#2: [18-Jun-06]

07-Oct-2004 -- This is the 23nd out of 29 confluence visits on our tour from Germany to China, the story continues from 27°N 109°E.

This morning I finally got an early start but I had to wake up the gate keeper in order to leave the hotel. He then knocked on the reception door, waking up the receptionist. Then the receptionist phoned the floor-keeper and woke him. Then the process was reversed: the floor-keeper looked into my room (nothing had been stolen by me) and phoned the receptionist to let her know. The receptionist finally gave the OK for the door to be opened by the gate-keeper. This was a lot of trouble for an early starting biker. The daylight was coming, but the little breakfast stalls on the street hadn't opened yet. So, I decided to ride 43 km to the next town Shibing (15 km from the CP), enjoying the sunrise. Well, it turned out to be extremely hilly, so I reached the town almost starved and found all breakfast stands closed already. At least I could impress a baozi (dumplings) shop owner, how big my stomach was.

Leaving Shibing, I headed for this confluence. On the main road I got as close as 4.27 km to the confluence point. Just one km westwards of the village Xinqiao (= New Bridge), I found a turnoff towards the CP. At the distance of 2 km there was another turnoff to a really, only push-able track. It turned out that the confluence was in the little village called Ganxi. The track came as close as 63 m to the point, so it was really easy, actually. On the other hand, the people in the village watched me carefully doing weird things like taking pictures of my GPS receiver. There was no way I could get a zero reading because: 1. the actual point is at a steep grade up in dense forest. 2. Even if I tried to get through the jungle, the people from the village would have called the madhouse. It is a 'little' difficult for me to explain what I am doing. Besides, my Chinese is not the best, the problem is, that the average farmer does not know what integer latitude and longitude means. And even if he did know, that would not mean that there was a real appreciation for what I am doing.

I spent the night in the town Huangping, where I got a good hotel-deal for 20 Yuan (2 Euros, I even had my own hot shower and toilet! I only had a hard time reading the English notice at the hotel-front.

CP visit details:

• Time at the CP: 2:00 p.m.
• Duration: 2 h (until I was back on my route)
• Distance of bike parking: 61 m
• GPS height: 773 m
• Description: In a steep dense forest near a village. Half way up a mountain. In the nearby wide valley many rice fields.
• Given Name: The Unexplainable Confluence

Story continues at 27N 107E.