day 96: 运城 (yuncheng) - 解州 (xiezhou) = 26,3km

Oh, so good to be on the road again!

Or so I thought…

It seemed like the Chairman himself was going to hail me off when I was about to leave the city:

Everything was quiet, almost all shops and restaurants remaining closed during the holiday season:

I seemed to find a kid around every corner playing with what was left of the big pyro-shoot-out some days before:

There I was, walking through quiet landscapes, appreciating the blue afternoon:

But then I realized:

With all the restaurants closed, I would have nothing to eat all day.

And only one bottle of peanut milk and no cookies whatsoever in stock.

Nice one, Christoph!

Since walking next to the highway was hopeless anyway, I decided to turn south and walk by the lakeside:

If you look at the map of this area you can see it’s divided up into little square sections:

It’s where they extract the salt, eventually turning the lake into something foul and disgusting:

You can walk all over to the other side without getting wet, and a lot of people seem to do just that to get rid of their garbage:

How convenient!

Actually, I think this place should look somewhat like this:

The mountains proudly rising up over the tranquility of the salty waters - even with the litter in the foreground, you can probably still feel a bit of its original beauty.

Once I had crossed the lake, I was able to find a little shop where I could get some crackers and a yogurt drink.

I snapped a shot of some friendly old folks while I was resting:

And there was this wall where somebody had written sth.:

Yes, I thought, that’s exactly it:

- like to do sth.

- want to do sth.

- try to do sth.

I don’t know why, but even though I liked to, and I wanted to, and I tried to, but walking was so painful and hard today.

With seven days of rest and good meals behind me, I thought I’d be an invincible tank by now, eating miles like it ain’t no thing.

But I wasn’t.

Well, invincible or not, tank or nothing, I slowly arrived at my destination at some point:

Found a place that was still serving noodles.

A shop that sold cookies.

A hotel with heating.

What more could I ask?

Soundtrack: At The Drive-In - “Mannequin Republic”

—total: 1235,3km