Right from the start the trip had an air of excitement about it. Having met each other only on the net by email, our first meeting was in a Hong Kong hostel. Although we knew each other from emails, we had never heard or seen each other before and didn’t know for sure that anyone would actually turn up. Fortunately we got along fine.

Our plan was to make it through Tibet to India, but first we had to cross China. To arrive in Tibet in the dry, relatively warm season we had to do South China in August, the wettest most humid month. The two thousand-kilometer journey was the perfect warm up for the Tibetan leg, passing through the classic limestone mountain scenery of Guangxi and the mountainous minority hill tribe areas of Guizhou.
                                                                             
We used the china drivers atlas to navigate a route that avoided main roads and the blue trucks that ply them. Always searching for the smallest roads we passed through villages where the clothing and way of life is little changed in centuries. Friendly local women dressed in traditional black tribal costume appear at every doorway, pointing and laughing at the strange site of foreigners on bikes struggling along the dirt track that serves as their high street.

One highlight of this first stage was a stop at Longji rice terraces. A ten km climb up a rough track off the main road to Longsheng left us at the beginning of the rice terraces that cut like steps into the mountainside. Turning a thousand meters of steep slope into farmable land. Too steep for motorized transport makes it a peaceful place to stay.