day 79: 新绛 (xinjiang) – 稷山 (jishan) = 25,3km

稷山 (jishan) is actually more than 30km from 新绛 (xinjiang), but someone had told me that the railroad was a more direct way to get there.

So I walked the iron road:

You know what sucks about this: the distance between the horizontal boards is just too small, so you have to make tiny little steps if you want to walk on them:

Not very manly, and not very effective for speed either.

About every 30 minutes, I would have to step aside and wait for a while:

Apart from that, there was really not much happening on the tracks:

Just whiteness everywhere, with hardly any people around:

Sometimes I would cross tiny villages, but I would be high above them, walking on the tracks:

Also, one thing I hadn’t thought of before: food. There was absolutely no way to find anything to feed on during the entire day. I had two muffins and a can of walnut milk from the depths of my backpack here:

The rest of the way meant sinister starving.

Once I ran into a dude who was also walking on the tracks, trying to get to his friend’s wedding:

He cheered me up a bit and told me that I had almost made it.

Then I found this:

“I bislike you”

And not just one – six or seven of these, all beautifully written in the snow:

Someone must have really bisliked someone else here.

Anyways, at some point I got fed up with all the cozy warmth rushing by every 30 minutes:

I would comfort myself: “Those captives sitting on their flat asses should envy me – I am roaming about freely, I am experiencing the outdoors, they don’t know what it’s like!”

But I guess they didn’t even notice me.

Well, at some point, after what seemed like a million tiny steps later, I had made it to 稷山 train station:

It was only then, when I stepped on the boarding platform and walked through the train station, and I could feel the eyes of all the other people who were there waiting in the waiting hall, that I actually felt that some part of the lie I had been telling myself for comfort was maybe becoming real.

At least for me.

Soundtrack: Snot – “Snot”

—total: 1093,2km