Mucheng And Mudslides

Mucheng, cool wee town, the Police came as usual and were very good to us, of course there is no reason not to be but you always wonder.

Seems that white faces are as common as chickens teeth here, I made quite a stir at the local eatery where we had dinner, one young fella plucked up the courage to ask for a photo and was very very happy when I said no problem.

Next thing there was a lineup to have photos, it was pretty cool, we talked about NZ and where it is, I had to show them on the google maps…they were astounded, very curious and also very grateful we took the time to show them.

As small as the world has got there are still many places where curiosity to foreigners is still a big deal.

G678 was our next road to continue on, this borders Myanmar with the razor wire fence stretching thousands of km, leaving Mucheng mostly dry but foggy the day progressively got worse, the rain increased dramatically, water flowing across the road, rock slides, small mud slides taking up half the road.

Making it easily to the G678 saw us turn left to our desto, the weather was getting worse (didn’t think it was possible) and across the road the water was flowing, little rock slides were getting bigger, we were riding around boulders 300 – 400 mm in size with scattered gravel, mud clay and water in between.

By this time I was thinking … some days you just have a hard day….little did I know...here it comes.

We came across a line of cars so we carried on to the front of the line, show stopper, a big mudslide, probably 1.5 meters or so deep right across the road and into the veges, no way around it, not content with bein a show stopper I walked onto the mudslide ….at that point it was into the mudslide and realized for us there was no way through.

Plan B, we didn’t have one, some quick discussions in the rain was to head back to Mucheng or take another road to the 219 and hook up, either way was back tracking which we hate doing.

Again, the rain started hiffing it heavily, we decided to bail knowing there were no machines/digger for miles, stopped on the way back for navigation purposes we stopped a local and asked about the shortcut road we were looking at and that came back with a resounding, do not go on that it is mud.

Backtracking along the G678 we decided to take the safe option and head right out, this was another 140 km as long as the road was not closed.

By this time hunger was hitting us, we ended up stopping for a quick lunch with a slight reprieve from the rain.

No sooner we sat down and a heavy downpour came through and went.

A quick scoff then it turned black, very black, we dressed full wets and waited for 5 minutes, it got darker and the streets were starting to flow, really flow, I said to Ellen we had better bail before this road gets closed then we are stuck. Hightailing out we got into it, there was water coming from the hills like I have never seen, the road/river was flowing fast and in places was up to 200mm deep (this is the road we are talking about), a number of times we got pushed across the road to the edge which was disconcerting to say the least.

No filming or photo stops we HAD to move before we couldn’t, I was genuinely concerned about getting out, we have no equipment with us to see out these condition, even if we had gear you would not want to be stuck not knowing if the hillside was going to invite itself to us.

Nearing the top the flowing water started to back off to approx 50 mm deep or so but still with a hasty speed coming down the road, I thought then we would be home safe but didn’t back off as we still dad the other side of the mountain pass to go down.

Luckily the hell ride treacherous part was only about 100km all up but it was plenty enough to test my skill and undies.

Finally back down after avoiding fallen trees, rock, mud and water flows we arrived back in Mangshi to start again. 

One day behind isn’t too bad, we head out to Laos on Saturday so we have burnt our buffer day unfortunately so steady progress for here is required, hopefully no more events like this in between.

A small vid sans the bad shit