Tuesday, 21 April 2009 00:00 Last Updated on Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:43 Written by Billy van Graan

Cycling Day: 7
Distance: 44km

We woke up today feeling like shit. I didn’t sleep very well and Muis’s cough is getting very bad. We packed up as quickly we can so we could descend further down the valley. Once we got below 4000m we soon felt 100% again. I think we are struggling to acclimatize because we are trying to do it while cycling were as with climbing you go to a certain height and sit and do nothing. Here we are constantly busy working hard and I think that our bodies are just not getting the time to acclimatize.

As we reached the town of Xaidulla I was yet again attacked by another dog. Luckily this one was smaller and I saw it coming from a distance so I could take my feet out of the cleat pedals ready to defend myself, but in the end I easily out peddle it.  Muis really enjoyed seeing this and was laughing very hard.

Xaidulla is supposed to be the last important town for the next couple of hundred kilometers so we were surprised it was so small. And you couldn’t buy much more here than you could in Mazar. We booked into a small guesthouse where we could store our bikes inside and ate and awesome meal. The woman that runs this guesthouse was amazing. She could cook very delicious food, ran the guesthouse and ran a pharmacy / clinic as well. She was a really hard working and somehow even found the time to help us at the local shop to try and buy a phone. Since no one in the town could speak any English we got her to phone Eric back in Guangzhou and this way we could explain everything and we ended up buying one of her second had phones.

Later that day a whole bunch of army guys pitched up and found us very interesting. They invited us to eat with them and have some beers. The food was awesome and we had a lot of fun trying to chat with them. I ended up giving them almost all the South African notes I had left. Today we has a lot of time to rest since we arrived in Xaidulla before lunch time so I think tomorrow would go quite nicely.

 

Tags
China  Cycling  Dragons Backbone