Guotai Hotel Jiayuguan

... a taste for it as well), but we are now firmly in the realms of a wide choice of food. How to order though, when you cannot read the darn menu? Unbeknown to me, my phrasebook has a menu section at the back, which has now had a thorough working through. Hurrah. It also has how to ask for not much chilli - otherwise, especially in Xinjiang, the chilli blew your mouth apart, which then required much quaffing of beer to calm the taste buds. Unsure how much of a shame that is... Perhaps ...

... Qilian Shan peaks in one direction, the Hei Shan [Black Mountains] in the other; and the Gobi Desert stretching into the forbidding distance.

We visited the so called Overhanging Wall, constructed in in 1539, but restored in 1987.

Monday 19th October:

Drove through the Gobi Desert most of the day towards Dunhuang; the highlight of the Buddhist connection of the ...

... muraille, mais surtout le debut du desert et de la route de la soie. C'etait la premiere visite du desert pour Josee et elle a adore. On pouvait appercevoir au loin des montagnes de roche, assez hautes pour etre couvertes de neige eternelles, dominant sur des etendues de desert de roche paraissant s'etaler a l'infini.

On a aussi fait la rencontre de deux freres allemands dont l'un d'eux vit en Chine depuis 11 mois et parle vraiment bien ...

... the wall. Actually a minute or two before I saw the sign, I was pretty much convinced I had gone and gotten myself lost. Once I got passed by a father and son scooter duo, who gave me a thumbs up sign and said "Lihai!" (cool/impressive/admirable...etc) at me. Uh huh. Lost in the desert rates as lihai. If only they'd known. I would have been demoted to silly foreigner lost in the middle of the desert. I pedaled back to town very slowly, worried about the front tire which was looking a ...

A quick stop in Jiayugaun (嘉峪关) to see the end of the Great Wall. Driving through the area you can still see the original wall. But the Jiayuguan Fort (嘉峪关城ઌ 4;), 61 yuan entrance fee, has been rebuilt. Jiayuguan isn't anything special, but if your interested in following the silk road it makes a pleasant stop.

... bars and found around 8 of them in is front pannier..plenty for lunch, even some dove chocolate appeared as well.. The funny thing though was that it almost looked like they had chosen the lunch spot on purpose, hidden away from the highway, whereas there were many places they could have parked and we would have noticed them on the highway (as they knew around 8 people had decided to take that route). Anyways, we had the very smooth and safer ride today...Guess ...

... were travel days, on the bus through the amazing expanse of Inner Mongolia, and the middle day was for the trees. And, for some place called Black Water Village that the travel agency couldn't explain to us. Oh, well, we thought, it will be interesting. We reached E Ji Na at about six p.m. on the first day. We knew we'd arrived, because suddenly the brown desert erupted in golden trees. The sun was going down, but the light on the leaves was so bright it hurt my eyes. The ...

Not a lot to do except go to the fort and the overhanging great wall. The fort was way overpriced, 100 RMB. The forbidden city in Beijing doesn't cost that much. Well, it was interesting enough I guess and the land scape was very different from eastern China. On the train ride in I woke up to the ...

... broke down. There was a big city nearby. Instead of arriving there at 2:00, I got there at 6:00. I wasn't sure if I could make it to my planned destination, which was another 200 km away. Driving down the main road of the city, wondering whether I should go or not, I saw something so beautiful I couldn't believe my eyes. Dico's! I hadn't seen one since Chengdu. I went inside and ate a chicken sandwich. A Dico's chicken sandwich will make ...

... bit too new and clean for me. I wonder if it's the first version of the modern city or if the former one has been knocked down like in so many other places. Still, it's one town in the middle of nowhere. I urged to get a place to stay, an expensive place to stay for the quality of it but never mind, I don't want to be fussy on that. I get a bicycle and and directly go to book my train tocket for the following day. I don't want to spent more than a night here. Unfortunately, there ...