Out for the bus at 7 o’clock, where we met Dan + Lisa. Their bus had not left at 5 – there was no way it could have, being hemmed in firmly by an assortment of trucks + buses. Only later did we work out that that 5 o’clock they’d been told must have been in unofficial Xinjiang time, used by the locals, 2 hrs out from official Beijing time. Another small item to add to their catalogue of misfortune.
Our third day passed, of course, in exactly the same way as the other 2 – no incidents of note to report. For a time in the middle of the day, Val slumped into a low + depressed mood, all the hours of inactivity, with the cramped conditions + mess, getting to her, but fortunately she pulled out of it eventually. To get some life + activity back into our cramped limbs, we had a race 40 yds down the road + back at one of the stops, which greatly amused our fellow-travellers. It was close, but Val won. I ate a cooked lunch at one stop, rather a poor dish of noodles… of course. Val had spam + beans instead, which was no better.
We pushed on until late, taking us beyond where any other buses were stopping. It was only a small place – we were the only bus. One advantage of this was that we were able to have a room together, + for no greater price. And then, it being very late, we rushed out to get a meal. The people in the collection of food-stalls were a boisterous bunch, many of them calling out to us, some of them wanting their photo taken. We took one of a man stretching dough into noodles by twirling it like a skipping rope, but the light was fading fast so I don’t know if it will come out. I hope it does, especially since we took his address to send him a copy. Another of the cooks in the same place challenged me to an arm-wrestle, at which he beat me with no trouble at all.
When we returned to the hotel, we had a shock, for all our belongings were missing. Luckily, we discovered that other people had also been assigned to our room, so the girl looking after our block simply moved us to a vacant room. She did, however, give us a stern lecture, in Uighur, about taking more care of our belongings. She was entirely right, of course – in China, we have dropped out of the habit of security, a lapse which could prove costly.
Another tedious day on the road, which makes the evenings positively vibrant in comparison – a chance to eat, to stretch one’s legs.
