Day 37, 33km: (by Amy)

I awoke at 6am with a bad feeling about the day ahead. Chris went out to forage for supplies and find out more information. All we could ascertain was that the road to Shangri-La Village (Yading) was not passable and that we should head for Daocheng on the road the locals use (not on our map). Crucially we would come across a turning and we must take the right fork to Daocheng. Nobody could tell us how far to the turning. We had discovered there was a BIG climb ahead. Possibly over 13,000ft. With some trepidation we set out. The road turned into a narrow dirt track as it left the town. We stopped the few people we saw on the way to confirm our route as the road looked the same as everyone's driveway then we started climbing into the mist through steep woodland draped in lichen. We didn't pass anyone for hours and hours so we just stayed on the most travelled path. The trail was impassable to anything bigger than a motorbike and we only passed 3 or 4 of these all day. After their initial shock at seeing 2 foreigners on push bikes they all confirmed we were on the right track to Daocheng. Distance estimates varied from 70-280km to the next town and Daocheng 80km further on. As we climbed the air got colder and thinner. We could only tell how high we were because of Chris's altimeter watch, the mist meant views were non existent. We camped above the tree line at 13000ft when the road began to contour. Thankfully with our warm sleeping bags and air beds we were still snug and warm in our tent. I was VERY grateful for the warm coat Zhang gave me in Chengdu! When we looked at our GPS location we were still roughly on the 'main road' described on our simple map, but after 8 hour of immense effort we were just 6km as the crow flies from the town we'd stayed the night before. I had no idea what to expect from tomorrow and was anxious. At this pace it was going to be a long way to anywhere. Thankfully we did have enough food for about 5 days, Chris was reassuringly calm and un-phased. In fact he was loving the lack of traffic!