Liuzhou to Yangshuo

Bicycling or by bus on the old road

Liuzhou is worth a visit? Well, compared to Guilin, Yangshuo and some other areas, the city is the poor brother/sister of Guilin. There's little to amuse the traveler. I have been a few times in Liuzhou and I can't say I found much that intrigued me. Around the city there are a few, you could with some improvisation say, not too bad mountains but further Liuzhou is just another Chinese city.

That said, if you are planning to travel to Yangshuo, the old road crossing the hills to Lipu is worth a visit. Visitors in Liuzhou usually take the express bus to Guilin and then the local bus to Yangshuo. It's fair enough as it is much faster.

However, the old road is a nice alternative. I did the road on bicycle. As it is almost 200 km from Liuzhou to Yangshuo this way, there's no way you can or want to do it in a day. It takes at least 2 days.

Liuzhou

By the time I arrived in Liuzhou I was sick of the rain. Almost two weeks in a row it had been raining continuously. Now I love cycling, but 2 weeks rain, even in temperatures of almost 30°C and very little to see is no fun anymore.

Thus I was happy to arrive in a decent hotel on the main street of Liuzhou. I choose a slightly more expensive hotel because I wanted to dry my clothes. The last two weeks I had no dry clothes on my body except in the night when I was trying to sleep.

The road from Hechi, west of Liuzhou and roughly on the way to Yunnan had been partly big but not too busy. The last 100 km from Yizhou could have been very nice, if it had been dry. This road swindled through the hills and I am quite sure that in another part of the year there would have been quite a few great sceneries but this time it had been just raining. June and July are not good times to travel in south China!

Accommodation in Liuzhou

Finding a cheap hotel in Liuzhou is not easy. Most of the hotels are 3 or 4 star hotels. This too makes Liuzhou less interesting for travelers who have a bit more time to spend. Despite this, we have found some decent priced and good hotels.

Hotels in Liuzhou

Leaving Liuzhou

In the morning I left Liuzhou for a day of just 100 km, or that was what I had planned. I expected rainy weather since the sky was clouded and it was very foggy. The breakfast of noodle soup was good and warm though I would have preferred hot soy milk with fried breadsticks. But as it usually goes, when you search for something, you can't find it!

Leaving Liuzhou wasn't too difficult, I just followed the direction of the Guilin and the Luigui (the Chinese have these nice names for express ways, a mix of two main cities, in this case: Liuzhou and Guilin) expressway. Of course I can't cycle there but I hoped to find the local road that would lead me in the mountains north of Liuzhou.

Several kilometers out of Liuzhou I came to the junction for the expressway and the old 322. There was very little traffic and I cycled through open agricultural lands while the mountains came closer and closer.

My English Nelles Map showed I had to expect some climbing. But the Nelles map is not always right. That is why I used a local made map of Guangxi.

The difficult climbs never came. In fact I cycled so easy, sure it went slightly up and down but never much. Highest point was just 450 meters after 6 kilometers going up. That doesn't even make me tired. And going down made me go fast as 62 km/hour, very fast!

Sometimes on the road people yelled at me. This area is little visited by foreigners and a man on a bicycle is an attraction. I stopped at the higest point of this road for some noodles. There was a small hotel available but it went all so easy that I decided to continue.

Instead of doing 100km I found myself at 3pm already in Lipu after 145 km. As said some of the hills went so easy up and even easier down. The last part to Lipu showed already some of the limestone mountain beauty Yangshuo is so famous for.

Lipu to Yangshuo

Lipu itself has little to offer for the travelers. Basically it's just another Chinese town on a crossroads. Going west, where I came from leads to Liuzhou. The road south leads to Wuzhou and was until a few years ago the main road to Guangzhou. Some years ago the road east leads eventually to Guangzhou. My plan was to go north, 40 km to Yangshuo.

As I was early I might have been able to reach Yangshuo that same day but why rushing? I found a little hotel in Lipu. Again it surprised me how many hotels some towns have considering how little there is to do in such a place.

The whole city was a big mess. Parts of the city had open streets, so it's likely when you come there now it's much nicer. But I found it dirty, noisy and polluted.

By the time I was in Lipu the rain had stopped too which made cycling a lot more pleasant. South of Lipu lie a range of good looking limestone mountains. Some of the rock climbing organized in Yangshuo use these mountains.

The next morning I left quite late, at least for me as I usually leave 7 to 8am. But with only 40km to go, I was not in a hurry. The closer I came to Yangshuo, the more stunning the land became. Even though I had been to Yangshuo before, it still knocked me out how nature could produce such beauty.

At 1pm I arrived in Yangshuo which had changed since my last visit, but that is another story.

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