Advertisement
Published: August 10th 2009
Camels
Karakorum HighwayWe crossed the border into Western China on 22nd July over the Toruquart Pass at 3752m - quite a road. It was a day’s driving over nothing more than a gravel track - this is the main route into China from Kyrgyzstan! The border crossing is quite a palaver and has several phases - it took us from about midday until 8pm to complete all the phases of it and know that we were finally in China. This is an area of China that tourists don’t normally see as most foreigners are familiar with the Eastern side of the country. We picked up our young Chinese guide called Kevin - yes really! and started off in Kashgar in the Xinjiang province where we had to spend an extra day for Steve and Lucy to be put through their paces to get temporapry authority to drive in China (not sure what would have happened if they had failed! ) Kashgar was an interesting, quite international sort of city and the food was fabulous. The province was traditionally made up of the Uyghur population but now has a much more Han Chinese feel to it with the Uyghurs mainly in the old town.
Bush camp
Up on to the Tibetan Plateau You may have heard about recent unrest in that area which happened a couple of weeks before we arrived. There was a huge military presence on the street and according to our guide were there to make us feel safe (believe that if you like). We visited an amazing Sunday animal market which was very interesting (also quite smelly) We spent a couple of days driving on the renowned Karakorum Highway - a road which took 20 years to build jointly by China and Pakistan as a trade route, although it has formed part of an Old Silk Route for centuries. It is apparently number four on the top ten roads in the world to travel on and we could see why. It has been blasted out of sheer cliff faces and over a 4200m pass on the Chinese side and even higher on the Pakistan side. Again words and pictures can never do it justice, it is surrounded by huge peaks and more glaciers than you can imagine. We came quite close to, but unfortunately did not see the K2 range. We spent a couple of nights on this road, one by a lake overlooking the most spectacular Muztaga
Censored
Sinclair being chased by a sheep on Lake Karakol Karakorum Highway Ata Mountain. Some of us went walking from there and had a bit of a laugh when two of the Aussies decided to do a spot of skinny dipping and got chased by a sheep into the lake and out again! The funniest thing was, they kept running and the lake never got any deeper - after about 20m it was still only up to their ankles! The sheep seemed to enjoy the chase though and just wandered off later to join it’s flock!
We spent four days traversing the Taklimakan Desert to the oasis town of Turpan, 154m below sea level and reputedly the hottest place on earth. It is a beautiful town famous for its grapes which are dried, not made into wine, and in order to keep to town feeling cool there are streets to walk or drive down which are covered all over with trellis and vines - quite a spectacular sight. They have a rainfall of 16mm a year and we actually saw some of it! On our first morning there it lightly rained for about five minutes! The other place we stayed during the desert crossing was another oasis town of Dunhuang which had
Desert
Just outside Dunghuan amazingly colourful streets and a wonderful night market. With some of the others we wandered through the market looking at the colourful stalls selling absolutely everything and then ate in one of the many street cafes - There’s no easy way to say this, but we ate donkey! It was very lean and very tender and tasty - I don’t know why we should have felt squeamish about it because as meat eaters we eat other animals! and it was probably organic! I hate to think what we might have eaten here without realising it. We did see some pretty horrendous things on some of the stalls. Dunhuang is where we left the Old Silk Route to travel south towards Tibet and we were in total admiration of the traders who did it hundreds of years ago on camels!
We started our long journey over the Tibetan plateau on the 4th, and I had a wonderfully rose coloured image of what it would be like and in the first two days it certainly did not meet up with any of my expectations. The Chinese have built a very high spec railway all the way through the plateau to Lhasa (the
Lake Namtso
4800m up on theTibetan Plateau capital of Tibet), now linking it with Beijing supposedly to open up Tibet to the tourism, that’s the line the guide has to take anyway! At the same time they have made tourist visas more difficult - sounds logical! The road was fairly good in places and non existent in others and for the first two days there were more roadworks than roads. There was very little private traffic on the roads and nearly all we saw were massive freight carrying trucks chucking out noxious fumes. The landscape did nothing to lift our spirits as it was just massive nothingness - a desert 4000m up! After a couple of days however the landscape changed, the lorries disappeared, the roads seemed to have been completed and beautiful mountains came into view. A lot of it however could have been the Scottish Highlands, only a few thousand metres higher! We’ve stayed in some “interesting” places, one night pitching our tents in some road builders huts and another night we stayed in a “government” hotel! We do feel we’re being watched all the time and have the feeling that the “authorities” are not keen for us to be here. We turned up at
Pilgrims
Father and son prostrating as a very hard form of Buddhist pilgrimage a horse racing event (not like the ones at home) with local people in very colourful national costume racing small horses. It was fascinating. Some of the local people were very interested in us and inquisitive but others would not speak and turned away. We had just got ourselves good spots to take photos when the police turned up and spoke to Kevin the guide and we were ushered off the land at speed. We’re not sure what they said to Kevin but he was very keen to get us back on the truck as quickly as possible!
We went over the Tanggula Shanku pass at 5200m which is higher than we will be at Everest base camp. It was very cold so we rushed out took photos and got back in quick. A highlight of that day was finding a place to buy drinks which turned out to be a small restaurant run by a young couple. It was a very humble little shack and they welcomed us in and cooked us an excellent lunch with three vegetable and two meat dishes and rice. Some of us went into her little kitchen and watched her chopping the vegetables and
Lunch
Being cooked by a lovely lady in a little cafe we came across by accident on the Tibetan Plateau cooking the entire meal for 17 of us in about half an hour - at least we knew it was fresh! We spent a night at Lake Nantso which is a very holy place for the Tibetans who make pilgrimages there. It was amazing to see the thousands of prayer flags everywhere. It is something we have seen on television but never thought we’d see then and touch them and step over them! It was absolutely stunning and we wished we could have spent longer as we arrived late one evening and had to leave by 9am the following morning. However we were up reasonably early and got the early morning sun and walked up to a viewing point at 4800m. The lake is the highest salt water lake in the world (apparently). It seems every country boasts about the highest, biggest etc etc! It was an amazing place. I tried yak butter tea in a little restaurant there - another acquired taste but not as bad as fermented mares milk! We also had yak and potato curry - excellent!
We are now in Lhasa the capital of Tibet and we can’t believe we’re here. We never dreamed we would
ever be on a hotel roof overlooking the floodlit Potala Palace, the winter palace of the Dali Lama since the 7th century. The present palace was built in the 1600s. Today in Lhasa has definitely been the best day of the last 10 weeks. We were moved to tears by the spectacle of the palace and the pilgrims. We were able to go inside it with a permit for one hour only and we even saw the audience room used by the Dali Lama. It made us feel really sad to think he's unlikely ever to be ther The beauty of the place is indescribable but unfortunately we could not take pictures inside. It is one of the few things left here untouched by the Chinese because it’s a UNESCO world heritage site. It is now nearly all Chinese and the Tibetan culture is quickly being eroded (very like the Uyghurs in Kashgar) - not the line taken by our local Tibetan guide though who is now with us as well as Kevin our Chinese guide). I mustn’t make this a political blog though and I understand we have to be careful what we publish on the internet. We spent
Horse Racing
Some colourful spectators at the horse racing which we were asked to leave a fascinating afternoon in the Old Town which is the traditional quarter and visited the Jokhang Temple, Tibet's most sacred temple built in the 7th century. We were blown away by it's colourful beauty and humbled by the pilgrims who sometimes walk 3000 miles just to come here, old and young, their dedication and belief is unbelievable. As we were wandering around the narrow streets of the old town with all their colourful stalls and shops we accidtally came across a nunnery and were invited in. It was the most beautiful, tranquil place I think I have ever seen. We watched the nuns washing their robes, and going about their work and they welcomed us with open arms. They have a small restaurant there and they invited us to have some tea. We're going back tomorrow for lunch! They also have a little shop selling things some of which are made by them with the proceeds going straight into helping the poor and the nunnery life. Today has been a WOW x 100! and none of us wanted it to end. Tomorrow we have even more treats in store when we visit the Summer Palace and debating monks (whatever they
Main road to China
James, Fiona and Chris on an empty road into China are). We leave Lhasa on Tuesday and I think we would all like longer here!
Truck life on this bit of the journey has been interesting to say the least. We lost some of the big egos last time but have gained a few people who are just clearly on the wrong sort of trip. The Texans are quite objectionable and complain about everything and everybody and are obviously used to getting their own way - which is not possible when 12 others have to be considered. A few others are using this trip solely as a means of getting into Tibet because it’s very difficult to get a visa unless you’re on a “tour” of some kind and are not enjoying truck life and are making it known! We have one lovely English girl Helen (another one) who’s 22 and even she’s not sure why she’s here. On her 2nd day she declared she’d seen enough mountains to last her a lifetime. She was expecting a sort of Shearings type trip with a loo on board. She had brought no cold weather clothes because she thought the truck would be taking us all the way to Everest Base Camp
:Lhasa
Potala Palace and then we’d rush out, take photos and leave again. We have now managed to kit her out in one of the many North Face shops and found her some warm blankets for her tent. She has been quite unhappy some of the time which makes it hard for everybody. With all the politics going on, the “Istanbul Six” (Glen, Chris, Fiona, Mike and us) have had to stick together and let it go over our heads. The problem is Mike (Kiwi) is a larger than life character as well and his mouth and brain don’t always work in conjunction!
Most of us have suffered to some extent from altitude problems. James and I were quite poorly with breathlessness, nausea and headaches for a couple of days but we’re now pretty well acclimatised we think. Lhasa is lower at 3600m than we’ve been over the past week but when we leave here on Tuesday we’ll be climbing again until we get to Everest Base Camp on Friday.
I can't believe that in less than two weeks time this will all be over and we will be in Kathmandu booking flights home. I suggest you never ask to see the
Lhasa
Jokhang photos unless you have at least a month to spare, we will be boring for the nation for at least the next ten years!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.136s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.1093s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Vicki
non-member comment
AT the top of the world
I'm just fascinated by your very descriptive details of your adventure which brings so much to life. I, for one, am definitely interested in seeing the photographs - along with a narration - and can well imagine that it will take more than one or two evenings. Love, Vicki