Farewell to the desert — now I'm following the river upstream

This morning, I didn't set off until shortly before eight o'clock because I didn't want to miss the hotel breakfast, which wasn't served until seven. While packing before breakfast, I was able to watch the penalty shootout between the Swiss national team and Colombia at the FIFA Women's World Cup. For the first time since 1954, Switzerland has reached the quarter-finals of a World Cup.

As I was fastening my luggage to the bicycle, I had a brief moment of panic: my luggage rack had apparently been put under too much strain on yesterday's rough roads and had cracked. Yesterday I had already noticed a strange new noise that I couldn't identify, and now I know what it was. The break occurred exactly where the lower screw secures the pannier. The luggage is still held in place because the two upper screws are enough in principle, but of course it's far from ideal. I'll ride a little more carefully over speed bumps from now on and hope for good roads. If that's the case, it should be fine.

I eased very gently into the day on the bike and was surprised myself by how low my heart rate was. It felt exactly right. After all, I'm not doing a sprint here, nor a marathon—it's more like a leisurely hike. Thanks to some light cloud cover, it was also still pleasantly cool at the beginning.

Today I also said goodbye to the Yellow River once again. After climbing to an altitude of about 1,300 meters above sea level, I am now following a small tributary toward the southeast. In doing so, I'm riding along a narrow green corridor through a region that is still otherwise extremely dry.

I once again took plenty of breaks along the way—and it's really not that difficult to do—so I felt good throughout the ride. There wasn't anything particularly remarkable to see. The biggest attraction was a noodle restaurant from Henan Province—Henan happens to be my wife Jiabin's home province. When I arrived at 2:20 p.m., the temperature was 34°C, but it didn't actually feel especially hot. The light headwind probably helped keep me cool.

Since yesterday, I have been in Ningxia Province, one of China's smaller provinces. Even so, in terms of area it is still more than one and a half times the size of Switzerland. With around seven million inhabitants, however, it has slightly fewer people than Switzerland.

After an afternoon nap, I went to a nearby restaurant for dinner and ended up chatting with the people there for quite a while. Like about 35% of Ningxia's population, they belong to the Muslim Hui ethnic minority. They treated me to a few slices of watermelon. It's watermelon season here at the moment, and yesterday as well as today I saw countless people selling watermelons along the roadside.