29 June, 2014
I didn't want to
ride when I woke up this morning mostly because of the hardship, the heat, and
the monotonous road I experienced in China yesterday. But, this is what it is.
You can't have everything desirable in this kind of trip. Sometimes, you have
to wait to see what's in the store out of a miserable situation.
I woke up at
5:30, stuffed my sleeping bag into its compression sack, and sneaked out of my
tent. It was rather cool, not warm at all. I went back into my sleeping bag
again. After a while, I heard Fausto, so I jumped out of my tent, washed last
night dishes, and got prepared to the usual morning chores. We had a coffee and
then some instant noodles. We eat pasta and noodles alternatively for every
meal: cold pasta with vegetables, hot pasta with fortified sauce, instant
noodles, and fortified instant noodles. Eggs in the morning is so special.
After breakfast,
while we were packing up, a guy came to our camp. We greeted as we usually do
with the locals, trying to be respectful and be patient with their questions...
they all ask the same questions which, after a while, get boring: they want to
know where we are from, where we started and where we are going. This guy did
not know any English, so after a few attempts of making each other understood,
he kept quiet as we continued packing. When we were all ready to get on the bike, he (with gesture) invited
us to his house for tea. We agreed although we were full, but that's why we
travel like this: getting to know about people and their lives.
His house was in
front of the woods we had our campground. In the house yard, a young girl was washing dishes in
a bucket. The guy made his family aware of having guests for tea. Then we were
led into a room. I guess it was the guest room. On the wall, there was a huge poster of a
window with the view of an ocean. The window in the poster had curtain too.
There were two identical posters of a big bowl full of fruits on each side of
the other walls. There was a big green branch hanging off the ceiling. Later on,
we found out that it was a plant that smells good. Great idea!
After 5 minutes,
our host walked in with a small table. He put it in front of us and covered it
with a patterned table cloth. Then came some bread, some Pamir Chai (tea mixed
with milk) with a big dish of salad. Our host broke the bread for us, put it in
front of us, broke some small pieces of bread and put them into our Shirchai
bowl, and gestured us to eat. He did all with outmost respect. We tried to make
some conversation with body language. When our bowl of Shirchai was half, he
poured some and filled it up. We were really full, but we thought it would be
rude to decline the offers.
After the food,
we filled all our water bottles manually pumped from their well, and said
goodbye to our unbelievably hospitable friends.
Since we started
to ride in China, I have heard a lot of cars sounding their horns, many times.
I was very annoyed by it. Sometimes, I thought they were angry at us riding
loaded bikes on their way. Sometimes, I thought they were cheering us, but
today, we realized that there is a traffic sign on some intersections that
order the drivers to sound their horns!
Soon, we were
riding on a very newly built and modern highway in the mountains, on many parts
of which the speed limit was 40 km/h! There was a river along the road, so a
couple of times, I washed my head and soaked my jersey to keep myself cool.
After a couple of hours, the road turned into huge, long bridges meandering
around mountains. Honestly, I firmly think that all those brides were not
needed. There was one bridge after another. Is this to show off Chinese new
face or what? The road and the bridges looked very new, but the bridges were
already crumbling! I witnessed the cement of many parts--scary!
After passing
through a couple of tunnels, I saw Fausto waiting for me by the lake we had
been hoping to reach and camp by. There were many tourists around the lake
after the tunnel. A couple of locals came to us and asked if we would like to
spend the night in a yurt there. A man asked 50 won ($8) to offer us a spot by
the lake! We bought some noodles and
kept riding to find a spot for camping. There was a fence along the road,
preventing people from going off the road to the pastures or to the lake side,
but there were some tunnels under the road for water to pass to the other side
of the road toward the lake. So we used one of them and found ourselves a
beautiful campsite by the lake, away from the road and everything.
I bathed in the
lake and had a coffee. The sky was warning a thunderstorm, so we pitched up our
tent and started preparing the dinner. Two guys (locals) in a Yamaha motorcycle
came to us and had a little chat/body chat. One of them had a very interesting
overcoat. It was a very old Chinese army overcoat with stars as buttons. He
looked like a Chinese world-war II army officer.
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| Friendly Cop |
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| Massive Meandering Bridge |
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| New but Crumbling Bridge |
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