The Really Great Wall Of China 1

I left the fascinating colourful hills of the Zhangye Global Geopark, and continued northwesterly.

As I left, the lovely old woman from the little three-roomed hotel I'd been staying at gave me a packet of dried red dates. What a darling.

It's about time I had a date.

The views were beautiful.

Everything's so ancient around here that dinosaurs are still roaming around at will. Luckily they fenced these two in, to keep them under control.

For awhile there was a colourful running track which I pretended was an Olympic velodrome. I won so many gold medals zipping along there I could hardly carry them all.

I thought I'd inadvertently stumbled into Casino Beef Week, but then realised it couldn't be real, because there were no SUVs full of swearing rednecks anywhere, and everyone was speaking Chinese.

The flat road to somewhere

These fluffy seeds are everywhere. Sometimes they fly into my mouth while I ride. I should remember to close it, but I'm often so busy talking to myself that I forget.

After a steady day's cycling, and with no major spectacular incidents to report, I arrived in Gaotai, found a hotel, and aimlessly wandered about, as usual.

Delicious bikkie stall.

Hmmm, look's like someone's been tucking in, naughty naughty.

Savoury snack

Watermelon Man. This region is famous for its melons.

The Sticks

I rolled out of town the next morning, through a few dry fields.

Corn stalks are a valuable commodity out here. They bale them up and sell them to local power and heating plants, where they're burnt as fuel.

At least there was some roadside greenery for awhile.

Mineral freight train. There's large copper and nickel deposits around here.

Speaking of coppers, there's quite large deposits of them on the road too.

It's really desolate out here. There's few settlements, and long fairly straight flat roads cutting through the outback scenery.

Bewdy chillin' and catchin' some, em, rays

These tall stick monsters were everywhere.

Could easily be a roadhouse in the Oz outback

Mindblowingly huge solar array catching a ray

Rock on

These guys found some water somewhere, I really don't know where, maybe underground.

I stopped to get a late lunch, and the young couple in there were so lovely, and so fascinated to have someone from another planet in there eating place. After we chatted for awhile the woman asked me if I had any currency from my home country, which I pretended not to, as I only had a few large Oz notes, but I gave her some Lao Kip and Thai baht, which I've been carrying around forever and can't get rid of.

The man cooked noodles for me, their home made noodle maker machine is on the right.

The woman insisted I have a bottle of this Chinese soft drink, the taste of which  is indistinguishable from what I remember Australian Fanta to taste like, when I last had it in about 1978.

The couple insisted I not pay for my food or drinks, which was so sweet, even though I knew I'd already paid twice over with my currency gifts.

Local roadside market, mainly selling young animals and poultry.

Including piglets.

Three wheel sedan. You spend 25% less on tyres and brakes, and, statistically speaking, should only get three quarters of the flatties.

This looks old, but I don't know what it is.

Nullabor-esque, but not Nullabor-ing

A lone, windswept, special tree

Ghost village

This car came off the road at speed and slammed into the ditch. I didn't see it happen, but saw the damage on the car. They're lucky they didn't roll it, it's quite a big drop.

Voodoo doll of me coming out of the shower

Speaking of me and showering, this riverbank was bone dry.

And then I arrived in the dusty, dirty, hick town of Quingshui. It took me a while to find a hotel that'd have me. The locals just didn't know what to do with such a creature.

Eventually they directed me to this hotel, whose lobby was definitely the cleanest and most extravagant part of the building.

The woman who ran it almost had a baby trying to get her head around registering and checking me in. It's quite incredible what can cause stress in this world.

I went a-strolling to find food. There was hardly anything around. This girl didn't even wake up when I went past.

I lied about the hotel lobby. My room curtains were also very extravagant.

There was a nice backdrop from the stairs too.

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