Friday:

I left the campsite at 9.30 a.m. and continued walking the Great Wall. Soon the gravel I mentioned yesterday was replaced by sand, and things started looking like what most of us conceive as being a desert, the Sahara sand, or in this case the sand from the Tengger Desert. Have a look at the Great Wall Route for today and look to the right.  You will see miles and miles of desert sand dunes.

The Great Wall acted like a barrier between the desert on my left and the green fields on the right. The fields are getting their water from the second biggest reservoir in Asia. It is about 5 kilometres/3 miles long and supplies a lot of the area with water.

Seaside resort by the lake

As I got closer to the reservoir, I got associations to the Mediterranean coast. The sand, the water and comfortable warm weather. There was a building painted in nice colours too. By the time I got to some houses, I was ready to order the biggest beefsteak in the house and some Sangria to wash it down. But there was no restaurant there so I ended up sitting by the edge of the reservoir eating peanuts and biscuits and an Ice Tea drink.

The remainder of the day, I walked on the bank of the reservoir, avoiding the road. The last two days I have not walked much further than before, but I have walked faster and noticed some blisters reappearing. Luckily nothing serious, although one of them really hurts. The new shoes (which don’t look that new any more) are doing their job.

Relaxing in the shade, by the reservoir. This was the first of about 20 pictures of me and different members of this man's extended family.

Today:

Rest day in Wuwei. Have just had yet another really good talk with the best girl in this part of the Universe and have installed a back-up system for the website and also a caching system. I hope to update the last posts with some pictures within the day.

Another piece of really good news: I have been contacted by the Dana-Farber Institute.  They told me that we are soon ready to go online with the sponsoring system. I am doing this walk to raise money for cancer research, and will soon be writing more about how you can contribute to this cause!