Friday, July 3, 2009

Getting Lost

When we started out this morning, there was some confusion regarding the amount of kilometers we were going to ride. Our guide mentioned 370 km while the itinerary we received mentioned 440 km.As usual we followed our guide to the beginning of the highway, and then took off armed with a piece of paper with the next town and hotel name written in Chinese to ask for directions along the way.

We were going to Datong and on the way out for the first hour all we could see were trucks on a hilly road which made our maneuvering difficult at best, and sometimes dangerous.On the way we discovered that we were not on route 109 any more even though we were going straight, and started asking direction, going on different routes. At one time a guy in a pickup truck mentioned he was going to Datong and asked us to follow him. We did until he stopped for lunch, and we moved on.

We reached the hotel at the end to the amazement of our guide an hour before him. He mentioned that the road was closed, and it took him some time to find his way. Finally we managed to do 456 km that day