26 and 27 June - Kashgar (China)

The journey from the border was a contrast in sights with desert, green land, trees all  mixed together with the odd huge solar panel farm thrown in as well. Kashgar was a hot, dry city of 4 million people with a lot of building sites both in and around the city. I found the streets to be quiet mainly because all the scooters are electric and the taxis run on natural gas. It’s a reasonably clean city but people did have the habit of throwing rubbish in the streets. I spent two days here mainly walking round the streets, visiting the Sunday Market (open every day) the Old Town and part of the craft area. Not a very exciting city as far as I was concerned. The truck was taken to a test station to be check end registered as a Chinese vehicle (and I assume it had to be insured for China as well). The registration number is now POO498.

While walking around I came across Chinese scouts (male and female as girl guides are called scouts here) coming out of a meeting. There were hundreds of them and though I  wanted to take a photograph of them I did not as I noticed that there were a number of policemen watching them and it is forbidden here to take photos of any police, military personnel or sensitive buildings. At another time a family arrived at a cafe on a scooter (four on a scooter is quite common) and father plugged in a power lead before going into the cafe. No special lead, just an extension lead as I would use at home. After six hours of walking around I decided to take a taxi back to the hotel (50p fare for a few kilometres) and with it being Friday afternoon just after prayers had finished at the main mosque the city was hopping with people doing their shopping and many sitting down to eat at the many street stalls. On the way to the hotel the driver kept stopping with  people at the side of the road shouting to him, obviously saying where they wanted to go. He stopped for two women who then sat in the back of the taxi, left before we arrived at the hotel when some money was put in his pocket and I paid the full fare when I arrived a the hotel. I just laughed at this!

Just as we were ready to leave the hotel one of the staff came to me via the guide, Jason, to say that I had to pay £4 for a pillowcase I had slept on as it had blood on it. I said that I wanted to see the pillowcase first and when I did it was obvious it was old blood, and anyway, I had no cuts on my face or head. I refused to pay and it was left like that. It was early in the morning and I was a bit slow as afterwards I could not figure out how he knew what bed I slept in as Ian was in the room with me as well. Anyway it was a scam to get money as he probably thought I was a loopy old man who would just pay up to save the bother of holding up the truck. The daughter’s inheritance is not meant to pay for the like of that! Our driver said that it was a common thing to happen in China,  not a good  thing for a country to be known for. 

Mao Tse-tung 

Main Street early one morning

City centre

A park

The Old Town

The Old Town

A street in the Old Town

A street scene

A blacksmith

A blacksmith making a kitchen implement

A wood turner

The demon barber

The Sunday Market

The Sunday Market

Beautiful colourful materials in a shop

A bear skin in the Sunday Market

Nuts and spices (red shade cloth made the colour)

The Seman Hotel corridor 

The Seman Hotel room

 

24 and 25 June - Tash Rabat (Kyrgyzstan) to Kashgar (China)

The morning of 24 June saw us leaving Song Kul for a bumpy wet ride to Tash Rabat (altitude 3200 metres) where we were to stay overnight in a yurt. At bedtime the fire was lit but if we wanted more wood to keep the fie going during the night it would be an extra cost. It was not necessary as the yurt stayed warm all night.

The yurt camp

Inside the yurt

Not long after arriving at the yurt camp some of us went further up the valley to a Caravanserai, one of the original ones on the Silk Road that had been renovated to appear as it would have in the 15th century. It was originally built as a Nestorian monastery in the 10th century with the building consisting of 31 rooms including cavities in the central hall. The rooms are dome-shaped and the transition from a quadrangular frame to a dome is by a squinch. The building was partially built into the hill behind and it had an escape tunnel, should bandits try to rob the merchants, which extended right through the hill behind the Caravanserai. In itself it looked quite a formidable building.

I 'borrowed' this photograph

The front of the Caravanserai

Inside the Caravanserai

The central dome (this was my photograph)

The road to the Caravanserai

The following morning it was off very early to the Kyrgyzstan/Chinese border on a bumpy and sometimes slippery snow covered road (E125) at 4000 metres altitude, following the Jukuu Mountains, part of the Tienshan Range. There we saw the Chatir-Kol Lake, now having now seen the three largest lakes in Kyrgyzstan.

Views on the way to the border

AND THEN THE BORDER. No further photographs could be taken until were were through the last Chinese border post. Although the crossing was relatively easy it did take 6 hours and 40 minutes from arriving at the Kyrgyzstan border to clearing the last Chinese checkpoint. Our Kyrgyzstani guide stayed wit us most of the time as he had to hand us over to the Chinese guide (Jason) without a break between the two. Except that the Chinese guide was late so the border guards allowed us to  ravel between to check points having confirmed that Jason was waiting for us further up the road.Those of us who had laptops had to switch them on and the Chinese went through the photos saved in the machines.

At 7.45am we past the first checkpoint. This took 15 minute. Then onto the next check point.
At 9.30am we arrived at the Kyrgyzstani checkpoint, passports stamped and left at 10.10am. Then it was another 7 kilometres to the first Chinese check point.

A t 10.40 Farhad, the Kyrgyzstani guide, left us at the Chinese border, a big lockable foreboding gate and we were let through into Chinese soil after our passports and visas were checked. All our visas were obtained before we set off on this trip, none were available at the border. No further payment was required to pass the border as has been  charged in other countries, namely Turkmenistan, where we already had visas before arriving in Turkmenbashi. At 11.20am we then travelled a further 163 kilometres to a further checkpoint.

At 12.10 there was a customs check when all baggage had to be taken off the truck and x-rayed. I was helping to do this when the Chinese guards wanted me to stop or use a trolley making it obvious that they thought I was too old to do such a heavy task. I just laughed and carried on. This was where I had to open my laptop and they searched the photos I had taken, looking for what i do not know specifically. They also had a look at the papers I had in the laptop case, some of which I had burnt before entering China.

Further along the road we were stopped for 10 minutes to have our passports checked again.

At 2.15pm the truck was sprayed, customs and immigration checked everything again and our Guide joined us. We finally were let free into China at 4.10pm.

The first photo of China, quite a contrast to Kyrgyzstan.

The road from the border was hot and dusty (quite a contrast with the other side of the border) and with a huge solar farm  seen at the side of the road. From the cold of Tash Rabat to the 30C heat of Kashgar was quite a change and a tired group of people finally arrived at the Seman Hotel in Kashgar at 7.10pm, twelve hours after leaving Tash Rabat.  One thing I noticed early on In the hotel room was a list of items in the room and the charges for replacing them. It looked as if EVERY item in the room was listed.

The Truck

As people have been asking about the truck this will give some idea of what it is like. It’s an orange and blue coloured Mercedes Axor 1823 chassis, right hand drive, with driven rear wheels.

The rear locker holds the folding chairs, under the chassis are racks for gas bottles and water containers, while the tents are stored in locker at the front .

This could be called the working side of the truck as various lockers hold fresh and tinned foods in plastic stacking crates, two tables, two gas rings with a gas bottle, cutlery and a drinking water tank.

The tents are named after fancy hotels worldwide

Inside the truck looking front to back (The orange thing is a silly squeaky toy). From the front, on each side, there are two sets of seats facing forward, then front and rear facing seats about a table and at the rear a double seat facing inwards (20 seats in total). The area below the seats is boxed in to provide extra storage. This is not so an all the trucks as we have been seeing others now and again and one certainly does not have the boxed seats, much to the annoyance of the people on that truck as their luggage stored under the seats ends up all over the place with the bouncy roads. On one side by the door is a small fridge to store fresh food (and beer). Then opposite the door is a locker for sleeping bags and roll mats while across the inside rear of the truck is a locker for the larger bags.

The cooking area

A normal on the road lunch. The bikes were extra on the truck and left a Special Home in Georgia. The rack hold wood for fires when they are able to be lit.

This was a special breakfast

21 to 23 June – Diety Orgus to Kochkor and Song Kul (Kyrgyzstan)

On the way out of the canyon we stopped and collected firewood for use later on. Our guide said that we were not allowed to collect any branches with leaves on or pull and wood off trees. The only wood that could be collected was that lying on the ground. Apparently local wardens go round checking if anyone has broken the rules and they are heavily fined. Obviously they do not look too far as shown in the photos of the last blog and from the amount of wood I saw that had been freshly cut down. 

Again there were many empty and dilapidated Soviet buildings to be seen on the way to Kochkor and in-particular miles of old watercourses and earth dams in disuse. The photos below will show areas of lush green grass then just about barren ground. On arrival at Kochkor (altitude 1800 metres) we were allowed to do some shopping before going to the Kochkor Homestay for the night. The meal in the evening was supplied by the homestay and consisted of a salad, soup, bread, rice and beef(?), biscuits, sweets and tea. To go with it all were jams of strawberry, apricot and raspberry, the latter being put into the tea and which was very good. All the jams tasted as if they were home-made as they were tasty and fresh.

Views on the way to Kochkor

Don't tell BMW

Fermented mares milk in the barrels

A container house

My bedroom

was in the library

The following morning we went to a demonstration of felting at a Woman's’ Co-operative. In about an hour a small bit of felt was made by the others in a traditional way. If overseas people are prepared to come to the town for a week or so the local women will show them how to make felt their way.

Simply put, the felt is made from sheep's wool which has been washed, dyed and dried. Dying used to be with natural dyes such as pear and raspberry leaves, dahlia and birch roots, which are now making a resurgence but synthetic dyes are still being used. First the fleece (usually more than one) is pounded with a wire whip to soften the fibres. The rug is made by thinning (teasing) the wool into small pieces and laying longitudinally and then similarly vertically (more than two layers may be used). Small, always small, pieces of teased coloured wool is laid onto the rug to make a design then hot water is poured onto the wool. The whole is then rolled into a reed mat, tied tight, more water added then the whole compressed. The lady demonstrating this said that the method of compressing the wool was for the women, and men to dance on the mat, continually moving the mat around so it was flattened evenly, always adding water and that this process could take weeks for a large mat with the flattening being done for only a few hours each day.

Making felt- hitting the wool with wire rods

Laying down the wool

The pattern

Rolling the wool in the reed mat

Dancing to felt the wool

The finished felt

Items for sale

Items for sale

Items for sale

Items for sale

After the felting demonstration it was a slow ride to Lake Song Kul (Son-Kul) at an altitude of 3016 metres through the Kalmak-Ashuu Pass.The lake is surrounded by mountains on both sides with snow showing on them and the area is a Zoological Reserve protecting wolves and waterfowl including Indian mountain geese. The weather is said to be unpredictable here and which is what we found with a windy storm on the second afternoon pelting us with hailstones and when the storm had finished there was more snow to be seen on the mountains round the lake.

Views on the way to Lake Song Kul

A heard of yaks

A yak

The storm happened when we were watching a local game of goat polo. Some of the local people used a goat’s body to play polo for us, a very vigorous sport. Perhaps some of you might want to skip the next part and some of the photos as I will describe what the goat polo entailed. 

A goat was brought to the playing fields and we all covered our eyes for a prayer to be said, as covering the eyes for prayer is the custom here. The goat was then killed, it’s head and legs removed. The remains were then used to play goat polo. There were two teams of three people and they had to put the carcase of the goat on a marked place to ‘score’ a point. The goat was carried by a man on a horse, the other side had to force the rider to drop the goat or pull it off him. At times the game was fast with the riders chasing each other round the meadow (there were no boundaries and no rules so it seemed) and a little violence was used just for show. The real games can result in serious injuries and even death.

Getting ready

Some of the others went horse riding in the morning for about two hours and some were rather stiff at the end of the ride.

Dave showing how it should be done

Jackie gave me permission to put this photo in the blog as it is Dave being helped on the horse

Off they go

The storm arriving

The first time the cooking tent was put up

A local man gong to the lake for water