day 129: 咸阳 (xianyang) - 店张 (dianzhang) = 23,5km

Oh yeah, I’m finally doing what I had originally set out to do: walk!

The last three days had seen me looking outside my window like a sick dog (March 15th 2008) - but today I packed up, went out, and walked down that road I had been staring at for so long:

Beautiful!

Okay well, with almost all cuticle shred off from my feet due to that vicious treatment a week ago (March 9th 2008), I felt like today’s joy was really more of a mental than of a physical nature:

But still I somehow managed to cover a decent distance, and I even came across a historical relic on the way:

To be totally honest I’m not so sure about what exactly this is, but I am led to believe that it could be a burial mound from Imperial China, much like the one I’ve seen earlier (February 27th 2008).

Whatever, it might as well have been the world’s largest molehill for all I care - I was so happy to be back on the road anyways!

So many interesting people to look at:

So much concrete winding through the countryside, waiting for me to gently put down one foot, and then the other one:

…and then the first foot again, and then the other one…

My original plan was to walk all the way to 礼泉 (liquan) today, but when I asked this friendly old farmer about his expert opinion, he just laughed:

He told me to forget about 礼泉 for today and just settle in at itsy-bitsy 店张 (dianzhang) instead:

And I did just that.

And you wanna know another thing? Two dudes at the place where I just had dinner told me that this particular 店张 used to be the very first stop on the Silk Road coming from 西安 (Xi’an). Magic!

There’s really nothing to look at here, though.

But so much to be imagined…

Soundtrack: Pantera - “Walk”

—total: 1617,8km