Day 43, 43km: (by Chris)

Regards finding vital food supplies, the next village up the road was as useless as the last. Tiny Chinese convenience stores in remote towns have been the same throughout and only sell 6 main products, all usually covered in dust:

1. A mind-boggling selection of fizzy drinks and iced teas, the bottles of which are all destined for the local river.

2. Instant noodles in 3 equally revolting flavours.

3. Meat sticks, which are as dubious as they sound.

4. Shrink wrapped chickens feet, the Chinese people's favourite.

5. Stale biscuits (unknown if the staleness is normal).

6. Tiny bites of brioche, which are presented when one asks for 'bread' and for some unknown reason are always packaged to 80psi.

I was buying some of these pathetic tiny individually wrapped overpriced brioche when I became flustered by the appearance of a policeman. It would have been a disaster if he'd asked for my passport, which they almost always do, because Amy had both of them and she'd zoomed ahead up the mountain after downing a can of redbull. He demanded to know where I was going - I told him, smiled at him, flattered him, and cycled off as quickly as possible. Luckily he didn't shout back and I powered on up the valley. I still had a giant bag of rubbish that I wanted to get rid off before heading up into more mountains, so stopped at the next suggestion of civilisation to asked if there was anywhere I could put it. A local gestured that I should throw it into the river in front of children and adults alike, none of whom seemed to think this was unacceptable. This appalled me and put me in a bad mood. The rest of the day was spent crawling up a hot bumpy gravel road through dry forests of hot pine and finishing at 13,000ft where we camped in an idyllic spot with stupendous views of the surrounding mountains. This helped my mood.