We prepare to leave at 8am, and outside dawn has just risen over Inner Mongolia. We have been sleeping in a little truckers' roadhouse hotel which we stumbled upon last night, after three hours of marching through the Gobi darkness.
It's Friday, December 9, and seriously cold outside - about minus 20 - although this is made much worse as the Siberian winds are whipping down from the north, biting through our clothes, stinging our faces, and, when we remove our gloves for simple tasks such as tying a shoelace, making our hands go numb in less than 20 seconds.
So we were relieved to find this place to sleep in the warm, and be spared another night in our icy tents. As we stumbled through the door last night, our huge rucksacks sticking in the doorframe, a gaggle of truck drivers looked up from their dinner, understandably surprised to see the arrival of two absurd foreigners in puffa jackets and giant fur Chinese army hats. I tried to break the ice by explaining in my faltering Putonghua that we were English people, to which a quick-tongued driver smiled and replied 'and we are Chinese people', to much laughter. We ate a bowl of noodles and collapsed into bed.
Today, we repack our bags, brace ourselves and walk back out into another mid-winter's morning. We are heading south along the road again, which is good for fast progress, but also not much fun, especially because the trucks which periodically go past often sweep an icy cloud of snow and fumes into our faces.
I call this kind of day a 'miles not smiles' day. For other days this week, we have managed to find much smaller paths and tracks through the hills or alongside the railway. These days are slower but more fun and more interesting - 'smiles not miles'.
Despite our progress being so slow, with us covering only about 30 kilometres of hard-fought ground daily, the landscape has been gradually changing. The flat desert plains of Outer Mongolia and the Chinese border lands have given way to a world of rounded hills, with increasing tufts of shrubs poking through the snow, and even groves of what look to be recently planted trees.
Sign of human habitation are becoming more regular, too. Little farmhouses with sheep pens are visible every few kilometers, and there are plenty of ramshackle, half-abandoned villages, consisting of small brick houses, insulated with mud on the outside.