{"id":146340,"date":"2017-02-01T11:49:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T11:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=146340"},"modified":"2017-02-02T09:30:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T09:30:38","slug":"travelling-world-hera-van-willick-coming-home-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2017\/02\/01\/travelling-world-hera-van-willick-coming-home-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Travelling the World with Hera van Willick: Coming Home in the Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

PANG KLANG YEEHAAAAA in other words: I\u2019M BACK! Recharged, rested, motivated, happy! Wild awake!\u00a0Two weeks of non-stop camping, vast empty landscapes of steppe and desert, away from \u2018civilization\u2019, sun on my face and a book instead of my laptop; that turned out to be the recipe to regain my power, my pill.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Bishop, where I wrote my last blog, I left the Sierra Nevada. While I descended into the valley at the east I could see how the Sierra mountains came to an end in the distance. Those first pale rays of sunlight in Bishop were a forecast of what was to come.<\/p>\n

Every day now that ends cloudless I roll out my matrass under the naked sky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The steppe lay stretched out before me in the wide valley, with a view as far as my eye could see. Wilderness again, at last, but totally different from the wilderness I\u2019ve seen in Alaska.<\/p>\n

The sun sets while I feed the campfire. And when it starts getting real chilly I crawl into my warm sleeping bag in the company of \u2018de Passievrucht\u2019, a book in my native language, Dutch. The sky naked and me in my warmest clothes wrapped up in my down sleeping bag closed up tight above my shoulders. Cause even though the sun warms my bare legs during the day, the temperature still plummets below freezing in the nights and I wake up every morning with a layer of frost on my sleeping bag and ice in my water bottles.<\/p>\n

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Travelling the World with Hera van Willick: Dripping South<\/span><\/h3>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/article>\n<\/div>\n

Every morning I see how the sun colors the sky yellow and orange from my bed, thereafter the first rays of sunlight hit the mountains, only to move on bit by bit, pushing back the shadows, to finally find me. With ice cold hands I cook breakfast whilst still in my sleeping bag. As I pack my things to load my bike and during the first miles of riding I lose the layers of clothes piece by piece.<\/p>\n

THE SUN IS AMAZING!<\/strong><\/p>\n