Our 1st stop in China was the city of Kashgar,
small according to our Chinese guide called Sophie, but very busy with electric
(& therefore almost silent) mopeds on the roads & pavements! Most mopeds had 3 people riding them weaving
where ever they wanted with no crash hats.
I noticed some women riding side saddle!
I realized we had popped out of rural Kyrgyzstan, over a
mountain pass into urban China. No remote
villages where the mode of transport was a horse, but bustling urban life where
the mode of transport was an electric moped.
We were in Xinjiang province which had 2 times! Local time & official Beijing time. Some places followed one time, others another!
On the 1st night we found a restaurant with a 10
page menu. On the final page were 14
dishes written in English. We chose 7 to
share & all were lovely. This was
the 1st time I used chop sticks on this Odyssey expedition &
likely to be the norm from now on.
On Tue 25th I went to the Sunday Market that was
on every day! It was the biggest market
I had been in so far. A bit like the
Grand & Spice Bazaars in Istanbul but bigger.
In the evening some of us experienced our 1st
street food at the night market.
Chicken or duck we couldn't really tell but it was cheap
The Chinese – English translations are weird. So much so that it’s called Chinglish. It just about makes sense.
I had to collect my clothes from the Chinese Laundry on Wed
26th. It lived up to the stereotype. There were clothes hanging up everywhere in
this little inner city shop. Most of the
Odyssey group failed to get all their clothes back. I learned from previous laundry visits to
list what I put in. I handed my receipt
to the girl & she began collecting my clothes from various washing lines in
the shop. I ticked off my list to find 2
items missing. We hunted &
hunted. I finally found 1 item still wet
hanging on a washing line in the back yard & the other item still inside
the 1 washing machine. I can describe
the Chinese laundry as chaos.
On Thursday 27th we drove 12hours along a
fantastic smooth road through desert.
This is how I would describe western China – desert. Travel/movement in China is monitored by
police. Check points all the way. Passports checked over & over. Permits, paperwork & permission had to be obtained by our guide every step of
the way.
The sign says it all. Days & days of this landscape
This evening we could not get authority to camp. We had to drive on. A few check points & phone calls later we
were given authority to camp at the back of a service station. The police turned up to check on us &
moved us inside the building. (There
were various rumours floating around for this.
Sand storm on the way-it was very windy outside. 30 people dead due to a riot in a nearby town
so we were kept in for our own protection or to prevent us from joining the
riot). We found ourselves putting up
tents within the service station restaurant within police crime scene
tape! The police then realized this area
was too small & moved us inside an empty office block in the service
station area.
Like most service areas we were actually allowed to stop at, there were no toilets at all. The many piles of poo on the ground were not from dogs! This was to be our 1st Chinese bush camp
We got moved inside. I moped the floor of this very dusty office & slept in here
It was weird sleeping on the floor of an empty office
somewhere in China. That night the wind
whipped around the windows, doors banging, it was extremely hot & policemen
turning up with torches checking on us.
We arrived in Turpan (China’s hottest city) on Fri 28th
June after two 12 hour drive days through desert from Kashgar. There was not much in between at all. Except of course police check points, 200km
restrictions where we could not stop, a pointless but expensive green fence along
both sides of the road, a selection of the world’s most awful toilets & at
many rest stops no toilets at all – so you guessed it – human excrement all
over the floor!!!
Only stopped in Turpan 1 night as we had more bush camps
& desert to cross. We reached the
city of Dunhuang on Sun 30th June.
Here I visited another UNESCO world heritage site called The
Mogao Grottoes, shopped for warm clothes, did Karaoke & spent a night
camping under the stars in the Gobi desert after a camel trek = fantastic.
Desert ships. I got the desert dingy! Last in the camel train but it was skittish on downhill slopes & passing vehicles so kept running & barging into the middle of the camel train. In the morning it was replaced by another camel
Gobi desert proper sand dunes
Sleeping under the stars
After passing more of the same scenery & experiences as
between Kashgar & Dunhuang, we arrived in Golmud. This is a city linking China with Tibet
province. It has a large train station
which runs the world’s highest railway service across the Tibetan Plateau. It was only completed in 2006. We were in 1 of the few hotels that accepted
foreigners. It was here Sophie our guide
was to hopefully obtain Tibetan permits for us.
We all really wanted to get into Tibet to see it, but also so our
overland expedition could continue into Nepal & the Indian Himalayas. Also, none of us wanted to back track through
days of desert to somewhere else. We
were warned it was not easy to obtain permits due to political unrest in
Tibet. Monks often set fire to
themselves in protest at the Dali Lamas exile into India since 1959. The last Odyssey Overland expedition to enter
Tibet was in 2010.
Sophie was successful.
On Sat 6th June we left Golmud for 2 very long drive days (10
& 12 hours) + 2 bush camps over the Tibetan Plateau. This is the highest plateau in the
world. Our 1st bush camp was
at 4815m. This was the highest I had
ever been on land. Unfortunately it
rained all night. We all suffered in
some way from the high altitude. I had a
bit of a headache & felt totally exhausted after pitching my tent. Others were gasping for breath in the night!
At 5231m high on the Tibetan Plateau - the worlds highest. Next stop Tibet
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