Home Yleinen Severe drought

Severe drought

by PointlessPeople

In the spirit of Dante we too traveled through hell before reaching paradise. And to make things more real, we did so in a heat so intense it is hard to fathom.

Our leg of the day took us on a 60 kilometer stretch of nothing. Only desolate partially burned down dry mountains. And an unforgiving sun.

The hell I’m referring to was a all in all some 30 plus kilometer ascent so steep we at times had to push our bikes. Which is saying something, as we have the fortune of having even the granny gears at our disposal.

It was brutal.

And while I am writing this I realize how utterly privileged it is to be complaining about something like this on a journey like this, but I wish you could have experienced what we did yesterday. Then you would understand.

Midway through, with our water supplies depleting at an alarming rate, we ran into a milk truck driver, who became our saving angel. He produced not one, but six bottles of ice cold water from the back of his truck, and warned us about the road ahead. (As if we already didn’t know it was going to be an uphill struggle…)

But one way or another, we once again managed to climb the mountain. And then descended into the prettiest lake area ever, complete with towns called Nice, Lucerne, and somewhere there was even a Buckingham.

With the cool lake air and the setting sun this was nothing short of the paradise counterpart to the hellish hills. But I guess you can’t really have the one without the other.