Bickle up people. I’ve entered Gansu with English on the signs. I’m looking forward to the statae class an xi extremely – I’m not sure if I’d recognise it if I saw it though. In the mean time, I drank a lot of ice tea in the ice zone and watched out for the traffic in the harmonious society. Chinglish at its best.
Extremely
Welcome to Gansu
Smooth Communication
The Ice Zone
We set of after the other cyclist Huang today, who was waiting at the hotel reception long before we had even thought about breakfast. With his eyes set of the 220km distant Duanghuan, we thought we would not see him again.
A flat tyre broke up the everyday existence of cycling along the main road through the desert, stopping every 30km or so at the parking area shops.
Puncture
All this cycling had brought Achun and I closer and closer to a first possible split in our paths. Dunhuang. A beautiful town, set in the desert, with massive sand dunes as a backdrop. A tourist mecca. And about 130km off our way. I was undecided on whether or not to go there. Achun was undecided. Both wanted to continue parallel to the freeway in Gansu afterwards for a few hundred more kilometres. Both also wanted to continue cycling together. I feel a real rapport with Achun.
It was approaching evening when we reached the turnoff to Dunghuan – a gravel road that stayed that way the whole 130km to Dunghuan. We were still undecided. And then Huang appeared. It became clear we had a companion no matter what our decision was. As the sun sunk lower in the sky, the three of us set off along the dirt road into the desert to set up camp in a beautiful place in the desert lunar landscape.
Sunset
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