Over the last few days the ground beneath the trucks has been flying by. After finally getting all of our paperwork straight and all of the “inspections” done, we made our way to Kunming, a day later we raced off to Dali, Li Shaing followed by Tiger Leaping Gorge and now we are hours away from Chengdu. (Excuse me if some of these spellings are wrong)
What does all this mean?
It means that we have travelled over 1,300 miles in the last week or so. The thing is though…we have been measuring it in the old metric system, so we have actually been “knockin off the k’s” as we have been putting it lately. We have gone from the tropics in some of the hottest weather to date all the way up to some mountain passes over 9,000 ft with temperatures like fall in Colorado.
Most of the most recent days have consisted of driving 10-14 hour days. These days seem long I am sure, especially considering that with that amount of driving we should have gone double the distance. As you have heard us say before, roads just are not the same here. China is particularly bad and yesterday our average speed over a 10 hour day of driving was only 30 mph, and that includes over an hour on a 4 lane expressway to help out the average. With the windy roads, giant pot holes, insane Chinese drivers, pollution so think you cannot see 30 ft in front of you and countless passes and canyons, it will be a welcome change to get into the Gobi desert. There we should have some wide open roads that don’t leave you feeling like you just ran a marathon after just a simple day of driving.
Oh…sorry for the lack of photos, we have just been moving so much lately and Internet is a little more difficult in China. Soon though, I promise.
