Expeditions / Trips Dragon's Backbone Diary / Updates Desert to Yecheng
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 00:00 Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 14:44
Cycling Day: 2
Distance: 130km
Woke up in the desert and it was quite chilly outside. We had breakfast and packed camp. Packing camp on this trip takes considerably longer than on my European trip since we have lots more stuff now and everything just fits so you need to pack very carefully. We walked back to the road and on our way we saw one of the workers which are working on the new railway line (we thing that is what they are doing) doing his business behind a heap of sand. I don’t think he was expecting 2 foreigners to come walking out the desert with bicycles.
The first 40km flew by since we had a nice strong wind blowing from behind but after the road turned it was back to our normal speeds. We stopped at a very small village called Quarak where we had some buns with minced meat in and bought water and fruit. We weren’t there for 2 minutes and we already drew a crowd. They just stood there watching us eat and some wanted to touch our bikes.
We then cycled on to Yarkand, a much bigger city with a lot of Chinese people in it, and stopped for noodles just before entering the city. This noodles where awesome and had eggs on top and it really helped getting some energy back. We then cycled through Yarkand which was a mistake because we could have just passed it if we took the correct road. After asking plenty of different people we got back onto the correct road again and cycled on to Yecheng. On our way to Yacheng a bunch of fguys in a small car passed us and the suddenly stopped in the middle of the road almost causing an accident with cars coming from behind. We slowed down and the car then pulled onto the side of the road and when we passed called for us to come over. We were tired and not in the mood for them so just carried on cycling. Not long after the guys were riding next to me shouting something, and then I see one guy hanging out the window trying to give me a Pepsi. I took the Pepsi from him while riding and off they went. Wow that was cool I though and looked behind me to see where Muis is to show him my prize, when I realized he also had one. We stopped at the next in road to for a rest and some fruit and to have a couple of sips of our Pepsi’s. When we were busy another boy showed up and just stood there looking at us until we left.
When we reached Yecheng we booked ourselves into the first hotel we saw and went for a walk and dinner. After dinner we bought some supplies and went straight to bed. Tomorrow we get onto highway 219 and the real fun will start.
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