Winding mountain lanes of Northern Vietnam: A Photo Story

Bullet Points:

- We cycled north out of Hanoi eight days ago
- We have cycled on small roads through the mountain country of the far northern provinces of Vietnam: Thai Nguyen, Bac Can, Cao Bang and Ha Giang.
- We are now in Ha Giang town, and will head west towards Sapa and Dien Bien Phu.

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Day Two and the quiet lanes begin

Every morning for breakfast we buy "banh me trung" (egg in bread) from a roadside stall

Babe Lake, Babe National Park

Ollie fixes a rare puncture under audience pressure

Our shortcut becomes a beautiful dirt lane

A clear blue day in the mountains

New friends who watch us as we munch our morning tea

They load the buses hard! They offered to take us, but we thought riding looked more comfortable!

A winding route through the karst land

Big climbs with big views

Morning market vendors, Bao Lac.

Market day, Ma Na Phong, Bao Lac

Brighter than your Kiwi motorbiking outfit

Village, Bao Lac - Meo Vac road

Carrying loads, Meo Vac

Company for the beginning of the ascent up Ma Pi Leng Pass

Climbing Ma Pi Leng

Climbing Ma Pi Leng

Some pretty tough people have made these rugged mountains their homes

Descending to Dong Van

River riding on the Yen Minh - Quan Ba road

Bright warmth again as we descend Quan Ba Pass

Hanoi

Bullet Points

-On January 9th we flew from Barcelona to Hanoi.
-After an awesome week with my sister Monica in Hanoi we have departed to cycle around Northern Vietnam and in 2-3 weeks plan to cross the border into Northern Laos.

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In a bizarre change of direction and continent we touched down in Hanoi, Vietnam, a long way and a far cry from Barcelona. We felt victorious after nearly 48 hours of connecting metros, trains, buses and flights, and must say a huge thank you to Adela, our friend in Spain, for helping us through the logistical challenge of carrying our boxed up bikes to the airport.

Within five minutes of arriving at our hostel in the old quarter of Hanoi my sister Monica appeared outside the front door, our rendezvous a highly anticipated occasion. Anna and I had seen no family, in fact nobody at all that we knew previously, since leaving NZ on April 8^th. Monica’s been living and working in Hanoi since early November, being a ‘local’ she has come to know her way around pretty darn well. She’s also a little bundle of energy and enthusiasm and the three of us have had an amazing week together. We’re feeling very lucky!

With a population of around 7-8 million Hanoi is a lively place to visit and has a cheerful vibe about it. The air is undeniably heavily polluted, but on the flip side the city is blessed with a myriad of cute little lakes and parks, and in a great piece of town planning many of it’s streets are lined with rows of great leafy trees growing over to form long archways of greenery. The streets that we experienced were kept surprisingly clean and amazingly free of the funky smells you might expect with such a density of population!

Our week has consisted of buzzing through the crowded streets, following Mon on our bikes, amidst the sea of motorbikes, moving from one great eatery to another, sampling a great range of delicious Vietnamese foods, and chatting over a great range of topics. We’ve also loved just watching life go on by, so many curious and entertaining things I’ve not seen before. Things like enmasse exercises, aerobics and dancing in the park, young boys trying to repair Anna’s jandals as she walks, babies squeezed between parents on motorbikes, crashed U.S. war planes in stagnant lakes, a whole city curfew at 11pm, and themed streets where all shops sell identical products. Space feels like it’s in short supply in Hanoi, for the first time ever we were regularly charge a small fee to park our bikes, most restaurants had chairs and tables the size of pre-school kids furniture, footpaths were so filled with eateries and vendors that anybody walking is forced to brave the road. Road traffic spills over onto the footpaths and foot traffic spills onto the road! We’ve loved it. The week has been an extremely precious time and Mon has given us a very good initiation to the country. Massive thanks Mons!! After seven days of fun today it was time load up the bikes again, to leave the nest and venture forth! To North Vietnam we have embarked and by the sounds of it some very hilly adventures await us.

Ollie

Journey: A brief film account of a 9 month cycle adventure

Finishing

Bullet points:
- We cycled from Tafraout west to Plage Aglou and Mirleft on the Atlantic Coast.
- We enjoyed some time and New Years festivities there.
- We now catch a bus north to Tanger, catch the ferry to Barcelona, and fly from there to Hanoi.
- We will spend time in Hanoi with Ollie's sister Monica, then spend about ten weeks cycling south through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, before flying home to NZ on the 25th March.

  

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Along the last 11km

How does one ride the last 11km to the Atlantic? The last 11km to the attaining of their goal? For 9 months we have been riding and there has always been land out there to the west to be explored. For a long time our initial plan of riding to Istanbul and a vague “beyond” had evolved into a type of “coast to coast” from the Pacific to the Atlantic. A great thing to aim for, adding some direction to our sometimes rather circuitous wanderings.

And now, as I read the road sign, “Plage Aglou 11km” I know the end really is nigh, and I don’t know what I feel. I am aware of the beautiful importance of this time, and I look around me at the square pink houses and dry pale hills rolling under a bright blue sky, and I savour the place and the moment. I feel reminiscent with almost a weight of all the memories, experiences, encounters and kilometres of road stretching out behind me, a snail’s silvery trail through the land and a forever blazed trail in my own heart. And alongside this I feel a little anxious, anxious that we seem in immanent danger of achieving our goal! Really a very scary thing! How does one finish a thing? How does one ride there, and arrive?

Sometimes it is more simple. Riding for Dushanbe as the finish of the Pamir Highway we had no such qualms about reaching a goal. Exhausted and drained by days spent at altitude, battling head winds, giardia, mid-40°C heat and a lack of decent food, we were hanging out for our Dushanbe finish line and we welcomed it with open arms, falling happily into its luxuries of vegies, meat, showers, fan and a couch.

Here in Morocco though, no great physical deprivations are hastening our pedal strokes in desperation towards the finish. All is very pleasant and very good. No, this is a different kind of finish. We finish here, now, because it is the time to finish; we have chosen a place, and drawn a line in the sand as they say, and now boldly we must claim this finish although we cannot fully comprehend it. “Sad, sad!” I hear the voice of the free spirit inside me, “Let no lines form your movements, don’t be hampered by such chains, even of your own making. Drift along all the winding roads that entice you!” But there are other voices I have chosen to listen to, and I choose them again. Voices telling me that to recognize “enough” is important, and that reaching always for more of a good thing is not always the best way to enjoy a good thing.

However, I probably need to stop here, as I can anticipate the odd chuckle from some of you at me philosophizing on these topics. As the practical among you may be considering, our “line in the sand” is quite literally a line in the sand, the sand of the coast where the land runs out, so our finishing here may seem to be more of a necessity enforced by the laws of geography than a humble and grateful claiming of “enough!”. Others may very rightly point out that we are travelling on even beyond this line in the sand, heading to South East Asia for ten more weeks cycling before we really head home, and may question just which of those inner voices I’m actually following! This would all be quite justified, and I venture no defence.

I only say that for us this is a finish. It is the finish of a wonderful and extended period of journeying, and that the reaching of this point has brought us both expected and unexpected feelings and discoveries. Finishing is a strange thing, and achieving goals can be scary as well as glorious. So we are toasting is with CocaColas and kofta sandwiches, burying our toes in the wet shining sand, taking photos, writing thoughts, and holding each other close, in the trust that in time we will make sense of it all, but for now our job is to live it. 

Anna

Finishing celebrations

Reaching the goal of the Atlantic Ocean we did miss having friends and family to share this with (in the flesh I mean; we treasure your lovely and fun emails!). But like so many times on our trip, we have again been treated by wonderful people meeting us at the right time, welcoming us, offering kindness and enrichening our time greatly. 

Reaching the Atlantic!!!!

Alain met us as we were trying to photograph ourselves by the "Plage Aglou" sign, took a much better photograph and in an enthusiastic whirlwind of gestures and excited French, dragged us to where he and his wife Madeleine were camping and set us up in the spot beside him, gave us their deckchairs and table, and kept checking with a huge smile and thumbs up to see that we were relaxing and enjoying our well earned rest! Madeleine, with a bit more English, asked us question about our travels, and pulled out her world map to track it, with all the wonderfully heart/ego warming exclamations to go with it! 

Enjoying the table and chairs from our kind neighbours at Plage Aglou. Somehow we missed getting a photo of them

New Years Eve we were in another campervan park in Mirleft, with some spuds and eggs to cook up and a bottle of Coke to celebrate (no beer of wine in the shops here!). In a lovely, natural way our Danish neighbours Karl, Hanna and their son Aster had us join them first for wine, then smoked salmon, an apple-fed pork dish and later champagne, all totally top class food they had brought down from their home. They own a resturant on a small Danish Island, where they treat guests to fine local organic foods, and going by the taste we got of their cuisine and their hospitality, I think it must be a wonderful place! We had a lovely New Years with them, enjoying talking over aspects of our journey and our homeland, and hearing about their home and country. Interesting stuff!

Hanna, Aster, Karl and I ushering in 2014

Then third and finally, Elizabeth and her husband Chris met us in the local shop, and asked questions that we were happy to answer about where we'd cycled from, followed up by handshakes and warm "congratulations"! They have been living in Rabat, Morocco for two and a half years, where Chris works at the American Embassy, Elizabeth teaches English and their youngest son attends school. They invited us for a New Year's breakfast at their holiday spot, and we spent a lovely time eating the most wonderful fruit salad, yoghurt, homemade muesli, toasted bread, chorizo, eggs, guacamole and orange juice! What a treat for us! So interesting to hear of their experiences in the foreign service, mobile around the world in a much more long-term way than us. We loved the warm and relaxed company of them and their two sons, it was lovely to be with a family like this.

Beginning 2014 with a breakfast for kings and queens!

A better photo with our new friends Chris, Andrew, Peter, Elizabeth and us

Dropping two small shells from Aramoana Beach, Pacific Ocean into the Atlantic. We have carried a bag of these shells with us on our journey, and given a number as thank you tokens from our homeland to people along the way.

Anna

A Moment at the Kitchen Bench

As I stood at the kitchen bench, the grey rice water draining down the plughole in preparation for another camping meal, I had a moment. One of those moments where it’s like I look down from above, I picture the whole world and I zoom in on my own little figure, out here amidst the mountains of Southern Morocco. The sun’s dipping low, lighting the rocks all around into a deep and earthy red, the tops of the palms are silhouettes, fanning out as if exploding fireworks. In the still quietness of the dusk an Arabic call is wailed out into the night, the time to pray has arrived. A shepherd, clothed in brown camel hair cloak and vibrant blue head scarf, quietly leads his flock to eat  from the scrub before retiring to home and shelter. The first stars are faintly twinkling, the moon will rise to join them shortly in a great display of light in the darkness. Here at the bench it’s just little me, just washing the rice. It’s one of those moments where I think “Wow, how the heck did I end up here?!”

The recent days cycling through Morocco have seen us on a steadily westward course, each day inching us further along the map and closer to the Atlantic Ocean, our finish line for this the major phase of our journey. Within our larger pilgrimage to the Atlantic we were on pilgrimage to Tafraout, a town of 3000 people nestled in the Anti-Atlas mountains, our place to celebrate Christmas.

In so many ways these recent days zeroing in on Tafraout have encompassed so many of the reasons I would give you for loving bicycle travel. Let me tell you why.

We’ve cycled for hours in wide open spaces on the edge of the desert, the land only disappearing as it curves away over the horizon, and then in the space of mere minutes we’ve entered spectacular gorges and hills of jagged rocky peaks. On moving from the edge of the Sahara into the Anti-Atlas mountains the landscapes have continually changed and been pretty inspiring in their beauty and variety.

Yet inspiring landscapes alone would not satisfy. Dotted along our way, seemingly at just the right interval for a cyclist, has been village after village. Foum-Zguid, Tissint, Tata, Tagmoute, Anamer, Igherm, Azoura, Ait-Abdallah. Beforehand, for us, each is just a name on a map, afterward they are a memory with a distinctive event or character etched in our mind. In common each has food, water and a friendly welcome, and yet each has their own distinctively unique character. Some villages bustle with noise and activity, chaos to us but normal daily life for locals. Other villages are quiet, the people industriously working away at what they do, often hidden amongst the palms, the almonds or the olive trees. We’re only aware of anybody there by the flash of a colourful headscarf in the trees or quiet voices chatting one to another. Still another village, from a distance seems void of activity or spirit, yet upon entering its streets are found to be crowded with lively school students pouring out all over the streets.

So often along our way the chance take a break, to sit, to eat and drink, to watch life go by has become a real highlight of a riding day. Once we’ve bought our bread or biscuits or fruit and we’ve roved around in search of a place to sit, a friendly face soon emerges carrying a table and chairs and inviting us to sit and rest. Sometimes the locals will sit with us to chat, at other times they will provide us with what we need and then just let us go about our business of eating, resting and observing. What we observe is always fascinating, often entertaining, and only occasionally disturbing!

Being so close to Europe Morocco sees plenty of foreign tourists, mainly four wheel drive enthusiasts and retired French campervan travellers. As a result a good network of camping grounds are spread across much of the country. It’s great to have good accommodation and all the conveniencies we need, within a town centre, without having to check into some crusty hotel. Even better though have been our wild camps, the real pinnacle of cycle touring accommodation options. Wild camps have not been so common for us in Morocco due to the difficulty in finding secret places in such open country, but they’ve been real gems when we have come upon suitable spots. In recent days we developed a routine of arriving in time to get the tent pitched and life sorted before brewing a cup of tea and sitting in the last light to watch the sunset. Several nights we were fortunate enough to then turn and watch the moonrise just minutes later! To complete our classic African camping experience I thought I’d better be the man and light a fire. I failed dismally yet Anna in her graciousness assured me that these dry-land trees must surely have developed fireproof adaptations that were resisting my efforts!

To cycle through varied landscapes on both sealed and more adventurous roads, to enter villages and experience their culture and kindness, to observe local life happening all around us, to have some conveniences yet the freedom to be camped in the wild, all these things make for a truly wonderful cycling experience. At the end of it all we descended into Tafraout for Christmas. Knowing very little about the place other than seeing on our map that it had a campsite, we’d taken a bit of a punt. Our punt paid off and the mini pilgrimage was complete. Just one phase left on our way to the Atlantic!

Travelling through the horizontal

Travelling through the vertical

Travelling smooth ways

Travelling rough ways

Bustling villages

Energetic markets

Quiet Villages

Locals at work

Morning tea observations

Lunch time people watching

Sunset contemplation with a cuppa

Wild camp classic on the desert edge

Wild camp under the moon's watchful eye

Wild camp on a mountain top

The pilgrimage to Christmas complete

Ollie

Wonderment and Wonderings in Morocco

Wonderment

Morocco has given us absolutely amazing riding and exploring joy; here are some of the scenes we've loved so far.

Marrakech is an ancient city, and the narrow winding lanes of its old city were built for foot traffic and maybe the odd camel to squeeze through. Nowadays they are dominated by a constant stream of motorbikes, giving the place a constantly noisy and full on feel. The foot traffic is still there though, and very well dressed, with men in their woven camel hair hooded cloaks and women in wonderful colour combinations of headscarves and dresses. 

Old town alleys of Marrakech

The streets of Marrakech

Another town scene, market day in Jorf

We crossed the High Atlas Mountains on a clear calm winter’s morning, with a dusting of new snow bright on the highest peaks. The road snakes up the bulky, stratified hills, making its crossing from the wetter and sometimes forested western flanks to the dry gorges facing out towards the Sahara.

The wetter flanks of the Atlas

Climbing Tizi N'Tichka Pass

Deep twisting gorges, the Dades and the Todra, coming out from the Atlas Mountains. As we rode inside them, I felt infused with the orange light that bounces off their walls. A line of palm trees, some patchwork strips of irrigated fields and occasionally the glint of a stream, give testament to the fact that this mighty passageway is indeed a watercourse. Along the sides of the gorge, and where it opens to more comfortable widths, villages are built from the earth on which they stand, now orange, now ochre, now brown houses clustered above their small green plots. 

In the Dades Gorge

The Todra Gorge

Villages in the Ounila Valley, Atlas Mountains

The upper Dades Gorge

Quiet, vast, ancient. We cycled out across the expansive dry landscapes that lie between the Atlas and the Sahara proper. Thorn trees, gravel, sand; flat topped strata outcrops, pieces of old plateaus, now tipped up, now scoured out by wind and maybe once, a long time ago, some water. 

Wonderings

There is a packet of biscuits. Round chocolate cream-filled biscuits, their open silver wrapping glinting in the bright mountain sunlight. At the base of this packet is my hand, holding on with determined if not slightly desperate grip. On the other end of the packet is a hand much more weathered and browned than mine, belonging to a nomadic shepherd of the Atlas Mountains, and he is also not letting go. For a few seconds we stand like this, in a very quiet but socially fascinating battle, until the nomad gives in and takes a healthy stack of biscuits from the packet instead, and relieved I move on to offer them to his mate, then Ollie and myself.

This would probably go down as one of the least successful cultural exchanges of our travels. I could try and explain my actions by saying that this was the only packet of biscuits I had for what was going to be a long tough day through the mountains. Or that when I offer an open packet of biscuits around even such an impromptuely gathered morning tea group, I consider it rude for someone to try and take the whole packet. But how much else is going on here that I can’t easily explain! Why was that his expectation? Is it indeed a reasonable one? What is a healthy way for our two cultures to interact now, and what about for the future?

This first meeting of the day had caught us by surprise, and as we continued to ride that isolated dirt road we got many other chances to adapt our response to the small groups of tough mountain folk who came out to meet us as we rode.  But we never settled on anything we felt totally happy with. Girls with chapped hands and ragged skirts tugged at my polyprop and gloves, saying clearly in any language, “Can I have these clothes for me?” Women with babies tied on their backs and no socks in their shoes tried to sell us small fossils they’d gathered in the mountains, or if they had none of these, to sell their photograph. This was no tourist gimmick, no dressing up poor to try and get some easy money, they were running to us just as they were when we appeared around the corner of their valley. If they had socks they’d wear them, the temperature was about 4 degrees.

So we did leave some extra clothes of ours there in the Atlas Mountains. As I rode down out of the mountains, I enjoyed thinking of the people who these socks and gloves have come from, Beth, Mum, Grandpa Yule, and the snug New Zealand wool they are made of, and hoped they would bring some joy and relief. But I was also unsettled, uncomfortable and very tired from the experience. Morocco has brought us more of these encounters than anywhere else we’ve ridden so far. Questions but not many answers. Attempts at genuine encounters, but realizations of huge inequalities not just in wealth, but also in the reasons that we’re each in that place at that time, and our expectations of our roles. 

With one of the nomadic Berber

Our track through the Atlas, between the Dades and Todra Gorges

More wonderment

In the huge orange dunes on the edge of the Sahara. The locals call them Erg Chebbi. They change in shape constantly, but are always there. Small groups of desert nomads still eek out a living amongst them, raising camels and goats. But with the Algerian border cutting through their traditional roaming grounds only 30km from here, it is now much harder. More of the nomads have now settled in villages on the edge of the desert, and many have found a way to continue in their beloved Sahara by working as tourist guides and hosts at the desert camps. A truly wonderful sea of sand, be it a little tracked out by tourist 4WD, camel and foot traffic. 

Meetings

We've also had some wonderful meetings with some special people. With Youssef at his mountain auberge (hostel) where we were welcomed more like friends than paying guests; we were told to use it like our own home, and we shared our meals together: tomato pasta with Berber omelette; porridge with bread and home grown olives. 

Youssef and Ollie

With Barek and his nephews under the striking (Mount) Djebel Rheriss, where we spent the evening learning a new game with coloured pebbles, sitting around the fire, drinking mint tea and then sleeping in their tent made of camel and goat hair. African dream!

Anna, Abdul Ali, Barek, Hammad and Ollie

With Lessin and Muhammed one cold morning in N'Kob, where they invited us into the carpenter's shed by the local shop and we shared lots of the sweet mint tea, hot fresh bread and the Christmas truffles I'd just made. 

Anna, Muhammed and Lessin. Muhammed was serious about his tea making, and was determined that the photo would show him pouring the tea he'd been preparing for us!

A few other favourite shots...

Bonus track: The Ginger Beard!

Anna