Tag Archives: walk🚶🏻

Most people in Shuiquanzi are farmers that try to profit from their fields as well as from the highway: This morning, one family called me over to have their picture taken: “You’re a photographer” they said (word had gone around rather quickly), “please take a picture of us, will you?” Of course, the pleasure was […]

One last look at all that beautiful green: …and then it was behind me, and nothing but dust and more dust were ahead: Sometimes there were these surprising little patches of green, just as if some landscaping god had dropped them there by accident: …but just because the plants can get water from the ground […]

The valley around Yongchang was so green and so nice, a half day’s walk of pure pleasure: The road construction team from yesterday had passed me again, only this time some of them waved me over for a chat: “Can I ask you a personal question?” said one of them, “we would like to know […]

I started walking at six in the morning today. After 5km, I sat down and slept for 20 minutes. Then I walked another 5km and sat down again. This time for 30 minutes. The third time I slept for almost an hour. All the while, there was a construction team fixing the road around me: […]

What a morning. So early… …so green… …and so short. “Why don’t you stay for another day and rest up?” the old Grandma/temple-keeper had said earlier while I had been packing my bags. Maybe that would have been a good idea, maybe I should have stayed a bit longer, maybe I just wasn’t prepared for […]

So many days = so many nights = so many places to sleep. Apart from all the different hotels and the Great Outdoors, there have also been private homes (dust), mines (azzurro), power plants (for what they are), and town halls (misled)… So here’s another issue of TLW Cribs, and this time it’s entitled “the […]

I got on the long straight road to the city of Wuwei: I walked along for a while, feeling sorry for myself, simply because I was so tired – then I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t alone anymore: 17-year-old Qi Yutian 齐宇天 had seen me walk by and decided to march with me for a […]

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But first things first… Allow me to introduce Shen Zhouyu 申周玉, 60year-old pensioner from Ürümqi 乌鲁木齐, who likes riding his bike all around China: We battled it out taking pictures of each other – what a charming guy though! We exchanged numbers and became friends. I […]

Sorry for being such a slack arse about posting these last couple of days, but things had gotten a bit chaotic on the way. – more petty excuses tomorrow – Right now though, we’re still on May 30th, and it’s the weekend around Children’s Day: …kids everywhere, some dressed up… …others just having a good […]

Luckily I didn’t get sick last night, otherwise I would have had to go to the place where many chose to rather relieve themselves outside: – Only the very brave and the desperately needy would ever go in there: A place to be avoided. … So anyway, I was really happy to leave this hell […]

Who could have thought that today would turn out to be this hard? … First I woke up at 5 in the morning and had to run straight to the loo. – There is just not much glory in the aftermath of an unsanitary meal. – I was eventually able to go back to sleep, […]

I put on my jacket today. Unfortunately I had to, first of all because it was cold, and second because it was raining: Rain can be a pain. But it can also be quite cozy to shake off the water and sit down in a small restaurant with a stove heating up the room: When […]

I felt like I was really up in the mountains today: …the green valley meandering through the barren rocks… Once I climbed up on one of those rocks, mainly because I had noticed a small pavilion up there: Some kids were playing a board-game using pebbles and shards of glass, and I sat down for […]

Ever since Lanzhou, the road has constantly risen up to pretty high altitudes. Now I’m at 2200m above sea level again (the last time was around Scandinavia). Well, the air is fresh and the sky is very clear up here: Potatoes were for lunch, and then I drank tea and had a very enjoyable discussion […]

From what I could see on the map, Yongdeng seemed to be the only larger settlement around. I figured it might be a good idea to get there before nightfall and then take a full day off tomorrow, staying in a hotel with a proper loo and a hot shower for a change. So this […]

What a bad night: not only had there been at least a dozen fat flies buzzing around my room, using my nose as a landing strip – but I had also had some obnoxious neighbors next door who liked to drop in whenever they pleased to take a look at the funny foreigner. Damn. So […]

See the green thing I’m crossing through on the map? Well, it’s a long fertile valley, just like an oasis… …embedded between the arid mountains in the east and in the west: One of the local specialties they grow here is a kind of rose-bud. …too bad they had already finished harvesting almost all of […]

I safely got out of the power plant and found the river again: An easy day with fair weather. One could have said a boring day. Sometimes I would run into people outside playing games: So far so good. Until at some point my GPS unit decided it was a good time to break down. […]

Walking didn’t go so bad today. One of the first things I saw once I turned into a small street: Person on the left working on a power line, person on the right gently floating along in a German luxury car. I guess both people on this picture must be kind of used to pulling […]

Anxiety caught up with me again; no sleep until five in the morning. I was pretty wrecked when I dragged my stuff through a place called Lanzhou Waterwheel Exhibition Park 兰州水车博览园 on the banks of the Yellow River: A couple of things about my outfit have changed by the way, I’m wearing more khaki now […]