04-05 July β China (Sichuan-Shaanxi) β 438 miles
So close to the end now, it sometimes feels like just that…”just the final thousand miles to get to Beijing”.
The last two days, I’ve fallen asleep on the bike – but that’s due to me, tired, stuck behind a vehicle, not bothering to wake up and just keep it crazy. A bit of water, I’ve typically been better.
But… it has been two days of waking up, leaving in gloomy/dreary weather, and doing nothing more than “battling” the traffic… which can be fun, considering it consists of all the outrageous manoeuvres one wouldn’t normally consider outside of Asia.
Both yesterday (to Guangyuan) and today (to Foping), the G108 had the same story – several hours of battling the local “red trucks”, and then an afternoon of nice twisty roads. It reminded me somewhat of the agenda through Europe – where that seemed a deliberate tactic of the route; but here… it’s just this one road, with multiple personalities which seem to fit that same agenda quite nicely.
Yesterday – visited a couple of temples… I’m pretty “temple-d out just now”, but figured I might as well see as much as I can as the days-left are dwindling…
Temple-Complex-#1 – nice, fine.
Temple-Complex-#2 – sold/advertised as the “Temple of the God of Literature” – which obviously intrigued me. It turned out one of the mini-temples was to one of the kings who fancied himself as a it of a writer, therefore his temple/statue made him a god of literature.
Life as a lord/king in those days was pretty sweet, apparently.
Did have a touch of the round-magic-stone which apparently made one guy a god, and also a bit of a lie-down/kip in the stone bed which allowed some other guy to have dreams come true.
Also tied my little red thing to the wall, assuming I was supposed to write my name and “wish” on it. On reviewing every other such tag – it was actually “name, and date”. Still… safe travels all…
