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The sun is already up when I wake after another marathon sleep but I'm pretty certain I've covered enough ground to allow for setting ff a little later. I prise myself out of bed and back onto my bike, limbs groaning, and take to the road. It usually takes a little while to warm up, but today I realise there's no escaping the fact that I really am quite ill - my head burns, my throat is raw and every turn of the wheels is an effort. Although I've estimated that I have 45km to go, with no signs to check against I quickly lose sense of distance travelled as my head swims, my legs protest and village after village of stooped, weather-beaten old men and women tilling their fields by hand blend one into the other against a cloudless blue sky.
Four hours in, I collapse into an ungainly heap by the roadside and under the gaze of a pitiless herd of mountain goats pour Sprite down my neck in the hope that a glucose hit will spur me on. Then, 500m down the road, just as I'm certain I'm about to pass out, there it is. I'm accompanied into town by the chap in the picture at the top of this post, and if my legs had teeth they'd have gritted them and propelled me through the crowds of livestock and shops selling dried yak genitalia all the way to my hostel. There's no hot water here, either - not until the evening - so I pull on an extra layer and head out for tea and yak hotpot with a graphic designer from Beijing.
My bus back down the mountain leaves early the next morning, so after an evening of reading, more yak, and the sweetest, hottest of hot showers of my life, I fall into my dorm bed and pass out. I'll have a couple of days back in Chengdu, then my three-week journey overground to Hong Kong begins the next day, and my thoughts are already turning to the series of marathon 24-hour-plus train journeys and adventures that lie between me and my flight home.
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