May 20, 2014
For some reason, I didn't sleep well last night.
I woke up again and again wishing to see the morning light from the window. The
house we stayed at was very warm because the water from the hot spring was the
source of the heating system (radiator). All we could do was to open the
window.
After having a coffee and some bread, which by
no means was enough for the kind of activity we did everyday, we left the
house.
We started gaining altitude in a very changeable
weather. We were close to 4000 meter, so in a second, there was snow, and a
second later, sun.
Close to 4000 meter, the road turned into gravel
and very steep. To make it more challenging for us, we were struggling with a
very strong head wind too. So... The altitude, the wind, the condition of the
road, made it very difficult for us to ride our bikes. From 3900 to 4240
meters, we walked our bikes, which in fact, was more difficult than riding it,
but at least when we got dizzy because of the altitude, we would easily stop.
So we walked all the last 300 meters.
We thought we would coast down from the top, but
we went down to 3800 meters in a very bumpy road with big gravels. I was not
enjoying the ride down at all. There was an incredibly strong wind from behind
that pushed us forward, but what a waste because I had to break harder to slow
down the bike on the bumpy, stony road.
I had seen a lot of pictures of this place on
the Internet, and I had been dreaming of biking in this place, but little did I
know how tough it would be. No water, no vegetation... Only nothingness and
beautiful scenery.
After going down to 3800, we had to climb again
to 4115 meters. Then we stayed in this altitude for an hour or so until we went
down again to 3800 meters. In general, we were biking at 4000 all day. The only
good thing was the tale wind.
It was getting late for camping. We had to
decide what to do. We were in a tough situation: either we had to camp in 4000
in an incredible wind, or we had to keep cycling to see if at some point, the
road takes a dive down. The more we biked, the more we realized that the road
stayed in the same altitude. Finally, at about 6:30, we saw another ugly
village, like the one last night, and decided to stay there.
A man invited us to stay in his house for
$20 including dinner and breakfast.
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