Day 28, 117km: (by Chris)

After our mammoth hill that took us 3 days to get up, this morning we were treated to 90km of downhill, passing through rustic dirty farming towns where, oddly, a lot of houses had knackered old pool tables outside them.

In one town I saw a woman selling fried bread sticks. i skidded to a stop and got very excited about this because the biggest loaf of bread I have found in china outside major cities so far was the size of my thumb and was actually brioche. I love bread, especially fried bread so I bought her entire stock.

After 90km our luck changed. The road suddenly turned uphill and turned into a gravel track. I normally like gravel tracks and uphill, but not today, with trucks kicking up clouds of dust. Amy doesn't like tracks or uphill at the best of times so she had a terrible afternoon which just got worse when our progress was slowed so much that we ended up bouncing over rocks in the dark and the dust until we reached our destination at 20:30. Amy's bad day was topped off when she dropped her shampoo bottle into a grotty, crusty brown pit toilet.