October 8, 2013, Tuesday, mong kuah-somewhere 25km total 10880
We left off from the banks of Likna, where we needing to get to the other side of the river to a road which wasn’t on our maps.. We got information there is a bridge further up river. So we bought some food and headed north on shit roads to a bridge which brought us across river, …Woohoo. Now we just needed to find a road heading.. west. At this point, we’d not be on the same road we were going for, but people say it’ll get us to Bountay, so, let’s see..
We rode through a massive dam construction site, where one would expect guys in sunglasses to stop you, turn you around, and maybe arrest you. Nope, the workers shouted out to us, I was expecting for there shouts to be “Get out of here” but they were just shouting hello and encouraging us to get pictures of them. Aha, only in Laos.
We meandered through the site and finally found a road from the river headed west, so we made our turn and started on a dirt road up a big climb.
We reached a village right as the sun set, and Raj and I were essentially aliens landing here. Kids, adults and elders gather to watch us ride through town and when we approached, the kids would scatter. We set up camp in front of some ladies house and a revolving crowd of villagers came to observe. 30 at a time. Luckily we got some privacy when we went over to the village stream for a shower, or so we thought. As I washed up, a crowd of cows slowly encroached. Closer. And closer. After scrubbing up I grabbed my toiletries, my towel and turned to grab my shirt, but it was gone! I looked to the nearest cow and saw my white synthetic long sleeve rhythmically lulling up and down with the munching of the his jaw. I exclaimed “Hey! Give that back!” He didn’t drop it. I slapped his side and my shirt dropped. Phew, this gear is expensive, not too mention, this is 25% of my shirt stock cause I have so little clothing. But then? Wait. Where”s my underwear! Gone? Luckily not, a cow dropped it ten meters further off.
We returned to our campsite and the locals gathered to just observe, some scoping the bikes, others lifting up the tents. Many there didn’t go to bed until we did.. Oh… and no food in the village, at least no restaurant, Raj and I ate sugary bread snacks.
October 9, 2013, Wednesday, village-top 60km total 10940
Today was slow going… dirt road, still climbing up and up, cool and dry. The mountains were big and the road was remote. And we remained to be aliens.. Rather, boogeymen the entire day. The first village we came across, I caught up with Raj whose stopped seemingly arbitrarily. I asked what’s up? He claimed that the there was a shop right where he stopped, but the windows were shut and doors closed. We called inside and the women reluctantly opened up. We asked if we could eat, and it took a few times of asking for her to sell us snacks(no restaurants in the mountains). As we snacked on our shitty processed flour and sugar, individually packaged snacks, about forty villagers stood and stared. No Sabaidees(hello) no bye byes(also used for hello) no “where are you from” or “you go where?” Just open mouths glazed eyes.
In the next villager, not much changed, besides the number of people, nearing forty-five, fiftyish. Watching as Raj washed off a cow chewed towel. More silence, more stares. We left as quickly as we came. I’m sure people are incredibly confused, cause really, we came out of nowhere, on the most technical bikes they’ve probably ever seen in person, traversing a massive mountain, not staying long enough to reveal what we’re doing… where we’re from or where we’re going, but slow enough let the questions start building. As we cycled further up the climb, some kids at a local school spotted us and paced us running, which snowballed into the entire school emptying out and following us up the ridge. I looked back and a crowd of sixty+ kids were kicking up a dust storm as they ran up the road behind us and each time I turned around to capture the moment, they scrammed.
Going up the mountain we could spot a few roads traversing the adjacent summits, none on maps that we’d seen… of course. Dying to go and explore on those roads, but our visa is running out. Though we summited, our climb wasn’t over, the road went in typical Laos fashion, up and down and up and down rolling along the ridge line.
Just before sunset, we made it to asphalt, we made it somewhere! F*^* yeah! I don’t know where, but it’s a real road! It’s still not on Raj’s gps, though. We decided to head south on the road, assuming we were on a side road off a side road, we’d seen on a different map. We cycled up the road, and set up camp off the highway; too tired to set up stove, ate dried noodles for dinner.
October 10, 2013, Thursday, top-oudomxay 60km total 11000km
We pitched, rode the last 100 meters to the summit and started a long descent. Down down down, watching the mile markers count down. I’ve never understood the rhyme or reason for the mile markers in Laos; they don’t count down to the next town. The posts rotate through distances to pretty much any town in the same half of Laos. One will say 600k to Vientiane, the next 350 to Luang Prabang, then 250 to Oudomxay. 400 to Phonsavang. All different towns on different routes. It would be like seeing mile markers for Reno, Davis, and Bakersfield in Santa Barbara. Though the signs seemed random, one caught my eye: 60km to Mung Kuah. Mung Kuah? Mung Kuah… The town where we boarded our boat up river. Maybe its just another random sign? I caught up with Raj just after that sign and he asked “Did you see that marker to Mung Kuah?” “Yeah.. I saw it, what’s the gps show?” “Well, we’re starting to head south east” Though we had no roads on the map,Raj could see our little dot in blank space trending the wrong direction. Pretty much the opposite direction of where we want to go. We decided to carry on, cause there’s no way we were going to climb back up the mountain.
The random markers still showed up, but the most consistent was still Mung Kuah. Dammit. We made it to one small village, no food. We rolled up and down hills for a bit and stopped at the first food shop we saw, the woman pointed us further on, but we were starving, and who the hell knows where the next food will be.. And while we sat in this small shack, eating processed snacks, and instant noodles the punchline comes, Raj let’s out “Ohh, this has the road(referring to his Ipad) Darn, I should have checked this” After leaving our breakfast spot, we descended more and ended at the highway. About 30k away from where we started three days earlier. That was the longest 30km I’ve ever done.
We have a few days left on our visa and 360 kilometers to the border. 200 to Luang Namtha. We wrote off riding and hopped on a bus to Oudomxay, but we just missed the bus to Luang Namtha. Set up camp in the temple on the hilltop in the center of town, I think we had the best views of any traveler here.