Day 20:"Bor.Na.Moon' Resort - Kiew Ka Cham (80km) -Distance travelled so far 1,020km "Broke Back Mountain"
Waking up this morning is pretty torrid.....Our muslces are still fairly sore from yesterday hills!!!. We catch a breakfast (pancakes, french toast and Lao Coffee) which takes forever and an age for some reason....This makes our departure time more close to 9am, and with another possible hell of a day in front of us is not the best start to the day...
I also in an effort to make my gear less awkward decide to off-load our now 5 string guitar...It is an emotional time but we figure that somebody here at the resort will cherish it....
Once we get on the road.....we once again realise that these roads are not forgiving to any form of transport (us cyclists definitely included)....The mountains ascents stagger, leaving once wondering "how far more to the top".. The only consolation is that all the other cyclists (also carrying far less gear) are also feeling the strain. It truely is Broke Back Mountain.
Today is pretty uneventful...It is bloody tough cycling which takes every last piece of effort imaginable out of us....We stop to take some pics along the way....We contemplate reducing our targets taking into the account the difficulty that the mountains pose us everyday, but at the same time we cannot believe that we are but a meer 300 plus kilometers from the Laos/China border....With this in our minds we find it in ourselves to peddle on stopping to cook noodles with our stove along the way.
The summit of a 20km climb to a 1400M mountain pass
A little bit of good news came in the form of reaching our 1000km......We summon up the energy to take some zippy little pics.....Fair play!!!!!
Should have been a happier moment but unfortunately
we were also looking at another 5km climb
We reach our final destination for about 6pm...Its the latest we have reached a town....We are absolutley shattered beyond belief....In our own words....
Brian "I am a broken man....'
Paul "Dear God...."
Mike "This is worst pain I have ever felt...."
We book into the only hostel left in the town....which is overrun with cyclists.....It is very difficult to eat the pile of steaming rice and pork that is served up to us for dinner...but we try valiantly.....With bandy legs, we stumble back to our one bed "dont swing felix" establishement. We pile in to bed together with a smell of B.O and flatulence that would put a grown horse to sleep....So its Shut Eye for the boys and in true cowboy fashion we hit the hay!!!!!.....
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