We woke up to a shifted wind! It was behind us, not blowing in our faces what a break! We eagerly broke camp and got underway. It’s amazing what a difference a tailwind can make, what yesterday was a boring stretch of lifeless sand was now a fun flat straight shot of Tarmac to open up.
We sped along, pausing only to fix a flat and converse with a father and son bike touring combo. They were Chinese and didn’t speak much English but we were able to understand enough of what they were trying to get across. The two of them were riding the opposite direction to,us add were headed across Tibet to Lhasa. Being Chinese they are allowed travel independently in Tibet, something us foreigners are forbidden from doing.

 

  
After this encounter we came across a small,village where a man with access to a deep well provided water to those passing through. This was a godsend as all we had was about three litres of iodine tasting water between us. He also had a freezer filled with drinks and we gulped down some incomparably refreshing ice cold lemon tea drinks.
The tailwind was fun while it lasted but by mid-day it had returned to its usual position of blowing into our faces. We arrived at a truck stop that appeared like a mirage out of the dunes, a couple of shacks serving food around a petrol station. We are some beef noodles at one of the homes/food shacks which were delicious.

 

 
After lunch we were back in the desert again. A few more scrubby plants than normal indicated that maybe we were about to reach some sort of oasis or something, but that didn’t pan out in the end. We did come across a river though, and there we decided to stop. We pulled our stuff under the bridge to get out of the blasting wind and ate a dinner of instant noodles.