Last year, my husband and I did Qinghai Lake, the largest saltwater lake in China, with support. This year, I was thinking to celebrate my birthday by running/walking around Lake Tai (太湖），the third largest fresh water lake in China by myself, self supported. Like Qinghai Lake, people normally cycle around it and there are several tournaments for biking. As to by foot, nobody has really done it self supported tracing Lake Tai fully. So my challenge was to ascertain the total distance in order to plan everyday.
As I did 1200k Shikoku Henro by foot within 27 days in 2023, I have got wealth experience in doing multi-day self supported journeys, let alone no language barrier for me tracing Lake Tai.
Nobody ran any portion of the journey with me, so most photos are selfies. Rarely I asked people to take a photo for me, and most of the time while I was close to lakeshores, I was alone.
I tried to stay overnight as close to the lake as possible. Unlike Qinghai Lake, there are many options around Lake Tai for lodging, particularly when I was in Suzhou and Wuxi cities. But to my biggest surprise, I had a very hard time getting enough food and water when I was so close to Lake Tai. Before I started, I did not believe food and water supply would be issues. As the cities with jurisdiction over Lake Tai almost all adopted restrictions to have shops open on Lakeshores, I started to realize that in order to get food and water, I either carry them myself, or detour 1-2-3k. The first day I did not have food until 42k, and the second day, I did not get hydration until 36k, and so on. Occasionally, I ran into festivals near the lake, I could get some snacks and freshly squeezed orange juice on those lucky days.
My dilemma lies in the weight of my bag and pace of my movement. In order to finish everyday within 8-10 hours, I had to carefully choose how much I carry. As I ran clockwise starting from Suzhou, once I came back to Wuxi and Suzhou 300k later, it appeared to have more shops to supply water and food. While I was on the eastern side of the lake, Huzhou and YIxing portion, it was a little hard unless I made a detour.
But I had a very challenging distance everyday already, I did not want to make detours. So what I did was to hydrate like crazy after I arrived everyday.
It was such a rewarding journey. I experienced fall, broken charger, blackout of my smartphone, lost, pain, and so on, but overall, it was smooth and peaceful to close the tap on my own.
Below is a summary of my journey:
Day 1 March 30, 2025 Northern part of Lake Tai in Suzhou to West Gate of Luxiang Ancient Village, 46.21k, 8 hours 7 minutes
Day 2 March 31, West Gate of Luxiang Ancient Village to Atour Hotel of Suzhou Wuzhong Taihu New District 43.73k, 7 hours 45 minutes
Day 3 April 1st, Atour Hotel of Suzhou Wuzhong Taihu New District to Manqi Suzhou Lake Tai Hot Spring Resort 52.76k, 10 hours 3 minutes
Day 4 April 2nd, Manqi Suzhou Lake Tai Hot Spring Resort to Ahua Restaurant of Changxing City, 50.39k, 9 hours 55 minutes
Day 5 April 3rd, Ahua Restaurant of Changxing City to People’s Court of Zhoutie Township of Yixing City, 44.37k, 8 hours 55 minutes
Day 6 April 4th, People’s Court of Zhoutie Township of Yixing City to Taihu Hotel Bus Stop (north), 45.41k, 9 hours 46 minutes
Day 7 April 5th, Taihu Hotel Bus Stop (north) to Suzhou Guxiang Guest House 44.29k, 9 hours 1 minutes
Day 8 April 6th, Guxiang Guest House to Northern part of Lake Tai in Suzhou, 42.74k, 8 hours 48 minutes