Well it was time to say goodbye to our final Stan and say Ni
Hao to China. Firstly that meant another
border crossing and we had been warned that it would be a beast – 13 hours was
planned in so potentially our longest yet.
It was also slightly different from the rest – there would be 2 Kyrgyz
check points and 3 Chinese ones that were many miles apart. We reached the first Kyrgyz one at 8am and
then had to drive 40 miles to the next one – nice and easy you’d think, that
shouldn’t take too long. WRONG! The road was horrendous and we could only do
20mph so it took 2 hours along one of the bumpiest roads yet. When we finally got to the second checkpoint
it was fairly straightforward to be stamped out and we headed to the first
Chinese checkpoint where we left Anton, our Kyrgyz guide. We were very quickly waved through this
checkpoint and we were all optimistic that the 13 hour estimate was erring on
the side of caution. It was an hour’s
drive to the second checkpoint and here we met Sophie, our Chinese guide. We also had to get off the truck with all our
bags and have them scanned and then we were on our way. It was over 120km to the third and final
checkpoint before we would be officially stamped into China and the race was
on. You see all of China officially
operates on one time zone despite it actually spanning about 3, this meant that
the whole country was all officially on the same time as Beijing which was 2
hours ahead of what should have been the local time. We had been told that the border would close
at 7pm Beijing Time so we had about 3 hours to drive the 120km on some dodgy
roads. We made it by the skin of our
teeth, arriving about 10 mins before it closed.
We were all processed fairly quickly, with only about an hour or so to
wait for Calypso to come through after us.
After a long, hot day we had made it to China! I have to admit I felt a sense of achievement
at this – how many people have travelled overland from Europe to China? It felt like a real milestone.
Once we were all loaded back on to the truck we started to
head to Kashgar, our first stop in China which was about an hour away. Everyone was excited to meet Sophie as we had
heard good things about her from Simon and Teresa as she had been their guide during
the reverse trip last year. She
immediately became popular when she announced that we had been given permission
to enter Tibet – the news was greeted with a loud cheer. Some of you may be wondering why. Whilst the planned itinerary for this trip
always included Tibet, Nepal and India, since 2010 the Chinese government have
not allowed large groups through and therefore the itinerary has had to be
amended. We were not only the first
Odyssey group, but the first overlanding group to be granted permission since
2010. There was much excitement!
We arrived in Kashgar pretty late so we grabbed food – my first
Chinese meal in China and it was delicious!
Over the next few days we shopped, ate at night markets and wandered
about taking in our first sights of China…..
Street sellers
Chinese building work?
Colourful dried fruit
Kashgar...
Id Kah Mosque
Anyone for goat's head?
Night market
Louise with her dumplings
Cold noodles
Everyone seemed to enjoy Kashgar, despite it not feeling overly Chinese. The majority of the people there are central Asian and it very much influenced the look and feel of the place. Our next real stop was to be in a place called Turpan, which is the second lowest point on earth and is nicknamed the fire city as it is the hottest point in China. Firstly we had to drive about 1200km to get there across the Taklaman desert, a place that had gained notoriety for being the place that once you went in you didn't come back out! The plan had been to have 2 very long drive days with a night's camping in between to get to Turpan. The best laid plans and all that......
The previous day in another part of the province we were in there had been riots and a number of people, including police offices, had been killed. The official line was that foreigners had come in and been involved in the riots and so the police were immediately more suspicious of us. That meant our permission to camp was revoked and we were ushered in to an unfinished service station where we were made to spend the night. To be honest whilst it was a major pain in the ass and added of time to our day (we didn't get dinner til after 10), at least we were indoors as a major sandstorm had started outside!
The group was also not in the best of moods as we were told that we would be leaving at 5am and that we would probably not get to see anything in Turpan as we would get there late and have to leave early the next morning due to the camping situation - we would have to drive further the next day to be allowed to camp in the next province. Whilst we knew this situation was out with the control of Odyssey, it did feel again that we were rushing through certain places and not getting the chance to see things - not why you book on a trip of this nature! Anyway, we made it there in Ok time and did manage to get to see some ruins.....
We met another Spike too!
Our next main stop was Dunhuang where we had 3 nights. Plenty of time to see a bit of the place. We managed have some fun at karaoke......
Jo and Lou
Louise, or should that be Taylor Swift
Mahala
Kelly and Andy
Phil and Jo doing their own unique version of Delilah
Mahala again
Stealing my camera for selfies!
Warren, Spike and Phil
Pernille, Dav and Fiona
Me!
Me and Phil
Mahala.....again lol
Warren and Dav
After a great night a few of us went out to seem some sights in the nearby Gobi desert. We saw some huge sand dunes in the distance as well as some cool landforms and a ruined section of the Great Wall.
The show recreated scenes from the Magao Caves which visited the day before - unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos so have a look on Wiki....
Some other pics of Dunhuang...
Our final stop in China was Golmud - a place of no interest to anyone to be honest. The only reason we went there was to pick up our permits to enter Tibet. The only interesting thing there was a game that we saw people playing on the street - it involved using a whip to hit a spinning plastic object. Weird, although a few of us gave it a go!
I am going to do Tibet as a separate blog so I'll sum up China so far - we definitely went through some less well travelled parts of China and had we not got into Tibet we would have seen more. However I'm happy with what I've seen and will definitely come back in the future and see more of the east of the country, including the Terracotta Army and the main sections of the Great Wall. These are fairly easy to come back and do whilst the section we are doing is much more difficult so I'm happy to have done it as part of this trip.
Amazing Tibet and a small matter of Mount Everest to follow.....
