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Published: June 23rd 2010
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Its been a long time coming.So many kilometres out in the mountains of Yunnan and crossing the endless expanse of the Gobi desert has put us on the threshold.The wait is almost over.
Yet it seems like only yesterday me and my mate Berni were at the last world cup in Germany.China has been showing adverts for months expressing full ,non stop coverage of the tournament which has had me sweating over Kazak interest in the worlds biggest sporting event.
After a ridiculous bandit border crossing involving having to take the bus and pay twice to each the chinese and kazak guards because were ''not allowed'' to cycle the one kilometre of no mans land I got to asking football questions to the Kazak cops in their massive gay hats.All seems well as one reeled off names like Gerrard,Terry,Shrek and Cole.Now all I(Tati for some reason isnt interested) need to do is sort out the tv im gonna be shouting at for the next 4 or 5 games(im realistic).Who knows ,might even get to take in some of the sights between penalty shoot out heartache.
Had more 'good' news when we went through control,it seems we have to
register within five days,some sort of old soviet crap they didnt do away with in 91.What with the weekend approaching theres no wat we will reach Almaty on Friday (3 days time).We'll go in on monday,that'll be our sixth day and take it from there,were both very bored of this kazak money laundering buisness theyve got going with foreign visas,its no wonder they can afford such gigantic headwear.
Well, they eat less here judging by the empty grass fields or is it that theres alot more chinese than the modest 15 million kazaks.Weve become used to cultivated land in China,not this sea of grazing land over the border.15 million people in the worlds 9th biggest country,most of which live on the southern borders ,leaving hundreds of square kilometres desolate and empty.Why are we here ?
Most of the country is flat,although the south east has towering mountains before dwindling away to the vast steppe land of the north.Luckily for us it was a slow downhill heading through villages more in common with home with flower gardens,picket fences ,pitched roofs and lots of kids hanging around ,generally behaving although one did pick up a rock but wisely didnt throw
it.Be a shame to beat him up!Just getting into hooligan character for the game on saturday night.
The road is crap though,patchy and potholed,it looks like a gang of drunken autistic horses have had a go at it.It softens to liquorice in the afternoon ,almost like having flat tires,makes pedaling hardwork.Kazak drivers dont give us alot of room either,so theres plenty of moving out of the way onto the gravel shoulder.But its only for 1300km!
Whatever,we dont care,its good to make progress.With our new plan(plan K) we will go from the chinese border to Baku(make that Tbilisi,plan L) within 30 days.Forsaking the tough bit after Aralsk like a couple of gays,taking trains to Actau on the Caspian where we will fly to Tbilisi thus avoiding unaffordable 100 dollar Azeri visas.Its a shame but theres no way we can do this in 30 days.Thought about just doing the hard part of Kazakhstan and decided that was a noble but really stupid idea.
Still, with over a thousand km of the country to go theres plenty to see and if the mossies are like the first night of camping we'll have skin like bubble wrap when we reach Aralsk.
If our sail plan for the Gobi didnt work,then our redundant mossie net came in very handy with our next invention.With the bikes upturned and the net drapped over them we had a very useful,insect free outdoor camp.Mossie retreat worked well too and by locking the bikes like that overnight we were able to get in there quick in the morning.
Had a couple of really hot ,energy zapping days on the way to Almaty.Very arid ground with tough looking bushes that reminded us of the Sahara.Enjoying the subtle differences here though.Who'd of thought that using spoons and tea with milk would produce such joy.These familiar items were proof yet again of our slow progress home.
When we 'talk' to people they understand.We have a few words of Russian locked in our dusty memories to take out of the closet.People here are less likely to collapse into a fit of shy giggles when we try to speak to them(something that we struggled with at times in China).The Russian language is so much easier to handle than the Chinese,it didn't take long to string together a few words that were understood.
We were going to make a side trip to Sharyn Canyon but after 5km of riding down the 22km track the washboard surface got the better of us.We're tired and settled for looking at the photo of it on the front of our Gizi map.Not quite the same but we sort of made up for it the next day by descending through the beautiful and unexpected Kokpek gorge.Thats where I found a big bloody tick with red and yellow legs feasting on my leg.At last nights camp we mistook these crazy looking buggers to be spiders.He was soon swimming downstream to Almaty in river we stopped to cool off at.
Friendly bunch though the Kazakhs/Russians, never afraid to approach us with the ambiguous 'Atcouda' which pretty much just means 'where'.
Luckily for us this double meaning question has the same answer,that being England.And since a lot of Kazakhs don't know where Denmark is Tati has become English again and were still from London since the chances of Gloucester being known were worse than slim. Made good time along the flat straight road that headed west. Traffic was a bit chaotic with old trucks and overloaded tractor trailers to navigate. The mountains kept us sane as we enjoyed their company on the way into Almaty.
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