30 June 2009
Annnnndddd....we're in China! After all the dreadful tales of Chinese borders (last year's Odyssey group got turned down despite having visas when they shut all the borders to groups ahead of the Olympics, and Dragoman spent two days getting in last month), we had a remarkably easy transition from Central Asia in Asia proper. Albeit a long-ass day.
Bushcamped on a plain about 80K from the border, ferocious windstorm ripped through that night. Sleeping with only two layers of cotton between you and nature can be challenging—it was cool and also extremely loud. Up very early yesterday to drive to the border—not hard to get out of Kyrgyzstan. The first Chinese border was slightly different—drove up through a 3,700 meter high pass, the Torugart Pass, and waited for about an hour for our Chinese guide to meet us. Once we had her (Vanessa), drove down another 20 minutes to the first post, where we waited in a queue of trucks for a while, then inched forward, then waited some more. Finally unloaded all our kit—having been told to pack it all down as compactly (and hence heavily) as possible, as there was good reason to expect we'd be carrying it all for some time—and queued at the mobile X-Ray van. They got through all of Amy and Paul before a hailstorm hit, and they sent us back to the truck. To wait. Could have been awful, but honestly, it was quite entertaining.
The nice guards let us just get on with it through the main part of the Pass, and down to the actual fancy-schmancy border post another two hours away. Where a bloke got on and immediately starting pointing a red laser at our foreheads. Either we had our temperature taken, or we are now indoctrinated into something. They sprayed our bags with some chemical, then had us stick thermometers under our armpits and pronounced us all fit to enter China. Some bags were searched, mostly not, and we were through the whole thing in about 2 hours. And here we are. Also, Jackie Chan is on the anti-pirating posters in Chinese borders. Who knew?
Kashgar—three nights at the Seman Hotel (I know!) in a Silk Road city that is the final frontier of China. The people are a mix of Uighur (wee-gar), Muslims who aren't ethnic Chinese at all, and Han Chinese who have been moved out here in the last 30 years by the Beijing government to colonize the oil-rich province. Uighur script is Arabic (though it's used phonetically, and was only adopted in the 1970s—they used to use Latin letters, the story being that they had an advantage in learning English over the Chinese, and therefore the government changed the entire script. No idea if that's true.) End result is that we can't read a damn thing here—Chinese characters or Arabic!
By the time we got in, it was quite late, especially considering that everything official runs on Beijing time—two hours ahead. It was light until about 11 last night. Had dinner (point-and-grunt ordering) and off to sleep in the hotel—which is lavished in glitter. On the walls.
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