Archive for August 6th, 2009

I started walking from San Guan Kou at about two o’clock. The first thing I noticed was that it was cooler than last time I was here.

If the temperature stays at about 30 C max, I’ll be happy. For me, 30 C is OK, whilst 35 C means that my body cannot cool down adequately.

I soon left the road going down in to the Ningxia valley and turned Northwards heading for two Xixia tombs in the distance.

Walking towards the tombs, I started thinking about how little is known about this Kingdom. It reminded me that we are all here on earth for a very limited time, so we should be grateful and make the most of it.

The tombs were fantastic. I took off my rucksack and walked around the Northern one, taking pictures. Then I heard thunder in the distance. Some frightening dark clouds were rolling slowly in from the North. I wanted to go on walking, but decided against it after considering it for five minutes.

To the North there was only open desert and I would have been the highest point in the terrain for the next hour of walking. A couple of lightning strikes in the mountains to the West were enough to convince me. I set up the tent just outside of the fenced-off area by the tombs. That should be close enough so that lightning strikes the tomb and not the tent. (Well - hopefully neither!)

It started raining and I dozed off in the tent. Only two hours later, the bad weather had passed. It’s good to be back on track and in the tent again :-)

17 kilometres today.

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