Day 154_to_158

Today it’s 5 months away from home, family and friends, and far faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from our comfort zone. It doesn’t feel real that we have been already that long riding. A lot happened in this time, I think we are not going to be able to digest all of it until some months from now (or years). For sure we’ll not be the same when we return home and to our daily lives.

During this time we had some hard times, as when we fell in the desert and we had to ride 8h (most of them off-road and I was injured), all the paperwork and officers harassment crossing China, or when Tià had a rough days due to the altitude sickness in the Himalayas, the f… crazy traffic through bad roads in India where we felt that we were risking our lives every day; when we almost ran out of gas at night in the middle of the jungle in Nepal, or when we got lost from each other on the road near Kathmandu and we thought that something dread happened to the other one. Some of this time we thought in giving up, just send the bike home and continue as normal tourists, but everytime we managed to handle the situation and continue. We just kept going and learning that we are able to do a lot more than we thought.

Thinking in the good times on the road has been quite important to take decisions during the travel, and most importantly to keep riding. The places that we visit, some are not on the travel guides and are not easy to reach as the desert in Uzbekistan, the mountains in Kirgistan, China and Pakistan, the jungle in Nepal … that also means that there aren’t other tourists around, and we get to enjoy this astonishing landscapes alone, as when we had to refill gas from a canister with curious camels looking at us in the Uzbeck desert, or when we ate plain bread with mare’s butter sipping hot tea in yurts in Kirgistan; when we couldn’t close the mouth ‘cause the views were breathtaking riding the Karakoram Highway; or when we found out we were able to cross rivers with the Bonnie in Pakistan; when we crossed the jungle using secondary roads with tiger and elephant warning signals in India, or when we found out there was a rhino bathing in front of us in Nepal. That’s what make us continue. This amazing experiences and the sensation of satisfaction that we have when we finally arrive to somewhere hard to reach is indescribable.

As we try to avoid the touristic places, we also get to interact with the locals and their normal daily life. That’s another great thing about travelling with the bike, the way the people approach us because they are curious or they want to offer help or their houses (we got thousands of invitations during this time!).

And for silly it could sound, we wanted to know how big is the world, and now we have a quite good idea about it. After this long introduction let’s start the day!

We leave the hotel a bit later than expected this morning, so we are not going to be able to do all the km that we wanted. We are heading now to the North west of Thailand, near the border with Myanmar (the one that’s impossible to cross without guide) to visit the mountains.

We ride to Sukhotai, it’s just two hours away and the way it’s not superinteresting, just more highway. However in Sukhotai awaits us a nice surprise! There is some kind of festival and it’s awesome!

Next day we’ll be riding the whole day, finally we left behind the highways and we start riding through twisty secondary roads! There are almost any other vehicles and on the way we cross some litle wood lovely villages. It’s quite hot, but we really enjoy the day.

Yesterday’s road was nice, but the ones coming on the next days are quite promising. Mountain roads with perfect tarmac! When we wake up in the morning the fog is surrounding us, so we have to wait a bit until we can leave the town.

Then, we finally hit the road! What a pleasure!

We reach Khun Yan and we have a nice surprise, another festival! And this time we are the only two foreigners there, it’s just amazing!

Next day we’ll arrive to the famous Pai, it’s suposed to be an amazing place, but we have our doubts… if a lot of people says that it’s because a lot of people goes there!

The rain is threatening our departure…

However the sky clears up and we may enjoy the bamboo bridge and the stunning views that we find in our way!

The next stop will be the tea fields in Ban Rak Thai, a Thai-Chinese village near the border with Myanmar founded by Kuo Min Tang soldiers or Nationalists who migrated from Yunnan.

We continue through the twisty roads.

Until sunset!

We reach Pai at night, and it’s shocking for us. It’s completely crowded!!!! It’s a backpaker’s village, it feels like there is anything genuine here anymore…just another crowded street with cheap things for europeans.

We thought we could spend two days in Pai, but after seen it we decide to continue our way to Chiang Mai. In this region are living the bad named giraffe women, from the Kayar tribes. For ethical reasons we decided not to visit this villages, it just didn’t feel right for us. You can find more information about this in https://epicureandculture.com/thailand-long-neck-women/ , so if you ever visit this region think about all that before going to one of this “villages”.

Here there are also many Elephant refugees, and in the same way we haven’t gone to one (even when it was kind of a dream to see elephants for me). Many of them are offering rides on elephants, what the people maybe doesn’t know is that newly-captive and captive-born Asian elephants are traditionally subject to systematic abuse in order to ‘train’ them to accept riders and perform in shows. It might also come as a surprise to learn that elephants don’t have very strong backs. Experts claim that adult elephants can only support a maximum of around 150kgs on the middle of their back for up to four hours per day, but many of Thailand’s elephants work eight hour shifts, carrying two riders at a time. Metal seats, which tend to be used over lighter bamboo versions, add an extra 50kgs. And this is before factoring in whether these elephants have adequate access to water, healthy food (not just sugary bananas handed out by tour operators) and shade. As it was not completely clear which sanctuaries were ethical and which aren’t, finally we never visited one.

So, today we’ll ride the intense and beautiful road to Chiang mai without many stops, people say this road has 762 turns… We are excited!!! and we are soo excited that we forgot to take pictures. Sorry!

In Chiang Mai waits for us the Loy Krathong & Yee Peng Lantern Festivals!!! Loy Krathong is a festival celebrated annually throughout Thailand (now we know what were all the festivals we were finding!) on the full moon day of the 12th month of traditional Thai calendar. While in Chiang Mai, Loy Krathong coincides with the Lanna (Northern Thai) festival of Yee Peng which falls on the full moon day of the 2nd month of traditional Lanna calendar. Yee Peng is mostly about lanterns hence the name The Lantern Festival, also known as The Festival of Lights. So promising!

And of course we also send our wishes and bad luck to the sky!