Day 11 (9th Feb 2013)

Day 11 / 9th Feb 2013

Da Lat to Bao Loc and further 40 kms

As decided day before we left our guest house at sharp 6 am. We had googled yesterday to find out the road going out of Da Lat assuming that there will be no one to give us directions at such an early hour. But we were wrong as roads were full with people out for exercise and some for work,so we had no difficulty getting out of Da Lat.The road climbed out of the town and then came the slope that we were expecting. The road was good, wooded on both the sides and we freewheeled for next 11 kms in morning krisp air. The pattern remained same more or less the whole morning and we sped with the tail wind towards our assigned destination 'Bao Doc' at great speed. By 11.30 we had covered 90 kms. There we stopped and had our 1st coconut water on this trip. Bao Loc was just 15 kms away but by this time it had become very hot and the road which was sloping down most of the morning started climbing. With huffing and puffing and sweating profusely we reached Bow Loc at 12.30 covering 115 kms.

We had lovely lunch of simple rice, vegetables,eggs and loads of cold green tee which comes free with food in Vietnam. As it was too early to call it a day we decided to carry on for further 2 hours, bot the Son was beating down so we decided to rest till 3 pm. There was lake just in opposite lane surrounded by trees and lawn. We went there, laid our cycle cover cum mat, and had lovely siesta. At 2.45 we were getting ready to move on when an Ice cream vendor turned up. Dipankar was longing for ice cream, so we ate ice cream ( there was slight confusion about the price as vendor first told us 10 k and charged us 15 k saying we chose the costlier ice cream, this keeps happening to us may be because of language problem) We got on our bikes and promptly lost the road, but got on the right track soon. As we started cycling the winds which helped us all morning had other plans and we were riding in cross winds now- The road also started climbing and the mountains were looming in front if us. But to our surprise we crossed one small pass and the road started descending. The road was surrounded with beautiful forest, birds were chirping and flying around and the descent lasted for full 12 kms. This was the first time we saw so many birds. To our disappointment, we hardly saw any birds free but saw lots of birds in cages. (I think Vietnami's consider keeping birds as pets auspicious) The birds kept in the cages are like bulbuls, Robins, babblers, whistling thrushes etc.

Rajoo had bought beer for us to drink after the lunch but which we had not taken and Rajoo had carried it with him. We stopped near one stream while climbing down the ghat, there we enjoyed the beer.

We had decided to look for hotel at 5 as we were not sure of road further ahead. and locals said the next village with the hotel was 30 kms away, luckily we found out a home stay. We had already clocked 153 kms, highest in one day on this tour, so we decided to stay there.