Chapter 201

Distance covered: 471 km (total 5061 km)

Up at 8:30, we had a slow start, folding our laundry and packing our bags and doing a 45-minute yoga session (shoutout to Yin Yoga With Matt on YouTube). I retrieved the stuff I put in the hotel’s fridge and freezer, bought a 4.5-L water bottle, and we hit the road.

The little sliver of overlap between the girlfriend’s musical taste and mine is slowly widening, as we discovered we both like reggae and dark country music. We played plenty of that, and also some stuff that pleased one more than the other, like Zhou Jielun or Sodom or Charlie Puth or Fonky Family.

The destination we wanted to reach over these two days was northern Henan, and we were to pass close to the city of Taiyuan, where the girlfriend proposed we stock up on groceries we couldn’t buy elsewhere. So we made the small detour and went to Olé, a chain of upmarket grocery stores with a wallet-slaughtering selection of imported products. We walked in at the same time as two Africans did, the first foreigners I’ve seen since leaving Tianjin, about 10 days ago. We filled the cart with dry goods, tons of craft beer, and also a few meat items we’ll put in the icebox and eat over the next few days. The price tag was steep, the frugal minimalist in me shuddered, the travel logistician wondered if it was worth the detour, but the hedonist slowly nodded with a huge smile at the prospect of having all that food and alcohol to consume.

It was getting late, so we set our GPS for the countryside south and drove for a long time in the huge city and its equally huge overlapping neighbor of Jinzhong. When we got out of high density areas, we were among fields, not the ideal place to look for a camping spot, so we kept going, obliquing towards the mountains on the horizon. Eventually we got to a village, and I hit the brakes when I saw an abandoned farmstead. I went to do a little recon, it was a bit creepy but there were not too much sheep excrement in the gated yard, so we could pitch the tent there.

On two occasions we had farmers riding past on their three-wheelers and stopping to investigate. Both were initially a bit confused by our explanation that we were 1000 km from home and camping for the night, but then welcomed us and said to contact them if we need any help. Nice.

We ate leftover noodles and Sichuan food for dinner, that we had kept in the icebox. Then I tried to start a fire but failed miserably, I didn’t gather enough wood before it got dark. Ah well. We watched the new Rick and Morty and went to sleep.