Monday, 20 April 2009 00:00 Last Updated on Thursday, 18 June 2009 10:50 Written by Billy van Graan

Cycling Day: 6
Distance:  83km

The man we stayed with woke up early this morning to make the food we would take with us. I got the times  wrong and he woke up much earlier than he should have. My bad.

We planned to cycle to the beginning of the steep section on the next pass called Xaidulla which was 66km away from Mazar, but if we then still felt ok we would go over the pass and sleep on the other side in one of the abandoned road repair stations we knew was there. On the route we printed it said that from Mazar to the pass was the first bad road of the route. We were really surprised at how bad some of the previous sections was we thought this won’t get much worse than that. We were very wrong and ended up having a very hard day. The roads were extremely bad with loads of loose stones, rocks and sand and even though the previous day was a rest day after 50km of this it surely didn’t feel like it.

The landscape around us was so beautiful and different. If you want to get an idea of how it must feel on mars this is a good place to start. Nothing grows here and some sections of the mountain are red with the rest gray. The lifelessness of this place is eerie but special.

When we reached the steep section of the pass my energy was running low but we decided to tackle the pass even if it means walking. The steep section of the pass is 10km long and when we reached the 3rd km of this we saw on the side of the pass a water break going straight up to near the top which we could walk rather than go up the pass that keeps on switching back and forth making it so long. If we walked up the water break we might cut the distance in half although it would be much steeper. We ended up walking up the water break and stopping quite a few times to rest and to eat and drink something. Pushing our fully loaded bikes on this very steep section up 800m was no walk in the park and when we reached to top I was really relieved.

We then rode down the back of the pass down into a beautiful valley to 4420m where we made camp in an old repair station. We were drained of all energy and with our luck the lake in front of this building was completely frozen over.  We managed to break 2 chucks of ice off the top and melted it for some drinking water. It was freezing outside so we got into our sleeping bags ate a bit and tried to go to sleep.

Valley at the back of Xaidulla - Click to Enlarge

Over the past couple of days Muis have developing a really bad cough which doesn’t seem to get any better.  Tomorrow we will have a long time to rest in the next town since it is all downhill from here and only 30km away. Hopefully this would give him a little bit of time to recover.

Tags
China  Cycling  Dragons Backbone