day 151: 平凉 (pingliang) - 安国 (anguo) = 19km

Finally, I got back on old highway 312 today:

I had figured that with seven days of rest in 平凉 (pingliang), my feet would have healed up perfectly, and walking would go like a charm.

Well - I was wrong.

I come to think fixing the shoes might have been a mistake. It hurts more than it ever did before.

Anyways, being back on the track was a good thing:

I slowly limped through the arid landscapes in the western tip of the valley:

Took a cookie break up on a little hill:

And lay down looking at the clouds doing their dance with the sun:

…then it was back to the limping part again:

That night, I had dinner with a group of truck drivers in a little Muslim restaurant:

They were shipping 20 tons of baby strollers to the most northwestern part of the country:

And because that was my destination as well, I was very happy to ask them a couple of questions about the road ahead.

I’m a bit worried about the desert, you know.

We figured we would run into each other again somewhere between here and Kazakhstan, then the dudes managed to find me a place to sleep in the back of a restaurant:

It was better than nothing in this place completely barren of hotels.

Though later that night, when the music started to play and I had regular visitors in my little corner, I figured maybe pitching a tent in the hills wouldn’t have been so bad after all:

At around 2am, once the music had finally stopped and my audience was on their way home, the baby next door realized he had a cold and started crying.

And he cried all night.

Soundtrack: Iggy Pop - “The Passenger”

—total: 1923,9km