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The beginning...

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My story, briefly, starts after my graduation from the University of Florence in Italy. Already at that time a force inside me has brought me to look beyond the borders of my town and of Italy. I didn't have a specific direction to look at, perhaps it was just towards the unknown, but it was surely far where I was looking. My story, briefly, starts after my graduation from the University of Florence in Italy. Already at that time a force inside me has brought me to look beyond the borders of my town and of Italy.

day 2

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"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".

-- Confucius
I arrived at the first destination and spent a day resting and setting up several things on the bike that i could not do while in Shanghai.

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today i also had time to sew the Restless Travelleres and Instancabili Viaggiatori patches on the bags and jacket.

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Tomorrow the next lag.

There are many things i would like to write after the first day...
I will have more time later on.

day 4 or so.

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Time seems to become lighter and less and less important.
At my 4th day of trip I reached Wuhan, another huge metropoli somewhere on my way.
Not much to see here apart from the frenetic life of China getting richer and richer every minute.

Leaving Tonling this morning i didn't know what to expect.

Rain

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the cruise will take 2 days to Chonqing.
We get thickes only on 3rd class (the lowest) and for two days we share a 4 bed cabin with up to 9 people at one time: smokers, players, screamers, families, kids and chickens!!!
At one point I find the whole situation just beautiful and at the least entertaining.

friends

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Oggi arrivato in Leshan dopo un po' di peripezie e trovo nella mia posta un sacco di sorprese.
un sacco di belle sorprese.
trovo e ritrovo amici.
e trovo parole che mi fanno pensare, e che mi fanno rivedere il volto diei miei amici in italia.

amici.
che parola strana.
che parola unica.

Leshan

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The road that leads me to Leshans is the worst I ever rode on in my life!
Bad is a compliment to the ones that first built it and then to the ones that reduced it that way.
Imagine 300 and more km of pure concrete (no iron structure in it) laid to make a road.
Then imagine to trough on it metal balls of 1 ton each.
the result......???
"the hell...!!" is all I have to say and all I could say for the 8 hours and more of hell on a bike.
My bike is a chopper, not an enduro and not really designed for extreme offroad conditions.

The road to Wudu

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"life is made of choices.
YOUR life is MADE OF YOUR choices".
"life is made of choices.
YOUR life is MADE OF YOUR choices".

...and today it has been one of my choices to take me in a very eventfull, scary and yet unique day.
Would I have known what my choice would have taken me into I would have taken a different one, but hey!, this is another topic worth a debate.

From the map and the available roads, I knew that this was to be one of the most difficult parts to cross and one in which crossing was not the only problem, choice was the other.

Linxia

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The morning I woke up in Wudu, besides having all my bones in pieces I really did I not want to look outside the window...

... rain.

Rain was coming down again. That morning it took me a few hours to get out of bed and believe me, a lot, a lot of determination.

Somehow I made it downstairs for a very long leg: 450km estimated.
Already in a bad mood, I also felt upset to leave so late in that I knew would have been a very long day.

Takkar

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The road to Xiahe promises to be short and suite.
The beautiful day warms up my body and my soul.
I am ready to go to one of the holy places for tibetians bhuddism. A place of pilgrimage and misticism. A small tibet. A place that does not really belong to China. It is a tibet for the tibetains outside tibet.

The road from Linxia leads right away inside the walleys towards the high mountains. At certain points far away I can see snow covering the peaks.
The road goes on well even if construction of a new road on top of the old one makes certain parts quite bad.