I am beginning to really dislike the police in Ningxia. Last night's episode was non-confrontational but, at the same time, I was pretty sure that if I attempted to go to a hotel other than the one they recommended to me, I wasn't going to succeed at staying there. Considering how much of a massive pain in the ass it was to successfully register at a hotel that was specifically recommended by the police, I was almost certainly right.

Tonight, I'm taking advantage of Muslim hospitality. Starting from tomorrow night, if I don't just throw my hands up in despair and leave Ningxia on a bus, I'm tempted to go to one of the mosques and ask them for help.

I'm in a hotel tonight - sort of. At least I'm in a bed in a room that belongs to a hotel. It's just that the bed and the room belong to the hotel owner. Who, along with his wife and 11 month old, is going to sleep somewhere else tonight. Because, after nearly 3 hours of my sitting in their lobby, we got tired of waiting for the police to either show up or call back. And yes, the police, who specifically started from a point of: "Aaack! No. She can't stay with you", and moved through to "we'll ask our supervisor what to do" were called multiple times during this period.

Since the early morning weather continues to be far too cold for tropical based lifeforms and then gets warm enough by 11am that if I were to unpack my thermals and put them on, I'd be sweltering, I—of course—woke up at 7am. The breakfast buffet that I'd chosen not to pay for but then got given a coupon for in thanks for helping the front desk staff eventually conquer the registration system was alright but not great. The xiaolongbao that I stopped for on my way out of town, however, were literally the best xiaolongbao I have ever eaten.

So far I've been switching it up about half and half between various kinds of halal restaurants and 汉餐 (Han Chinese Food). I love lamb and mutton and beef and generally think Muslim food is like the Prophet's gift to mankind or something. However, while most of the halal meals I've had in Ningxia have been lackluster, the non-halal stuff has been incredible. Even the non-treif stuff (kung pao chicken) was amazing.

Back in the room, I made a few shots of moka pot espresso and finished off the open cream from yesterday. Even carefully packed into a plastic bottle with all the air squeezed out, the motion of my bike had been enough to whip the whipping cream. I'm not too worried that the cream will go bad as local temps are relatively cool, it's starting out ultra high temp pasteurized, and I'm putting it in a spring water bottle. I am, however, worried, that I might end up with butter.

I didn't mention it at the time but, the day that I went to the Zhongshan Grottoes, I got sweet coffee butter.

I dawdled while I packed, read some reddit, uploaded some photos to Facebook, even did some work. By 10am, I decided the weather had warmed up enough that it was reasonable to begin riding. I'd seen a Giant bikes on my way to the hotel the night before and stopped by them on the way out of town to buy more glue for tire patches and to ask directions.

Unfortunately, the only possibility they knew was the National Road. Luckily, I've got multiple electronic mapping systems available to me. I only ended up on the National Road at all today because I decided to spend 15 kilometers on an under construction section of expressway and it was only at the National Road that I was finally able to get back down to surface roads.

I felt really good all day. Not sure if this is because of my sleeping below 1200m after peaking at close to 1600m two days ago, if it's because of the awesome night's sleep I got in a comfortable bed, if it's because today's uphills were all gradual and only peaked at just about 1300m, or if it's because I've started taking the altitude sickness medicine in preparation for real mountains later this week.

Much of the day was varying levels of unpaved either because of my firmly held belief that "Road Closed" signs don't apply to me or because the road I was on was being upgraded from some rinky dink dirt farm road into a Provincial Road.

The one temple I stopped at, still fairly close to the city proper, was an incredible display of artistic skill. Everything else that wasn't waaay far off in the distance with no obvious way to even think about going there was a mosque and, as I may have mentioned before, I feel weird about going and taking pictures of mosques.