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Published: April 23rd 2009
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Tian Shan mountains
Driving up to the border on the Chinese side. Crossing borders in central Asia might not be quite as simple as inside the Schengen area, but as long as you have your papers in order and transport sorted out, it should be straight forward enough. Or so we thought, until it took us almost 48 hours to cover the 400km between Kashgar in China and Osh in Kygyzstan:
Day 1, 07:00 Our driver picks us up and we head essentially due west from Kashgar towards the Irkeshtam Pass. We're in for a stunning five hour drive past beautiful scenery into the Tian Shan mountains that takes us over 3000m above sea level. As we near the border post, Mr. Li's VW Santana struggles with the snow on the road, but after several run-ups and attempts to push him on, we finally get over the last stretch and arrive at the border post.
Day 1, 12:00 The border post is a big efficient and orderly looking Chinese gate and the truckers that shuttle goods across the border are lined up outside waiting their turn. We are clearly the only tourists there, but inside the building it almost feels like Beijing International Airport: slide your bags through the metal detector,
Irkeshtam border pass
One illicit photo before I was reprimanded by an armed guard. fill in the yellow departure form, get your passport stamped by a friendly customs official and walk out into duty free world and snap up a couple of two-for-one bottles of Absolut. Well, not quite the duty free part, but instead you get border guards both curious about what your doing and eager to help you along the way. And so they bundle us onto a truck that take us across the 7km of no-man's-land to the Kyrgyz border post.
Day 1, 12:00 Kyrgyz time is 2 hours behind Beijing time The Kyrgyz border post is a very different story from it's Chinese counterpart. It feels like something out of a James Bond movie, I think I'm thinking of the opening sequence of
The World Is Not Enough. We enter a long, dimly lit shack, hand over our passports to a border guard who stamps them and points us towards the exit on the other end. Two armed guards meet us at the other end, inspect our passports and march us back into the shack and into the supervisor's office.
Gavaritye pa russki? Oom, sorry, no, I wish I did.. At least he doesn't seem to need to
Welcome to Kyrgyzstan!
The other side of the Irkeshtam Pass. ask us too many questions and smiles as he waves us out. Once again our passports are inspected by another armed guard before we can leave the compound and get to, well, a trailer park. Old containers and what look like train carriages remodled into a small settlement to cater to the border traffic.
Day 1, 13:00 There is supposed to be a driver here to take us to the Kyrgyz city of Osh. But by the time we find our way through the trailer park to the main road, there is no sign of the car we had been promised. The travel agent assures us over the phone that the driver will be there any minute. When it becomes clear that he obviously won't, we take refuge from the icey wind in the truckers' refectory and feast on some hot tea and biscuits.
Day 1, 15:00 Ominously, none of the trucks seem to be leaving the border post. I meet Abdullah, a burly Uigur truck driver from Kashgar, finally someone I can communicate with. He tells me there has been an avalanche on the road to Osh and no one will be able to get
Dostuk Cafe Bar
A haven of hospitality at the border crossing. through until they clear the road the next day. Another call to the travel agent confirms that the driver will in fact only get here the following day at noon. Great..
Day 1, 17:00 The
kafe where we have been camping out for the afternoon comes with a few guest rooms. I'm not sure how it would do on a star rating of the Kyrgyz tourist board, but it comes with a bed (three in fact), a bucket of hot water and a heating coil precariously balanced on two bricks and connected to the live wires hanging out of the wall. Nightlife and other entertainment at Irkeshtam trailor park being fairly limited, we settle for an early night.
Day 2, 09:00 Outside, we come across a guy who speaks English, who says his truck is leaving in an hour, do we want a ride? Yes please, we've seen all there is to see around here..
Day 2, 10:00 The truck driver is not the same guy, and speaks no English, but we jump on board. After half an hour we are stopped by guards, have our papers scrutinised and directed to a car park
Five-star accommodation
It's not as if they have much competition.. next to the road. Our truck driver leaves us in the hands of some of his colleagues and drives off. We wait around, try
to ascertain the cause of the hold up and whether anyone else would give us a ride. An hour later, someone does.
Day 2, 13:00 Driver two stops the truck and instructs us to get out. What we thought was a break for basic necessities is in fact due to a problem with the truck. Driver two disappears into the innards of the vehicle and appears to fix something.
Day 2, 14:00 Luck is on our side when my friend Abdullah from the border post drives by in his truck and calls us over to jump on board. Abdullah turns out to be the Schumacher of the Tian Shan mountain truckers: we race across the pot holes, disregarding the trucks in the ditches on either side, and I hone my perching-on-the-back-bunk-of-a-truck-without-going-through-the-windshield skills.
Day 2, 16:00 Perhaps unsurprisingly, luck is no longer on our side when we pull over onto a large car park and Abdullah informs us that we have a flat tire. Could I help. Of course, I heroically
offer, ignoring the fact that my one experience of changing a tire on a car is hardly relevant when trying to change one on a three and a half ton truck. I think Abdullah is silently cursing the fact that he has picked up such a meager passenger as he has to re-tighten all the bolts after I have given it my best shot. Personally I'm quite reassured that he's not leaving it all up to me. All photographic evidence of this episode were conveniently lost with Yuchi's camera later that day, otherwise I
would post it up here.. Two hours of blood and sweat later, we are served a cup of tea and a chunk of bread and lamb in a small road side hut and head on.
Day 2, 24:00 After another six hours drive (still perched on that back bunk), we arrive in Osh. Finally here, we think. Except that when we get to the address of the hotel we had booked two days before, there is no hotel. No one is answering the phone anymore either. Either we're in the wrong place, or the economic downturn has had an acute effect on Osh's hotel
scene. We attempt a different hotel, this one at least exists, but inside there is no one to be found who might give us a room. 1am is clearly not the best time to cruise around Osh in search of a bed. We finally do find one in a soviet dinosaur of a hotel. Not exactly princely accomodation, and wildly over priced at that, but at this point I'm just relieved I don't have to spend the night on the back bunk of Abdullah's truck.
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It's amazing
Wow..... It looks amazing... It's so cool... Enjoy your journey! Take care...