Almaty

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Hi Again, have covered thousands of klms since the last blog as we have travelled right up thru Western China, including the Southern Tibetain highway thru Litang and Zhongdian down to Chengdu where I said farewell to Stefano and hello again to CArol.. The Tibetain highway was beautiful and remote in places reaching over 4000mts. Towering mountains and deep gorges, monks and horses, sand and wind , very cold and extremely hot. Great spicy food and very cheap beer. Once leaving Chengdu, Carol and I paired up with 2 other travellers, Phil from UK and Craig, a bee keeper from Geraldine. We spent a week touring the Tibetain Grasslands ending in Lanschou where the Yellow River flows. After here CArol and I were heading West to Juiuyuan where the Great Wall starts and also visited a famous fort dating from the start of the Silk route, 2000yrs ago. Eventually we found ourselves in Urumchi, the furthest city in China and stayed 5 days in a small town called Turpan 2 hrs from there which is 145mts below sea level, the 2nd lowest place on earth and also the furthest place from the ocean on the planet. The temps reached a staggering 46cel so we never ventured out of our rooms till 6pm every day. The town was great thou and everyone wanted to practise their English on us. The local BBQ seller wouldnt take any money for our BBQed lamb, which by the way surpassed any lamb Ive eaten in NZ, and also ploughed us with free beer and rice wine all night. To those of u who have met my friend Manfred in Austria would have recognised him as Manfreds double in looks and drinking and hospitalaty traits as well. We finally left Turpan to head back to Urumchi to pick up our Kazak visas which took 2 hours of pleading and begging and finally threats of police action if they didnt give them back immediatly ( they wanted us to come back another day as they couldnt be bothered to open the gates that afternoon and we already had bus tickets to leave town that night). The next morning after another 14 hr bus trip we arrived at the KAzak border and said farewell to China and hello to my first Stan country which is also my 100th country to visit. We are staying here 3 nights while waiting for visas for the next country and in the next blog Ill explain why we arnt hanging around here long. So thanks for all the messages and Ill catch up again soon from the Centre of the Earth. Love from Kay xxxxx

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Comments

[vincent]

what's up?
hello, what'sup in your journey through the east?