We got off to an early start. We were soon out of the fields and started on the desert stretch. We walked up to a plateau. The area consisted of the desert, the Great Wall and a lot of ancestral burial places formed in slots. These places varied from heaps of sand and stones some places, to a site with a gravestone, a bench and plastic flowers. Some places there were also greetings written on paper placed under a rock to keep them from blowing away.

We kept on walking, and after about 20 km (12,4 miles) we decided it was enough. The only problem was to find a suitable site to pitch the tents. The sand was loose and even though we have free standing tents, they also have an outer tent that requires two plugs in the ground so that they can withstand some wind. We ended up sleeping without the tents and luckily there were no high winds that night. Otherwise we would have been covered in sand.