Today I woke up not feeling very good. My stomach was hurting, so I decided not to grab any breakfast and instead just got ready for our hike.
We started the hike by leaving our guesthouse and walking through the city towards the edge, where we could see the gates that represented the start of the next city, Birch City. From there, we walked through the bush and around the hill until we eventually reached the top. At the top, we had some nice views of the valley, surrounded by lots of marijuana plants. On the way down, we took a shortcut down one side of the hill before heading back to our hotel for a quick shower and a nap.
That was when I started to feel even worse. Things were made even worse by our first bus ride, which took us to our lunch spot — a self-service restaurant by the side of the highway. Because I was feeling so sick, I couldn’t even go inside as the smell was making me feel worse. Instead, I lay outside in the sun while everyone else ate. With the drugs I had taken, this actually helped me feel a little better.
After lunch, we got back onto the minibus, which felt slightly better, and drove towards the edge of the mountains. Eventually, the road ended and we had to continue along a gravelly path for around two hours, being shaken and bounced around the whole way up. Along the journey, we saw lots of animals, including yaks, horses, cows and dogs.
Finally, we reached the top of the hill and arrived at Song-Kul Lake, where we found our yurt camp. We stopped there and unloaded our stuff into our respective yurts. Unfortunately, Ji and I were separated for the night because the yurts were divided by gender.
We walked down to the lake and took a couple of photos before managing to get a quick nap. Even though I was wearing three hoodies, I was still freezing, partly because of the cold I had caught.
We then headed to dinner, where we had some more traditional local food, a soup and some noodles, while enjoying some warm tea.
Since I was feeling so under the weather, I grabbed a spare blanket and went straight to bed to recover under my many, many, many layers.