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It was quite chilly this morning but as the day went on and we got a bit lower it got hotter and hotter. We picked up Terry from the hospital - the swine flu tests were all clear, apparently it's just man flu and he'll be fine, thank goodness or we would have all been in the hospital for tests. Today we drove on proper toll motorway the whole way, complete with clean service station toilets - luxury! The countryside is strange, barren desert-looking hills and green irrigated valleys, and the motorway goes through a lot of tunnels. The area around Lanzhou especially is very dry and barren. The city is in a river valley and looks pretty densely populated. We arrived at about 5pm and are staying in a hotel - hooray for the first shower since Lhasa, just over a week ago! We headed out and had cheap dumplings for dinner again, and spent a bit of time in an internet cafe full of young guys playing games (one or two playing WoW).

The next morning we didn't leave until 1 and not long after we did it started to rain. It rained all the rest of the day and night, and when it was time to look for a bush camp we were in an area of hills divided by steep ravines in the valleys. Every available surface was covered with crops. We stopped at a couple of muddy-looking fields that looked like we were all going to end up wet and filthy, but eventually found a bridge over the highway that was dry underneath that we could be hobos under.