This is about a two day cycling trip to Anren, Pingle and the bamboo forest
November 20-21st
I met a couple friends Reggie and Calum around 830 near my place in Shuangnan in south west Chengdu. It was still rush hour so it was busy as we biked out. We tried to take as many back roads as possible. We passed by the airport and continued on Hangdu road which was pretty good to get out of town and is pretty green passing some parks on the way. It was the first time I took that road. It doesn’t have too much construction like most of the other roads I take leaving town. It takes about an hour and a half to get out of the city pretty much. At least Chengdu has a good bike and scooter lanes for the most part, which makes it safer. From there we took some small roads through farmlands and headed towards Anren about 50 kms away.
The road west from Chengdu is basically flat. There’s a tiny incline since you are heading towards the Himalayas but it’s not noticeable. The beginnings of the mountains are about 70 kms west of Chengdu. We got into Anren old town and had a look around. I guess the small town was made around the 1930’s and was probably remodeled but it’s pleasant enough. There’s an international school and some old houses including Liu’s manor which is supposed to be decent, and a museum but we couldn’t take bikes in some of the areas and we also didn’t want to pay the fee so we moved on.
We had a good lunch there and continued biking on towards Qionglai, a small city about 22 kms south west of there. We biked on a small countryside road for a bit and then got on a highway for a little bit that can take bicycles. It’s the same one I usually ride my motorcycle on since it is the most direct if you want to head to the mountains as fast as possible, but it’s kind of boring too and a little dangerous. We passed by Qionglai and headed south on the G108 towards Pingle Ancient town. I would recommend taking the back road since that road is a four lane busy highway without any shoulder pretty much. We then headed west on Shougao road which is a smaller road and a little busy but not as bad. There’s a small climb to go over before heading down to Pingle ancient town.
Pingle Ancient town is pretty nice and I guess is originally about 2000 years old. Some of areas and roads were under construction. Most of these ‘ancient towns’ in China are actually all rebuilt which is a shame. They are new towns made to look old. I’m not sure how much it resembles the original, but it’s still a pleasant enough place regardless. At least it wasn’t crowded at all since it was the end of November and too cold, but on weekends in other seasons I imagine it’s pretty packed.
We had a couple drinks then looked for some decent camping spots outside the town. We ended up basically finding a good spot on the outskirts of town on the river bank not far from the road but kind of out of sight. There weren’t too many places open for dinner but after having a couple drinks at a bar we found one good place then headed back to camp without any problems.
We got up and biked just west of town about a km to Lugou bamboo forest, which is a sea of bamboo trees and a very scenic place but there it is a decent climb. It’s about 9 kms to the top and takes an hour to bike through and its not just a bamboo forest, but there are some nice old houses, a stream and some Buddhist or other religious sites in the rocks. You can ride most of the way until the last 1 and a half or 2 kms and then it’s so steep you have to walk the last part to the top where there’s a nice view of the valley and farm fields on the other side. You could head left and continue west to that valley and towards the mountains but we were headed back to Chengdu so we turned right.
It goes up another couple hundred meters and then its super steep going down. Make sure your brakes are great or walk if you have too. You pass through some nice tea fields on the way down. It flattens out and you pass through some villages and farming areas and then there is a town which is a good place to get lunch before continuing on the back road for another hour or so to Qionglai that is much better than the way we went to Pingle. We got a bus ticket for 28 rmb and our bikes on for an extra 14. It was about 2 hours back to Chengdu to the north west bus station and I biked back home in about 40 minutes. If we biked back from Qionglai it would have taken all day. Definitely a good day and a half trip I would recommend.
