April 5 - Up, Again

I was on the road already by 7 am - riding through some very pretty countryside - it was an easy going for the first 30 kilometers or so. A small surprise: a lady at an intersection spoke very good English, especially in the Highlands, this was rather selten of an experience. Then I met two road bikers on a fancy racing bike: they were a couple from Singapore. I asked them about their luggage: they said they were carrying all they had. Except for a small pouch, they were carrying nothing - hmmm, me, with my two large bags, had some thinking to do. We rode together for a couple of kilometers, then they rode away, lightweight as they were. The road was leading up to a place called Da Lat, a French resort town high up in the mountains, it was around 120 kilometers away from the start, as said, 30 were done, so I had no doubt about being able to the remaining 90 or so, even if it meant some climbing. Oh, how wrong I turned out to be!

Beautiful countryside

Soon the road, which was rather easy, turned into a real torture room. It was namely very hot and the incline was a major one. There was hardly any traffic, which was good, I had the entire road to myself, I could veer from one side of the road to the other. I looked up and saw how the road would circle around the mountain relentlessly. For the third time in Vietnam, I had to ask someone for water - a small bus stopped, they gave me not only water, but some bananas and bread, I was quite grateful. And the heat - that was terrible. I spotted a waterfall, stopped there, stripped to an underwear and sat below the stream - after which I was dry in like 5 minutes.

An almost dry riverbed

The view back to the valley

You can see where I came from

From sea level to thousand meters

I suddenly saw an entire group of bikers going downhill - they told me they started at the top and were riding down to the coast - Germans, Australians, British. Quite a good business undertaking...Another thing I noted was a paraglider, making his circles above me with the thermics. At a lookout, I met two French motorbikers, they told me they were quite impressed with me riding up this road, their motors had to be revved to the max at places to conquer the incline. My camera was busy that day, I made a dozen or so photos both from the vistas and from the mountain itself, which was quite majestic.

Here I am looking up the side of the mountain - and hope no rock would fall down

It was quite late that afternoon when I reached the 1500 meter mark - and there were still some 70kilometers to go. It got rather cloudy, something that would happen in the late afternoons, I was afraid to be caught in a thunderstorm, but I did not get wet, though it cooled down considerably - which was not a bad thing. My progress was real slow and I was quite frustrated by this. The top of the mountain was covered in a thick fog and I think it was somewhere around 10 degrees - a significant drop. Talking about drops, I must have dropped one of my bags, without noticing, this was a black leather toiletry case, containing my electric shaver and electric toothbrush, just to name the most valuable things in it.

Just after the summit, a sign proclaimed I was in a national park - it was dense jungle, I wish I could have stayed and hiked around, but was not equipped for that. I stopped at a ranger's house - and talked to a Russian scientist, who was on a research trip in the national park. He told me there were some poisonous snakes and some rare monkeys to be found in the park.

Getting close to the summit

Now I was riding through some highlands - covered some distance, but there were still 50 kilometers to go. I stopped to buy some snacks at a wooden shed - and suddenly noticed my bag missing. Oh no, another case of back-tracking. I wanted to be efficient about it - there were some young guys hanging out, one spoke a few words of English, I managed to explain to him that I needed a motorbike to look for my bag.

So there I was, sitting on the backseat on a shattered motorbike, with a frail person driving it, in WWII goggles. We went back to the ranger's station, then cut into the fog at the summit, and rode back to the last place I had seen the bag. I was surprised how much distance I had covered since, the guy asked after each curve if I still wanted to go on. He was running low on fuel - which was not surprising, as he was driving full speed. I asked him multiple times to slow down, as I wanted to look at the side of the road for the bag, he shrug it off. In fact, in one curve we got very close to the railing. I survived the trip, but never found the bag. The lady at the wooden shed became quite unfriendly, she almost refused to sell me some snacks - apparently she did not understand why I had left my bike in front of her store. I gave the guy quite a lot of money ($4), everyone cleverly pretended not to have any change.

This little detour cost me an hour, by the end of which I knew I had no chance of reaching Da Lat that day - some 40 kilometers were still ahead and it was getting quite dark. I found a small village, where they said they had a room. I waited for a while, when a guy appeared, asked me to follow him and showed a very unappealing room in a very unappealing house. I refused to stay there and went on, knowing I'd probably be tenting that night. At the next village, a very strange young guy assured me there were no hotels till Da Lat (he spoke English in a very high-pitched voice - which was completely different than his Vietnamese, he was growling at his younger brothers in a deep, deep voice). OK, so after seeing the beginning of an incline, I found a random spot on the side of the road and pitched my tent. To my surprise, I slept quite well.