Day: May 25, 2006

Our caravan is now made up of 4 vehicles: Our two, the 4-wheel drive of our friends Liu and Rémy and lastly the truck of the CCTV team.  This is a 4-man team: the director, the photographer, the sound technician (all 3 from Beijing) and their driver.  What a lot of people are on the roadside.

Starting up is difficult, the wind is unfavorable.  Yesterday, Serge couldn’t stand eating anything sweet during his feedings and he is now asking for sugar this morning.  The days are never the same.  However, he does prefer salty food, more Bolinos and more freeze dried noodles (easy to find in China).  The machine slowly but surely takes off.  Daniel and Thomas are in the 4-wheel drive and give their entire attention to Serge.  It didn’t keep Thomas from taking pictures and Daniel from running for 9 kilometers.  Serge met a man riding his donkey who accompanied him for a while and both men were all smiles.

At kilometer 58, Serge was attacked by bees.  We thought that the invasion was due to the trees at the edge of the road but no, the trees disappeared but not the bees Serge was going crazy, the more he ran the more he was attacked, stung on the shoulder and the thigh.  He broke down and took refuge in the camper.  The four vehicles stopped because a solution had to be found.  What better than a disguise: Serge was transformed into a bee who had only to blend in with it’s brothers (see photo).  We discovered the cause of the problem: trucks filled with beehives were passing in convoy.  It’s the seasonal move of the hives and they lost several hundred bees in the process.  Really nice those truckers!

Our camp is magic tonight with the Tian Shan (Celestial Mount) mountain range as a backdrop.  We will leave it tomorrow to find the plain and continue in the desert which we rarely leave.