look closer

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Sometimes we have to look a bit closer in order to find what we’ve been looking for:

hotel

(Note that it says “hotel 旅社” in the window over the door.)

I left the shop/hotel in the morning, even though the owners were urging me to stay. They knew walking wasn’t very easy for me, since I had got myself some more bleeding blisters the day before.

But the call of the road was there, and it was strong:

identical houses

I could see the fertile land and the mountains in the distance:

fields and mountains

The Gobi desert was behind me. The mountains were, too. I was back in the valley. And it was a valley full of apple trees:

mediterranean place

One time, there was this dude who was apparently “cleaning up” the road by simply tossing all the trash that he could find down the embankment:

clean up man

I walked by, imagining that there would be another similar looking dude tossing that same trash out from the embankment and down into the fields later.

I ended up not walking very far.

After a few hours, I reached a place full of restaurants:

numbered food places

Found a comfortable spot that served noodles:

restaurant

And a guesthouse to spend the night:

Caboose parking

(Again if you look closer, you will see that the Caboose immediately made a new friend.)

And then the weather changed, and a summer storm came rolling over the little village with its restaurants, shops, markets, streets and backyards:

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And I was happy that I was inside.



  • Benjamin

    Don’t forget to buy some moon-cake for sunday (2 days to go)! It’s moon-festival. Don’t know if it’s still celebrated in the region you are moving but maybe you can eat it in the evening, look up to the moon and think about the people you love.

    (btw. good to know you somewhere west of china and not in the east. The next days they expect some protests again and so it could be more dangerous for foreigners (especially with japanese goods/cars)).

    Reply

  • Joshua Thayer

    So can Uyghur herds man basically cross all of these political borders via the mountains?

    Reply

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