Ding Dang

The horses are in desperate need of shoeing. As we have been riding carefully, I had hoped the original shoes might possibly hang on until we reached Urumqi, where we are more likely to find a good farrier. But Shandan lost a shoe yesterday, and Peng also had to pull off Bajiu's front shoes as they were paper thin. However it is a job to find someone capable of shoeing horses, and we have spent the day being told there is someone at the next town, only to arrive and discover it was not so. Here is Peng in his Man of Mystery guise, being told yet again to try the next town.

In the meantime we are going slow and keeping to earth tracks where possible. If the worst comes to the worst we can always fall back on Peng's rubber tyre shoes as he has his shoeing kit with him, but the beat on the street is that there is definitely a farrier somewhere here in Jimsar.