A few day ago I have been contacted by Jia. He found our web site and wanted to cycle a part of our route with us. Nice idea; and we agreed to meet on Wednesday.

Jia is a tough guy. Former marine in Chinese army, then member of a SWAT brigade in Chinese police, he recently returned from Iraq, where he worked as a mercenary. We met not far from Wuwei, and cycled together to his hometown. Jia invited me to stay at his place overnight, what I accepted. The rest of our team continued till Gulang, where I joined them by taxi the next day.

I promised Jia not to publish his real name and photo on the web. His way of life and general opinions are far away from mine, but I had a very interesting evening. Maybe later, I’ll tell you more about him and his life.

Thursday was our main mountain stage. Starting at 1900m we pedaled up to some 3000 meters. I do not know the exact altitude, our altimeters, road maps and GPS could not agree on a common figure. Anyway; the climb was not very steep, and so it was quite a long one, more than 40 km. On the GPM line Charly was the uncontested winner and will wear the red dot jersey till Beijing.

Once again the wind spoiled the downhill, and we had to push our pedals like idiots although the route was descending.

On one of our snack-breaks, we were invited my peasants to share some fruit with them, and Nico and Jason could not resist helping them at their field works.