Sunday 8th September After last nights feast, sure the waitresses could not believe, how much we ordered for the first course, but we managed to eat the lot, then came the puddings ,we did make a mistake here. We ordered from the picture menu, first came Linney's 8 slices of pizza stuff (to be honest it was the best of a bad bunch),then came mine 8 deep fried pastry things, really sickly, closely followed by Keiths 8 tarts, not sure what was in them, but tasted ok, just could not eat them all. To save face we got a bag and put 90% of the stuff in the bag, then left the bag in the room. It was nice getting up in the morning with no rush, we just had a short 50 mile hop to the next town, with a view to getting there fairly early and sorting out the routes to Xi;an as Rylan arrives a week on Wen. Breakfast was traditional Chinese OK but I do like my cereal / porridge in the morning, not the same with with noodle, pumpkin and celery, all very nice but not for me at breakfast, though Linney loves it. We set off just before 10, with the first section a pretty big climb, around two hours of steady climbing nothing to steep, it just kept going again. We were in no rush just taking are time up the mountain,came across a traditional Muslim village perched on the side of the mountain, all very colorful. The scenery was now like the Brecon Beacons, with sheep and cattle on the fields beneath the mountains, with Badger like animals crossing the road in front of us possible Hyrax? Keith & Linney all so saw a wild cat have a go at a bird, I just heard the noise, most of the time I am in a different world. Once again the scenery changed this time industrial, coal and other processing plants, all down the valley, modeled on the Rhoda! we stopped for a bite to eat, in this area, nice noddle, tomato and egg special are favorite at the moment. Then rode on, taking it easy for the next 18 mile into Chaka, must admit it was down hill most of the way. Here we go again the saga of getting a hotel, first place very nice told us exactly where to go, up the road on the left, we where booked in straight away, nice result. Keith and Linney put their stuff in the room and went down to the salt lake, I brought a couple of beers from the shop next door (well it is a Sunday )and caught up with the blog and researched the route to Xi'an.