Setting off at 7.12am from the city of Dujiangyan, 120km from Wenchuan, I breezed past the old ground I covered on Wednesday in just a quarter of the time.

Maybe Wenchuan, a remote city of 116,000 people nearly decimated by Monday's powerful earthquake in south-western China, is within reach after all, I thought.

But it did not take long before it dawned on me why thousands of Chinese rescuers from the military and police were travelling on foot. Unless you are in a helicopter, there is simply no better way to get to Wenchuan after the earthquake tore up the already unforgiving mountainous terrain.

Once I got past Zipingpu Dam, where my trek ended on Wednesday, it felt like I was helping to take my 20kg bicycle to Wenchuan, rather than the other way around.

It became a burden. I had to heave and carry it over every steep slope and uneven road.

Regular roads were a rare sight. Most either had deep cracks or were crowded with boulders which had fallen off the adjoining cliff. Some sections of road were pushed together to become a steep sloping ramp.

Taking a short-cut, the first one I encountered, meant lugging my mountain bike and a bagful of camera gear, water and food up a mountain trail inclined at about 50 to 60 degrees.

Deciding it was far better to be stubborn than suicidal, I tried pushing on to the nearest quake-hit area en route to Wenchuan - Shuimu Township, about 20km away.

Four kilometres in, however, I decided to chain the bicycle to a lamppost and proceed on foot instead after encountering a debris-strewn section of the road that was all but impassable to traffic.

The terrain, ironically, improved after I began proceeding on foot. For me, the last straw came around 1.15pm, when I came across two pregnant women - Ms Chen Mei, 36, and Ms Yang Xin, 23 - on the outskirts of Shuimu.

Both nine months pregnant, they had decided to trek out of the town to look for a hospital as the one in the town had been destroyed.

But if they had been able to escape from the earthquake without a scratch, surely the damage in Shuimu could not have been that extensive. I decided to cut my losses and turn back to Zipingpu Dam for Plan B: Beg to be allowed on a military boat ride into Yingxiu, one of the cities worst-hit by the earthquake.

All morning, the Chinese military and armed police stationed behind the dam launched assault boats filled with rescuers bound for Yingxiu. But journalists not linked to the government or military were all turned away despite repeated pleas to be allowed on the boats.

But as luck would have it, I did not have to travel to Yingxiu to speak to the survivors. Dozens of them were shipped from Yingxiu to a makeshift dock behind the dam using the same boats so that they could get medical attention.

Although shellshocked and disoriented, they knew they were the lucky ones, having survived a devastating quake that flattened their entire city and killed three-quarters of its population of 10,000.

Everyone had a traumatic story to tell about living next to the dead, losing their family members and living on crumbs of food since Monday.

Ms Li Hongyin, who works at a power plant in Yingxiu, said there was no electricity and water, and she had to scavenge in the debris of a collapsed apartment to find shoes to replace the ones she lost in her attempt to escape.

Asked how she kept herself alive, the 36-year-old said: 'We watched out for each other, and shared whatever food we could find. For a whole day, a group of about four to five of us can perhaps share a bowl of porridge.

'That meant about two to three spoonfuls for every person.'

There were also amazing accounts of how relatives found one another amid the chaos in Yingxiu.

Mr Song Jian, 24, trekked for 10 hours on Wednesday - from Dujiangyan city to Yingxiu - in order to get word of his grandparents and young nephew. Mr Song said it was pure luck on his part that he met someone along the trek who knew where his nephew's family lived.

Though his family members survived relatively unscathed, they lost all their belongings.

'Being alive is the greatest wealth you can have,' said Mr Song.

chinhon@sph.com.sg