From Kashgar to Kyrgyzstan

---

With one remote border crossing down, we approached the Torugart Pass (from China into Kyrgyzstan) with confidence even though it's known to be one of the most unpredictable border crossings at the best of times. When you're in the middle of nowhere I guess you have the liberty to open and close the border as you please, take breaks every hour ad treat foreigners how you want! The pass is actually classified as a "class 2" border crossing which means that it is meant to be for local traffic only. But obviously when you show them the money this rule is thrown out the window! I'm fortunate to have left Kashgar when we did as the borders have since closed due to the terrorist attack that killed 16 policemen in the city close to where we were staying...

To cut a long story short, the journey from Kashgar to our first stop in Kyrgyzstan took us a total of 12 hours, and we travelled about 200km! Half of the time was spent waiting endlessly for border officers to thumb through out passports countless times. To top it off we didn't have anything to eat for most of the day apart from a hanful of raisins and a boiled egg!

By the time we got to our home at Tash Rabat for the night, we were ravenous! Though luckily our Russian host serve just as much food as the Uzbeks. Whilst Tash Rabat is known as a caravan-serai (a travellers roadhouse/ınn), word has it that it was built as a monastery many centuries ago. Either way, it must have been a location of significant importance during the Silk Rd trading times as a lot of manpower would have been needed to construct it.

Situated more than 3000m above sea level, we were in for another chilly night, but the Kyrgyz have it sorted. With a fireplace in our yurts, it was nice and toasty but as I get cold so easily I was still wrapped up in my thermals and was covered with two thick blankets! I fell asleep to the sound of the nearby stream and woke up to the smell of pancakes and eggs cooking. Zoya, our host is one of those women you wish was your mother - she looked after us so well and is a talented cook!

As you can see from the pics, the scenery was spectacular and we spent our day here hiking up a massive mountain just to see how much our lungs could do with the lack of oxygen! ha. Yuri our other host also showed us some ancient petroglyphs and was very animated in telling stories about the surrounding valleys and gorges.

Once we got back to camp, he wanted to show me the "traditional Russian sauna". Whatever that was I did not care to find out given he was a bit too touchy and told me the sauna involved using a stick! The time to leave came too quickly and I didn't want to leave without having a dip in the stream and there happened to be a spot which was deep enough. At that altitude and with evening temperatures hovering around 0 degrees, the water was unsurprisingly icy cold, but it was so invigorating! Even more so because we knew we weren't going to be having a shower for the next 4 days...

---

Photos

zoyas kitchen
the rolled eggplants wıth garlıc were scrumptious

zoyas caravan
where she produced the yummiest food!

Comments

[Marcus]

travel agencys
ahoi, I have an important question: I heard a bordercrossing is only with a travel agency possible. Did you traveld individual or with an agency? If agency, how much was it? Gretings and thank you! Marcus

[trabella]

border crossing
depending on which border crossing you're intending to make, it can be difficult going individually, but i think it can be done (from memory i met people that were going individually). but given that these borders are quite remote, if you get stuck, you can get yourself into some trouble...but it's all part of the adventure! if you at least have someone else travelling with you then i think you'll be fine, but i probably wouldn't want to do it on my own...