3 policemen entered my room

Today was my first day on the bike. The weather was grey with a slight rain... not quite the summer weather we had in Stockholm last week. 

It was a day with contrasts: leaving the big city of Chengdu with 4 million inhabitants took almost 1 hour, then it was another few hours with a lot of traffic untill all of a sudden I was in the countryside with typcial chinese ricefields, bamboo and a nice river view. Still things took longer than expected and on the small roads the 135k to Leshan became longer and longer... I rode 120k and there is still 40 left for breakfast to visit the worlds largest buddha statue.

 

Tonight I am staying at a small town "hotel"... there is a bed and a warmish shower... and just after I had washed all the dirt of my legs and my face, 3 policemen entered my room. All dressed up in uniform, they explained that they were the police and needed to register me. I guess this town doesn't many foreign guests: it took them 10 minutes to figure out what line in my visum was my name. 

After that they became very friendly and I was allowed to go around town to have some food. To add to the joy of this little town they are paving the road just outside my hotel. It feels like they are going to keep doing that the whole night. At least I will not oversleep again.

 

After arriving in Chengdu yesterday I fixed my bike and then went for a stroll around town together with Michael from Australia whom I met on the plane. He is here to visit his Tibetan friend who is a monk in Tibet. He explained a lot of things about the different schools of budhism in Tibet and it was really interesting to meet. I might be able to pass by the monastry along the way at some point during the trip.