day 326: [a plain spot] – 柳树泉 (liushuquan) = 35,8km

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Finally a decent night spent in the outdoors. Not too warm, not too cold. Not too windy.

I made this video time lapse of my morning routine:

Note the two friendly dudes showing up for a chat.

…

There was some nice scenery on the way today:

The only downside: the man had put up a checkpoint somewhere along the road:

“What country are you from?” this guy asked me after fumbling with my passport for what seemed like ages.

Then he called for backup.

Oh well, whatever.

…

Once I walked past this enchanted old tree that looked like it was from Middle Earth or something:

…and only a little while later I found a perfect resting place that I thought could only be described as biblical:

I also couldn’t help noticing that I wasn’t the only one inching about in a rather slow pace – there were these big fat caterpillars everywhere, and it seemed like they were all going north:

Did you notice the sudden flipping moves towards the end of the clip? I guess it must be a way of evasion for them, but who knows? Maybe these are in fact highly poisonous predators, and I should congratulate myself for cheating death today… mighty caterpillar of doom, thank you for sparing my life today…

…

Well here’s what I haven’t told you:

I was being sabotaged all the while!

Remember I had gotten a set of new tires three days ago? And then they failed on the first day out of 哈密 (hami) and I had to get them repaired?

Well this one was beyond repair I guess:

I also remember myself telling the guy from the bike shop: “please understand, I will be walking through the Gobi desert – these tires must under all circumstances be highly durable!”

Well, he obviously hadn’t agreed with me and rather decided to sell me some cheap crap.

You see, in the Chinese language, if you really want to insult someone, cursing his ancestors might be a good way to go.

“肏他祖宗十八代!” (“fuck all 18 generations before him!”) you could say.

Well, take a wild guess what was on my mind while I was doing the Sisyphus, hauling my broken caboose through the land…

Then all of a sudden 艾合坦木 (aihetanmu), an Uyghur who could rarely speak any Mandarin Chinese appeared:

We made some extremely rudimental conversation while I was struggling with the weight of the caboose, then I decided the whole situation was unbearable and went for a pit stop. Luckily I had taken one of my old tires as a spare on the way, so I just slapped that one on the caboose and hoped for the best. All the while, 艾合坦木 stood there, overseeing the process and making more or less inarticulate remarks.

I was very happy when I finally had the caboose up and running again – you know that a happy mind is probably a bit more receptive to the beautiful sceneries around…

…and to the inherent charms of the different faces everywhere – the expressions of animal…

…and man:

There I was, happily strolling through the beautiful countryside:

A very friendly lady gave me some grapes from her garden and told me the exact way to the next place with something like a guesthouse:

It was quarter past seven and I had another 8km to go.

Well, you know what that means:

Walking in the dark – thanks to the 18 generations before the saboteur.

…

[PS: I am very happy to tell you that I have just finished remodeling the important Support-section of this site!]

Soundtrack: Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”

—total: 4057,5km