Bit of a strange day today. It’s two years since my dad passed away and also the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party. Been thinking a lot about him on today’s ride (my dad, not Chairman Mao).

The original plan was to hammer down the highway to Hami before sunsrise, but we got an earlky start and made Hami by earlt afternoon, so on Frank’s advice we pushed on to Dun Huang on the basis that there was more to see there than Hami so total push today was abou 900kms of desert riad in about 13 hours ..knackered, but in a good way.

Mr. Sh warned me that there would be about 130 kms of bad road, and he wasn’t wrong.

The dust was like talcum powder and was getting into everything; the road such as it was, was 2 foot deep in sandy dusty talcum powder stuff that was being stirred up by hundreds of trucks coming at me from all directions. So no option but the open up the Tiger and cane it with a Hail Mary and hope for the best and left Mr. Sh and Frank behind. Scary as f**k but the only option was to dawdle, get the front wheel stuck in the sandy dusty stuff and end up on the deck getting run over by a big Chinese truck.

We eventually got to Dun Huang around 11 and found a local place for more great food and a cold beer or 12 🙂

Mr. Sh helps me park tbe Tiger in Dun Huang