day 222: 祁家店 (qijiadian) – 东乐 (dongle) = 16,6km

How I loathed the day!

After I had started walking just to get warm in the morning, all the pretty landscapes kept guttering by in a thick and pasty stream…

…I felt tired and ill…

Would you like to know a dirty little secret?

In spite of all the countryside that has been generously laid out there for the wanderer to look at…

…walking can still suck.

And today it did just that.

I came through a gate once:

This had happened a hundred times before, those old gates are everywhere.

But then I ended up in a place where I didn’t want to stay:

And there seemed to be only one way out to the highway up north:

1,20 meters tall – 20 meters long, the ground sprinkled with little turds.

I could hear my own voice echoing away in the dark: Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck…

…

Well, there’s an end to every day’s joy and misery, and today I called it an early one:

I sat down in this restaurant where I heard about an “old Grandma” from Australia who had come by here – on foot, with a donkey.

There had been other people telling me about her recently; she had apparently started out somewhere in the west, and some voices even claimed that she had gotten cancer or some other terminal disease, and was now on a religious pilgrimage to get cured.

Maybe we’ll hear more about that mysterious old lady in the future, who knows?

…

Me personally, I sat down and put my feet up, then I ordered a serving of noodles and a soda pop from the freezer:

The owner was a very friendly guy who could even improvise a bit of English conversation.

“Do you have any beds for rent in this place?” I asked him in Chinese.

It was two thirty in the afternoon, the sun was out punishing the desert and baking the mountains around this place.

He smiled.

Then he came up with a reply in English: “Yes, we do!”

Soundtrack: 113 – “Marginal”

—total: 2837,4km