Well, if there is one thing the Chinese know how to do its build a road. Their roads are a testament to engineering. When the Chinese come to a hill they dont go over it, they go through it. This photo is one of many tunnels, some several kilometres long.
A testament to my intelligence is that I tried to cycle through one of these yet to be completed tunnels that had no lights. About 1km into the tunnel my sense of direction started to fade, and I slowed drifted into the side wall of the tunnel. Crashing in complete darkness caused fits of laughter from Marie, and only minor grumbling from me. The damage to myself was minimal luckily.
Another tunnel was completely shut, meaning we had to go over the mountain. This resulted in a four hour detour, pushing our bikes up dirt roads and getting only mildly lost in the backwaters of China. As you can tell from the expression on Marie’s face, it was a character building experience. We probably easily pushed our bikes up over 500m of vertical climb – gutted. Some other cyclists about 20 minutes behind us were simply allowed to ride through the tunnel.
