Rally Elan

This trip had its origins back in 2018 when we signed up to take the Elan from Chengdu to Lhasa in May 2020. Covid intervened and the rally company folded so the outlook was bleak until Adrian proposed a similar trip in hire 4WDs and a much smaller group. Initially there were 4 cars but one couple dropped out, then Allison became unwell so eventually just 5 people did the trip with Adrian and his Landlady. There were more arrangements and organisation from us than usual – see Technicalities (below)

Our first day was to visit pandas and then some old (tourist) streets. It was 38° and the black/white pandas were all snoozing in huts whilst the reds were sprawled out in the trees – so with all the crowds not much to see. In the afternoon we met our “Tanks” and were given supplies of water and an oxygen compressor – our route goes well over 5,000 metres.
Our first day in the road was to Leibo and my first navigation error at a motorway intersection as I was following the wrong mapping app (see Technicalities). Lunch brought its own problems as we could not read the restaurant signs – so they gave us photos of the shop front in future but messed that up on day 2 by sending us to one location with a photo of another restaurant in the same town with the same name! After the motorway we were on ordinary roads with plenty of aggressive overtaking on roads cluttered with cars, lorries and bends.
In the first few days there were relatively few sights to see and driving occupied our full attention. This was more so on day two when the plan to visit a “cliff village” were cancelled after a tourist fell off a ladder the day before and died. We stopped at Meigu Canyon before arriving at Xichang. I took an early morning walk along the lake across the road from the hotel and was surprised to find CCTV cameras on the footpaths and lane markings showing which side of the path you should walk on!
And on to Lugu Lake where we had the first rescheduling of the rally. Our planned hotel was deemed unsuitable so after hasty phone calls we went to another some miles away, arriving after dark – brand new and almost empty but somehow they conjured up beer and food.
The meals were fairly consistent in that our guide ordered for us, gradually realising that we didn’t like it too spicy. I guess it was all air fried with loud extractor fans and plenty of oil which I invariably split on my trousers as we sat on low chairs and were using chopsticks. Pork and mushroom was a favourite along with stringy greens (always stuck in my teeth), broccoli and various beef and chicken dishes, accompanied by rice; relatively few noodles. Breakfasts in the larger more western hotels were standard buffets but became more challenging in the smaller Chinese hotels where everything was a random selection – steamed buns (aka dumplings) were safe and almost edible. Melons, dragon fruit and mangos were usually available.
From Lugu our route was via Baoshan Stone village – lunch stop to the ancient city of Lijiang. A sign in Baoshan showed Tea Horse Road; long ago, Lijiang was a major centre of commerce and a start point for the trade taking tea to Tibet so this road was part of the old trade network. We had a rest day in Lijiang and the highlight of the day was a tea ceremony when we had a lengthy lecture on teas. This was followed by lunch and a trip to a monastery.

Technicalities
The trip required preparation – from our end: Chinese visas, altitude insurance (our standard policy stopped at 4500 metres) but we would be going 1,000 metres higher, the balance between warm and cold weather clothing (Everest base camp could be cold but Chengdu was 38°/40°), arranging an E-Sim and a VPN (virtual private network), flights, London – Chengdu return and a single flight from Lhasa to Chengdu, plus the usual airport transfers, car parking, dogs into kennels, cash and credit cards – the list went on and was longer than usual and the arrangements continuously changed. For example we were told that anyone over a “certain age” had to take a Chinese driving test which would occupy our first day in Chengdu so there wouldn’t be time to see the pandas – and who would go to Chengdu and not go to see the pandas? So we booked an early return from Lhasa to Chengdu to see pandas but then our driving licences were arranged so we cancelled the early flight to have longer in Lhasa.
Then Allison was too ill to travel so I went alone, cancelling her flights, then the airport taxi didn’t arrive – “sorry we forgot” – so a rush to arrange 3 weeks airport parking and an unexpected drive to Heathrow.
Adrian had arranged Chinese Sim cards for us and helped set up the VPN so we could use WhatsApp for easy communication – but its banned in China so the VPN hides your location. We were told we had to use a Chinese phone app called WeChat (similar to WhatsApp) which had a payment feature as credit cards were not commonly used, the majority of payments being by phone. Being old fashioned I wanted some cash – the hotel didn’t have any and the local ATM promptly swallowed my card! I thought about going to the bank the next day but as the card was in Allison’s name, I decided that would require a lot of explanation so bye, bye card! Then my phone died as I exceeded my data allowance when the wifi failed whilst I was calling back to UK. That meant I couldn’t load my credit card onto the WeChat app because I couldn’t access the bank’s pass code – which was sent to my UK phone number……. Fortunately, Allison was able to pay off the mobile bill, Alastair had a spare phone (as mine couldn’t take 2 physical Sim cards) and a few days later I was back in operation. Too many dominoes!
Navigation is much easier when there’s a driver and a navigator in the car as I found out when I messed up a motorway intersection and was 20 minutes late for lunch. We had been given 3 mapping options:
• Guru maps which showed the track to follow but not speeds or instructions at junctions but it did show the “deviations” which Adrian liked to follow,
• AMaps, like a Chinese version of TomTom but in Chinese. This did show big white arrows at intersections and speeds but not the deviations
• WeMaps which the guides used but served only to confuse everyone else!
Speeding was a concern to us as China has overhead camera gantries all over the place, in towns and on country roads – and twice as many in Tibet as in China. Most flashed at you because you were there irrespective of speed, some were actual speed cameras and others were Average speed – but we weren’t told that till much later and how AMaps could tell us. However Adrian and our China guide were initially relaxed about speeding – foreigners could not collect penalty points so at the end we would be invoiced for the financial penalties and charged the cost of getting people to accept the points – there is a thriving black market in getting others to take your points in China. This relaxed attitude changed abruptly when the first penalty notices started arriving – one at over twice the limit. “Please slow down” a tearful China guide asked us! In the event, I had no penalties, one had £10 and one was about £750. Maybe the cameras were broken!