We got to the border very exhausted and poorly fed. We had been surviving on disgusting canned fish, old bread and pig's liver pate sausage that we used as spread for it. Julie suffered of very unusual migraines all the way whose origin we can't figure out and at times they made her life miserable, but once again, she showed that she's a tough nut to crack and kept going (not that we had much more of a choice anyway). On the other hand, I never cease to prove to myself that the most extreme journeys leave the greatest gifts in our souls, and as the motto that drives my life says, they give us the satisfaction of proving to ourselves that there's more in each of us than we know. They leave the taste of having lived through truly unique moments where one has the place completely for oneself and where the strength of body and are both put to test. After such an overdose of beauty in th days of the steppe, I reached the gate to the Gobi with certain skepticism, believing that the journey that lied ahead of us would be closer to torture than to anything else. 1200 km later, I left feeling that the sensations result of the effects produced by the beauty of this kind of idyll were even more powerful than those of the steppe I had had the month before. I was so surprised by this that it took me quite a while to really comprehend it.
After 55 days, 3300km and 4 showers we finally left Mongolia, smelling more like sheep than humans. We had dust and sand up to the very last orifice of our bodies. On the way out the border, we masterfully mocked the evil mafia that runs on both sides of the border. We were lucky enough to run into some German overlanders traveling by truck who were happy to drive us for those damn 200 meters of no man's land where it is forbidden to walk or cycle. Once again, we were back home, with a desperate need to eat well, in quantity and quality. We still had 750 km left to reach Beijing but once back in China, everything would be easy once again.