon hooked handlebar bag were enough to carry my basic gear. My two 'lessons learned' were to bring a wing mirror and some gloves next time. A neck scarf/bandana was essential for those cold morning starts too.