Into China - another catch-up

1st July, day 75, Lake Song Kul - Bushcamp near Torugart Pass.

Tomorrow we leave Kyrgyzstan and enter China, the biggest country and the longest visit on our trip. We will be in China for 38 days, just a week shorter than a quarter of the trip.

Just a drive day to an en-route bushcamp. We've finished Kyrgystan now and we want to be at the border as soon as it opens. We were warned about the Chinese border - it can take a very long time.

2nd July, day 76, Chinese Border at Torugart Pass


It does not start well. The Kyrgyz border guards are power-crazed and take perverse delight in keeping us waiting. It takes ages to all file through the grotty decaying and Soviet-looking passport control building and get stamped out of Kyrgyzstan. But then we are all back in the truck and we start the long drive to the Chinese side of the border. This is not like other borders, where the different sides are a short walk, e.g. opposite sides of a river over a bridge. This one is huge - no-mans land stretches for many miles through a high mountain pass, and even here there's the occasional yurt.

When we got to the Chinese side, the initial inspection point was where we had to wait for our Chinese guide. Unfortunately she was running late so we had to wait for 2 hours until she arrived. Meanwhile, the customs staff started processing our luggage through the x-ray machine. This all went OK, these border guards are probably the nicest ones we've had yet, all friendly and smiles.

The we were on our way again. About 80km further on, we get to customs and immigration proper. This is a clean, modern building with friendly staff and we were all processed through quite efficiently. Even the truck got through without much hassle. There's a fair amount of admin required to get the truck in, but the border guards gave permission to drive to Kashgar and continue the admin there.

On entering China I was immediately impressed how we were no longer in the third world, here everything works efficiently.

2nd - 6th July days 76-80, in Kashgar, Uighar Xinxiang Autonomous Region, China




Kashgar is a medium-sized and fascinating city where the Uigher culture, typically Central Asian, meets the Chinese Culture. The Chinese are not the most tolerant of other cultures and any attempt by the Chinese authorities to preserve the Uigher culture is done for the benefit of Chinese tourists and reduced to the status of a museum exhibit. The result is that some parts of the city have been Chinesified - gone are some of the rambling, labyrinthine market stalls selling everything from knock-off Rolexes to live sheep, and in their place is a new, neat tidy gleaming city square. The nearby mosque is now a tourist attraction, too.

We do, however, visit an area which does still have genuine Uigher influence, and that is the market (yes, another one. Central Asia is full of them). There is no livestock here though, like there used to be. That's all been moved out of town.

It's here that we have our first taste of Chinese food - it's lovely, although tricky to order when the menu is in Chinese. One thing that surprised me was just how similar it is to the Chinese food you get in the UK, although it is better.

It's nice to have 4 nights in a good hotel to rest, relax and do laundry.

6th - 8th July, days 80-82, en route to Turpan

From Odyssey Overland Trip 2010

Two nights of bushcamping follow Kashgar, the first at the ruins of Subash Temple, the 2nd near Turpan. Here, we are going round the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, and Turpan itself is in a depression 154m below sea level. As a result, it's seriously hot. When we arrive in Turpan, most people brave the mind-bogglingly hot weather and go and see the nearny ruined city of Jiaohe. I don't. Not in that heat. Having had a nice dose of heat-stroke back in Uzbekistan, it's not an experience I care to repeat. Stepping out of the hotel in Turpan the heat hits you in a similar way to opening the oven door to check on a roast turkey.

Having said that, the city is well designed to handle the heat - most pavements in town are shaded by grape-vines, which grow in great profusion all over the place.

9th July, day 83, en route to Dunhuang


A single night's bushcamp between Turpan and Dunhuang. It's a little less hot as we head uphill out of the depression, but still on the warm side - still in semi-desert on the edge of the Taklamakan.

It's a really nice campsite tonight - a very lonely spot miles from anywhere, arid, almost desert, with a distant view of mountains. Also the camp food is getting a distinctly Chinese taste with the inclusion of mysterious mushrooms, such to some people's distaste.

10th-12th July, days 84-86, in Dunhuang


Dunhuang in Gansu Province is the first proper Chinese city. Kashgar and Turpan have strong Asian influences from the Uighur people, but here it's almost exclusively Han Chinese. The city is clean and modern.

On our full day here, we take a trip just out of town to see the Magao Caves (The Caves of A Thousand Buddhas). About 1500 years ago, some were carved out of rock, others were constructed. The Magao caves is home to the (now) biggest Buddha. It used to be the 2nd biggest, the biggest being in Afghanistan, but the Taliban are not the most tolerant of peoples and destroyed the biggest because it was un-Islamic. Even Saudi Arabia condemned that. Seeing the Buddhas here really brings home the unspeakable vandalism by the Taliban, but at the same time makes me relieved that these ones are so very well protected.

12th July, day 86, the night of 2 bushcamps.


We set off early from Dunhuang for the long journey to Golmud. We have to take a 1500km detour because the direct road is closed to foreigners! This puts us about a day behind schedule, so we'll need to catch up somewhere. The road from Dunhuang is luckily quite a fast one and we make good time.

Near the end of the day we turn off the highway and head towards Golmud. We have done the bulk of the extra distance, but the road ahead is much slower.

We are now starting to see mountains in the distance - small as yet, but these are start of the foothills and the extreme northern edge of the Himalayas. As he head into the mountains, desert gives way to much greener country, and the temperature reduces (thank goodness!)

That evening we find a nice camp site in a river valley amongst the mountains. We set up camp, set about cooking tonights meal, when a group of Chinese on motorbikes come and join us. It all starts off nice and friendly, but they soon turn nasty. They try and extort 1000 Yuan (about £100) from us to allow us to camp there. Pete's not having any of that so we all have to hurredly pack everything up again and take down the tents. In the pouring rain. With thunder and lighning. Oh what fun. The meal has been cooked by this time but not eaten yet, so all the food has to be packed up as well, somehow.

Soaking wet, we all climb onto the bus again and try and find a new place to camp. It's still raining, and now it's getting dark. About half an hour later we find a new place and set up camp again, luckily it has stopped raining by this point. The meal is served up, a nice curry and rice. The curry's fine, but the rice has turned a bit stodgy, never mind though, it's still good.

July 13th, day 87, Start of altitude sickness

A long day driving mostly uphill. I start to suffer from headache, feeling very tired, nausea, loss of appetite, and, whenrt the Diamox, I think.ever I try to do anything strenuous I get quite breathless. At the campsite that evening I can just about put the tent up but it is very hard work. When I find out that we are now at an altitude of about 3600m, my feeling dodgy is all explained. Time to start the Diamox, I think.

In order to get to this nice (if somewhat wet and muddy) spot, we had to ford a stream in the truck, to find somewhere out of sight of the road. It's not a very big or fast stream, no no problems there.

July 14th, 88, arrive Golmud

It rained all night. This morning it's even muddier. I still feel rough, but I slept OK and the Diamox is getting to work, so I'm not quite so rough.

Remember that stream we forded yesterday? On the return trip to the road, the stream is no longer a stream. It's now a raging torrent, enough to make the hardiest white-water rafter turn pale. Fording it again is no longer an option, so we need another way round. I was worried we'd have to wait here until the stream subsided, and then what if it rains again? Luckily Pete found another way round - along a narrow track just barely wide enough for the truck there was a bridge. All in all, we reached the road after only an hour's delay.

This evening we arrived in Golmud, our first 'proper' Chinese town, where no tourists ever go, nothing is in English, and Joy & I go to a restaurant to find the menu entirely in Chinese. I suggest pointing to random things on the menu, but Joy's not convinced by that idea. Luckily Dennis is already there so we just go to his table, point at what he's got, then point at our table. We and up with a style of Chinese food you never get in England - a steam-boat where you get a pot full of boiling stock and bowls of raw food you cook yourself at the table. It was gorgeous, we were very full, and the whole thing cost only just over £10 for the 2 of us.

Goat Polo

One of the days at Song Kul we witnessed a local sport, best described as Goat Polo.
A fairly gruesome game by our soft western standards, Goat Polo is a game played by two teams of men on horseback. It is preceded by the ceremonial sacrifice of a goat, after which the head and lower limbs are removed. The rest of the goat is used in the game, the object of which is to place the dead goat onto the target.


When one man is holding the goat, the opponents will try and grab it off him. At one point, 2 men were fighting over it, one had hold of one hind leg, the other had the other hind leg and they were both pulling very hard. If the goat wasn't already very dead I'd have felt quite sorry for it. The game has no boundaries so it's very necessary for the spectators to be alert, as you may have to run out of the way at any time. The horses are so hyped up they'd just go straight over you. Last year, someone's tent was in the wrong place at the wrong time, result - no more tent. This year we moved all the tents to be huddled up together behind the truck.

The game is followed by horseback wrestling, where two men attempt to try and pull each other from their horses. Finally, what can only be described as a more serious version of the old schoolyard classic 'kiss-chase': where a man persues a woman on horseback, and gets to marry her if he catches up. That's now we married one of our number, Roberta, off to a Kyrgyz. It would have been rude of her to win.

Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan - a catch-up

Here, as promised, is the first of several catch-up entries:

18th June, day 62, Tashkent, Uzbekistan - Kazakh Border



It's quite a long wait today. That's all a part of traveling, it requires patience, a quality I lack in abundance. But at about 5pm ish we finally leave the hotel and head for the Kazakh border, it's not far. Before we know it, we're there. Unfortunately it seems we are not welcome at this border, so we turn round and head towards a different crossing point. A few hours later we arrive at another border crossing point, safe in the knowledge that we'll get through this one. The Kazakh official says it closes at 9pm, but it's just before 8 when we arrive at the border, so plenty of time. The Uzbekistan exit formalities don't take too long and at shortly after 8pm, we're through to the Kazakh formalities. Then the bombshell hits. The Kazakh side of the border has just closed, because in Kazakhstan it is 9pm, not 8pm. Just a shame no-one took the time difference into account!

So we all set up camp in no-mans land, with Pete's warnings if not climbing over the fence to go to the loo, there might be land mines. Lovely.

19th June, day 63, Kazakh Border - middle of nowhere, Kazakhstan

We are through first thing in the morning when the men in huge peaked caps open the gates. It's quite quick really.

After a few hours driving through flat countryside with the occasional shanty-town we are busy overtaking a slow lorry when another car decides we are not overtaking fast enough, so overtakes us at the same time. The road is only 2 lanes, one each way, so the car has to go onto the dirt beside the road. It then pulls in in front of us and jams on the brakes. The driver gets out and starts yelling at Kirsten, who was driving. Pete and various other men get out. The car driver looks a bit worried and backs down. The problem is, were are in an extremely chauvenistic culture and women are seen as inferior. It's true in all the Stans but seems brutally true here. The car driver probably though that the truck was full of women, because (just by chance) on the visible side whilst overtaking, only women would have been visible through the window (apart from me, and I have long hair).

Another slight incident was being stopped by police. Nothing unusual in that in the Stans. The police have wide ranging powers to stop anyone they like, and as foreigners we are obvious targets. The policeman says something about insurance being invalid, and it will cost a US$200 "fine". Clearly he's making it all up, the insurance for the truck is world-wide. One bribe later and we're on our way. Welcome to Kazakhstan. What a horrible place.

20th June, day 64, nowhere, Kazakhstan - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Last night we were camped near a railway line - quite a busy one at that. Luckily it didn't keep me awake much. Also, all the tents were in a row along a farm track next to a field. Sometimes it's hard to find a good camp. We were expecting to have to bribe/compensate a farmer for letting us stay, but vodka usually does the trick. We never saw him, though.

It's only a short trip to the Kyrgyz border and we bid a last farewell to our first unexpected country. We're getting quite good at border crossings now and this one isn't too painful. After that it's on to Bishkek for a night in a hotel.

Kyrgyzstan in apparently 96% mountains, so it only seems fitting that the journey from the border to Bishkek is flat as a pancake. Not so much as a molehill. The road all the way along is lined with the ubiquitous third-world market stalls - little brick or concrete shelters brimming with goods for sale spilling out over the muddy wasteland either side of the main road. This continued all the way to Bishkek. We found the hotel in the suburbs, and it's about a 40 minute walk into town, navigated with a map whose road names are all out of date.

In the evening we all go to the Metro Bar for a few beers. Not really in the mood, don't stay late. The taxi driver has no idea which way to go back to the hotel, it would have been quicker to walk, but apparently it's very dangerous to walk after dark in Bishkek. Not the the locals are a threat, oh no. It's the police you've got to watch out for. They violently rob tourists after dark.

21st June, day 65, Bishkek - Lake Issyk Kol, Kyrgizstan

Bishkek did not give a good first impression to Kyrgyzstan, but luckily it's only one night in the Hotel Alpinist, where, if you manage to get any water out of the taps you are doing very well.

We leave fairly late in the morning, it's a shortish drive to Lake Issyk Kol, the 2nd largest mountain lake in the world. We have now started to enter the mountains - just. The lake is so big that it stretches all the way to the horizon in some directions and looks like the sea. Look another way and you'll see snow-capped mountains reflected in the lake. Very beautiful location. We arrive mid afternoon and set up camp, and I go for a swim. It's lovely, not too cold.

22nd - 26th June, Days 66 - 70, Diety Orgus, Kyrgyzstan



We have now entered the mountains proper and set up camp for 4 nights in the beautiful Diety Orgus, a mountain valley in Kyrgyzstan. The valley is very lush and green with plenty of pine trees and river running through it. We are now at an altitude of about 2400m, the highest camp yet, and so is no longer hot. But with altitude comes other problems such as slight breathlessness, but really 2400m is not that high and the breathlessness soon passes.

This location is great for walking and during the time here I go for some nice walks including one to the top of the mountain immediately opposite the camp. It was a bit of a challenge but well worth it.

Another activity was horse riding, which Joy and I both tried. The horse I got was quite well behaved, I was able to make it go, stop, turn etc without too much hassle. Simon and Alice went riding at the same time and they did not have quite the same luck I did. Their horses refused to turn around and instead just stood there where thay should have turned, some miles from the camp. Simon and Alice just gave up in the end and got off their horses and walked them back. I managed to ride mine back and returned to the camp about an hour before them. Not sure if the locals who we hired the horses from were worried or not.

On our last full day, another overland truck turned up. It was a Dragoman truck on a journey from India to Istanbul, via China, the Stans, Iran and Turkey. It was nice to sit with them and compare notes over a few beers, though I must say our truck is nicer. They all stayed in Yurts that night.

26th June, day 70, Diety Orgus - Karakol, Kyrgizstan

It's a shame to leave Diety Orgus. There's so much more we could have done, especially since just about one whole day was nearly constant rain, so another day would have been nice. But we do have a schedule to keep and Australia is still thousands of miles away.

We go to a small town called Karakol where we have a homestay, a chance to have a proper hot shower after 4 nights under canvas.

27th June - 1st July, days 71-75, Lake Song Kul, Kyrgyzstan



After Karakol we have 5 nights bushcamping, one en route and four near Lake Issyk Kol. The drive from Karakol is uphill all the way and soon we are getting some altitude again. The en-route camp is just a spot near the road heading up towards the lake, not a busy road, luckily. It's in a valley with a stream running through but not quite as picturesque and Diety Orgus.

The following day we head further up into the mountains, the road zig-zags up a very steep slope and soon we are beyond the snow line. At this point I am on the roof-seats looking around surrounded by snow-covered mountains. The air is thin, bitterly cold, but the sun is blisteringly hot. A strange combination.

We soon come down from the high pass and emerge into a vast, flat grassy plain with the lake shimmering on the horizon just below the mountains on the far side. This stunning location is exactly how I'd pictured the Stans - endless grassy plains with the occasional yurt separated by huge distances, horses and yaks roaming free, huge dramatic sky, mountains on the horizon dwarfed by distance.

Here is the highest bushcamp again - now over 3000m. Can't stand up too quick otherwise my head spins but other than that I'm OK. It's all good preparation for the Himalayas, where even in the valleys it rarely gets down to 3000m.

One day, a group of us decide to walk towards one of the closer-looking mountains. This is the sort of place where you can walk for hours and the scenery doesn't change. Still the same mountains in the distance, the same lake, the same endless grass. It's just that the camp reduces to a mere speck in the distance. After about 2 hours, the mountain didn't look an awful lot closer although the ground was getting steeper, so we headed back. We'd gone uphill a fair way and could see the vastness of the plain better from this vantage point. A tiny speck was visible, we thought it to be the truck. Beyond, we could see the lake.

This is a huge and awe-inspiring place, my feeble descriptive powers or the photos can't really do it justice.

Next update - the gruesome game of Goat Polo, coming soon....

Been a long time...

I am still travelling. A lot has happened since the last update. Now in Luang Nam Tha in Laos, where it is so humid you almost drown by breathing the air.

We had one night in Kazakhstan (not recommended), then about 2 weeks in Kyrgyzstan, which was really very beautiful and almost enirely lacking in internet connections, then just over a month in China, there the internet is so controlled and so any sites (including this one) blocked, I could hardly do a thing.

Lots of blog and photos saved up, will catch up more later, so watch this space....