Today we departed China after 25 days and approx 7000 kilometres along what has been one the most spectacular drives this trip I think. More about that later and some photos which I hope will show the beauty of the area.
We left Kashgar for the immigration post to wait for a hour before it opened only to spend another hour getting processed. After processing we drove the 140k to the border control post to find that it had just closed for lunch for 2.5 hours. This blog post is being written while we wait patiently for the border guards to finish lunch. The town we are waiting in is probably the biggest dump of a town we have seen this trip. But low and below amongst the hovel we found a really nice noodle and vegetable lunch with a couple bits of meat sprinkled through. The true test of the lunch will be in an hour or so’s time.
Now back to today’s drive after the customs clearance. We have been traveling through desert valleys of eroded sedimentary rock with many different colours and shade of colour. Well not much of it is hard enough to be rock so it has eroded in to wonderful shapes.
There is a lot of thing I could write about this trip and China but political comment is best not on a blog while traveling in China.
It still half on hour before we can move so I’ll continue the rest of this after we arrive in Sary Tash in Kyrgyzstan for a one night stop before proceeding to Tajikistan.
We have arrive in Sary Tash, which is a quant little high altitude Old Russian town at 3000+ metres. On the drive in to town across the high flat grass plains we passed many nomadic goat and horse herders.
The scenery this afternoon has been equally special as we have had high mountain range on the left covered with snow and large glaciers.
When we arrived in Town we had a lot trouble finding our booked accommodation to the extent that when an hour later when we found the one we had booked they had no record of our booking and were booked out. So off around town to find another home stay. We found a place with 11 beds for us with dinner and breakfast for $25.00 each. We don’t have showers and the toilet is up the back yard and a long drop. The great thing is that we are warm in the house as it was 11C when we arrived and it getting very cold as the sun sets. Some of the local are saying that it might snow tonight, It’s certainly cold enough to now with plenty of the right clouds coming of the mountains.
The house is very warm inside so let’s hope it stays that way all a night. The only down side to the place is there is no shower. When I asked the host about a shower she said “Shower in City”
We have just finished the dinner that was provided by our host with 2 hours notice. Everyone was so happy with the dinner and with nothing else’s to do everyone has gone to bed early ready for the trip too Tajikistan tomorrow.
