Qinglong to Kunming

There's nothing edible for breakfast at our modest hotel in Qinglong, but we want to make an early start anyway since we have nearly 400km to cover today in order to reach the final point of our road trip, the Yunnanese capital, Kunming. Our driver, Mr Huang (pictured here with Sun Ying and me), plans to begin his return trip to Chongqing as soon as he's dropped us off so we don't want to get to Kunming too late in the day. We set off at 8:15, navigating a narrow road crowded with trucks full of pigs being brought to market. A young man from the hotel is with us, since he's offered to show us a viewpoint for a legendary 24 hairpin bend road, which was built during the war as part of the northern extension of the Burma Road. The exact location of the 24 bends was a mystery for many years after the war (most people thought it was in Yunnan not Guizhou province), until a Kunming historian named Ge Shuya identified it recently. It is now a listed historic site, preserved though long since replaced for everyday use by a less dramatic road. Audrey wrote that 'you look down from the top of a hill and can actually see 24 hairpin bends below you'. Our local guide unfortunately leads us on a wild goose chase to get to this viewpoint - we climb up an extremely rough road, itself very windy, and the clouds are hanging so low this morning that there won't be a view anyway. We give up and instead get the guide to take us to the unmarked starting point of the 24 bend road, pictured above. It is a packed dirt road but Mr Huang is game to drive it, and so we do - heading steadily down exactly 24 hairpin bends which weave around with metronomic regularity. It is a quite lovely drive, though undoubtedly less terrifying than it was in 1944 since the landscape is much more wooded - looking at the old photos the bends really do stand out because there are hardly any trees on these hills. We are very pleased we've found the road (which took some painstaking research on Sun Ying's part) and got down it.

From the bottom we climb up again towards the highway, expecting to join it quickly, but we are informed by a surly toll-taker that the southbound lanes are closed until Pu'an because of a road collapse. So it's back to the old national road, which of course is more interesting but much slower. This stretch of high mountain country is especially desolate, dogs lie in the road, men stand around in bleak coal-mining villages along the way. About 60km beyond Qinglong we can join the highway and resolve to follow this for the rest of the day. We pass by Panxian, where Max and Audrey had another night stop and by the village of Pingguan Zhen, where Max noted that the elevation was 6800 feet - the highest point on our route, and close to the boundary with Yunnan province. Tunnels run through several of the mountains now, but in the open air there's thick fog and little visibility. As we descend onto a plateau, I can see why Audrey commented that 'the last part of the journey is not so interesting. The country is very barren and mountainous and scorched looking. The villages you go through seem pathetically poor, and the dogs lying in the street are nothing but bones'.

Our three days driving through Guizhou province have been astonishing. There is a Chinese saying that Guizhou is a land where there are "no three days without rain, no three hectares without a mountain, and no three coins in any pocket". Our experience has certainly born that out. We've had rain for at least part of every day and we literally haven't seen the sun since Tuesday, our first full day in Chongqing. The mountainous landscape is phenomenal, but the impression of rural poverty is indelible. At one point, Mike said rather provocatively to Sun Ying that he hadn't seen anyone going barefoot. She was a bit taken aback, and remarked that China wasn't Africa. But we have seen plenty of people wearing the shabbiest of clothing, doing their laundry in the nearest stream and, I suspect, never truly drying out or feeling fresh and clean in this damp climate where they live in dwellings without running water or toilets. World War II was a temporary engine of development for the province, since it lay in a vital position between the Allied supply base at Kunming and the capital, Chongqing. Afterwards, things slipped backwards again and now the policy is to develop tourism to take advantage of the area's many natural beauties. I hope this succeeds and that one day, the villages will thrive, that young Chinese professionals will be proud to have weekend homes in this stunning province and to remember their roots in the rural villages.

At midday, we get off the highway to stop for lunch in the city of Qujing, which was another night stop for Max and Audrey - one where they stayed with the Friends Ambulance Unit, a Quaker volunteer force, who 'called for volunteers after supper, to take the Chinese dead to the cemetery. Otherwise they would be left in the [army] camp and on the road.' Well, things are much better now but modern Qujing is yet another ugly Chinese city, where we have a typical Yunnanese lunch of 'across the bridge' noodles - a broth with noodles and helpings of thin slices of various meats and fish cooked in it (some of them less than appetizing).

Then we're on the home stretch to Kunming and the sun finally comes out, the country turns flatter and sandstone replaces limestone. We're very pleased to reach our hotel, the Green Lake, at 4pm after a journey of 1150km - remarkably close to the distance of 1129km recorded by my meticulous father. And unlike Max and Audrey, whose truck had six tire changes and numerous breakdowns and refueling stops en route, we have arrived without a scratch or mechanical problem with our sturdy Buick minivan - largely thanks to the skillful Mr Huang.

After we bid farewell to him, Ying, Mike and I enjoy our best meal of the trip - a Yunnanese dinner at 1910 Gare du Sud, a chic restaurant in a restored French colonial railway terminal.