The 5000 Project

having switched from the truck to the car, we agreed to a 500som ($10) fee for us to be taken to sary tash, when we actually wanted to head to osh. During the car ride they asked for $50 for us to get to osh, we declined considering the standard rate from the border is $22. We arrived in sary tash, however noone seemed to let us know, so we agreed to ask if the next town is sary tash which was a few hours away, and then act as if we had been betrayed, in order to get the upper hand and pay a reasonable fee when arriving in osh. The plan worked, our acting skills were believable, we ended up paying ~$25 each for the 7hr journey all the way to osh, with the help of me actually running out of any additional funds requested :P

We found a restaurant and had a feed of kyrgys style dumplings, the family who own the restaurant were celebrating something and the father seemed to be quite drunk of vodka – we had a chat with him when he approached our table, then he offered to give the meal to us for free, while also giving us 200som ($4) he then proceeded to knock his bottle of vodka off the table, where it smashed. I fetched our unopened bottle of emergency vodka from my bag and gave it to the man, he was immensely happy and offered for us to join his table and celebrate with them, using the new bottle. A few shots later, we noticed that it was getting late and rather dark outside and we still hadn’t found the one guesthouse in town which hosts foreigners. We decided to say goodbye and leave, the father offered for us to stay at his house, however I had an assignment due the next day and required an internet connection to get it done – we respectfully declined, then the man was quite forceful, grabbing our arms; it took a lot of effort to escape.

We walked through rat-infested market streets and by using a set of instructions that we wrote down from a japanese backpacker in kashgar, not unsimilar to a treasure map, we attempted to find the guesthouse. It mentioned building locations, several turns to a hidden block of flats, finding a middle apartment block next to a red building; and then counting to the third entrance before walking up 4 dark floors. Knocking on an unmarked, other then the number ’22’, door , we were a little surprised to find that we were in the right place. The reason for the difficulty and somewhat secrecy the guesthouse location is that last year around this time there was a revolution against the government and during this time there were certain expulsions/assassinations of uzbekistan residents in Kyrgyzstan, I believe this may be why the place is kept so secret. We were paying $5/night for a bed in a dorm, in pretty much an apartment within an ex-soviet apartment block. The benefit being that we had access to a kitchen and the ability to walk to a market and buy western style food, which was a refreshing change from asia.

Half of the people in the street are russian and the other half are kyrgyz (quite similar to the mongolian look) and some others were a mix of both – quite an interesting combination. We spotted some young gypsy girls in the market, with much darker skin than everyone else, a rare group of people that were almost wiped out by the soviet union.

A couple of days rest and a completed assignment later, we took a car to bishkek, a 13hr drive costing $22. There are no busses in kyrgyzstan, not sure why this is the case, however the cars are reasonably comfortable. During a food stop, one of the kyrgyz guys in the car bought us a bottle of vodka, we downed a few shots before heading back to the car – it definitely helped sleep during the rest of the journey.

We arrived in bishkek greeted by falling snow, with a faded map given to us by a passing backpacker in kashgar, we found a masutka (vans pretending to be buses for local transport) heading in the correct direction and hopped on – thankfully finding the guesthouse… which is once again an apartment within a huge ex-soviet apartment block, also on the 4th floor – almost a carbon copy of the one in osh, except this one was only $3/night.

We had to wait in bishkek for visas, not only for the processing of the Uzbekistan and Iran visas but also the processing of the invitation letters which we applied for from various websites online (after ensuring their authenticity from backpackers heading from these parts). All up, the cost for visas are hefty, to the point where I’m fairly certain the project has failed, im too scared to check my bank account :(

Heres a list of the visa costs:

Uzbekistan letter of invitation through stantours.com
Time taken to process: 10days
Cost: $45

Uzbekistan visa:
only one way to pay and its instant visa on the spot if you have:
– the letter of invitation
– application form filled in and printed online (www.evisa.mfa.uz)
– copy of passport and kyrgyz visa
Costs: $75
Lasts: 1month

Iran visa Authorization code through http://www.iranianvisa.com (which the consulate receives to authorize the visa)
Cost: $54 through western union only, as US sanctions prevent paypal use as well as other US based payment systems, for iran.
Time taken to process: 10days

Iran visa:
– Proof of travel insurance, else pay for travel insurance through a company that they suggest and direct you to
– a photocopy of the main page of the passport
– a confirmed security code (although they still seemed to process the visa even through they didn’t seem to get the clearance when I first applied… makes me wonder if I actually needed the code in the first place…)
Cost: $80
Time taken to process: 5days (although its usually 7, it costs $106 to have it processed in 3 days)

All up, visas cost:
– $120 for Uzbekistan
– $134 for Iran
Total: $254

When I hit Uzbekistan, I’ll still have to apply for a Turkmenistan transit visa… I really hope it isn’t going to be the same kind of cost :(

I pre-arranged to sit my final exam for my computer science degree by emailing teachers and lecturers while I was sick in kashgar (ah, did I mention that I have been studying while travelling?) and the long visa wait turned out to be quite handy for studying, with the perfect combination of cheap accommodation and cheap food to cook stuff in the kitchen. I cooked almost every meal, porridge every morning and large batches of spaghetti bolognese to last the weeks. Some nights we would all chip in and get the Iron-chef japanese guy to cook some amazing meals, which cost between $1 and $2 each.

I sat my exam at the American University of Central Asia and was rather confident that I passed the exam, finally completing my 5yr (which is generally meant to be 3yr) Bachelors of Computer Science, the vodka celebrations began shortly after. Vodka here costs $3 for a 2ltr bottle, dangerously cheap.

Oh wow, I’m still in this Guesthouse…. this means I have finally caught up with blogging! :D

Going skiing with some locals on sunday, then crossing over to Uzbekistan on wednesday; eager to check out the museum tomorrow so that I have something more interesting to write about this country.

I will check my funds soon enough, to give the bad news of the failed project, once I gain the courage. Good news is I received a nice tax return, after doing my tax online while in Kashgar, which means I can keep going – I’ll just put the remaining funds in negatives as I gradually spend more, instead of registering 7000project.com or 8000project.com :P – The last time the funds count was updated was when I arrived in urumqi, around about two months ago.

Main cause of project failure:
spent too much money and time in china that I could have avoided, spent money for sleeper trains instead of putting up with sitting or standing for days. should have couchsurfed and hitchhiked more often…. I’m sure someone else out there should be able to do better :) give it a go!

8 months travel on $5000 isn’t too bad…
Well, fear not, my travels and blogging will still continue! Uzbek in 5 days!

The final checkpoint was the actual kyrgyzstan border, we were finally free from china…

…and in really thick snow….

the plastic bags gave way and I could not move my feet with the fear of frostbite though the thin fabric of my useless sneakers
I used my sleeping bag cover for one foot, and the sturdy plastic bag that I used for my dirty clothes for my other shoe – it provided enough protection to walk the 100mtrs to the local ‘magazine’ (shop) in fetch of adequate footwear.

To my shocked surprise the shop was selling proper high boots with wool underlay for $12 a pair. I immediately purchased the shoes with only a slight barter. The shoes are amazing, comfortable and they never seem to feel the real cold of the outside world. incredible.

Some locals guided us to a caravan concreted to the ground (the same as every building in the so called ‘town’) the family there offered to let us stay in their supplied bunks for $1.50 a night – we quickly accepted.

I made a snowman in the thick snow, then instinctively decided to throw snowballs at my companion. He was less than impressed, considering he has grown up in snow in Czech republic, he was not swayed in the way of childish snow activities.

Each day we were fed by the family for a $2 fee per meal and we questioned (with the help of my companion’s russian that he learnt in highschool) the truckers for information, the pass was closed due to the newly elected government not paying anyone to plow the road.

Each day it snowed, except for the third day… which greeted us with sun and blue skies. We hiked a hill and were struck in silence for a good half hour, starring at the surrounding scenery. Mountains and snow from every angle, with the sun shining down, breathtaking. If I was a religious man, I would have been bowing to the god(s).

We befriended a trucker (with the help of vodka) who guaranteed that we would leave on the 4th day, however when we were all set, in the truck, to head on the way – the officials spoke and denied passage due to a recent avalanche fall restricting traffic. We spent the final night in a different caravan, awake at 8am then next morning to the call of the driver to my newly purchased sim card; and headed west, through the cold outback wasteland.

only 1hr into the journey and a truck coming the opposite direction with a heavy trailer started to slide, due to the dangerous speed that he was driving, the trailer slid off-course towards us; we reversed until it came to a halt. There was much cursing that proceeded, until the offending driver managed to gain control and clear the road. Quite a nervous start.

another uneventful hour passed until we came across another truck that was bogged in the middle of the road, the other drivers; behind and ahead, were digging holes in the side of the road and throwing dirt in the middle of the road with their shovels – in order to grit the road to help with grip for when the truck is back on track. We waited a half hour before the road was clear once more.

The next obstacle was the first kyrgy checkpoint, a tiny little poorly-attempted camouflaged caravan, they checked out passports. They asked if we had any cigarettes, we said no. They then asked if we have $50USD, we said no. They settled with $4 (200SOM) after we pretended that is all we had.

3hrs past… simply incredible mountains and snow… we passed a few turned trucks that seemed like they had been there a while, until we came across a recent one, we stopped and helped them out. Tajikistan drivers with afghani helpers were carting goods from the recently felled truck, we stood in line to help out down the single file makeshift path through snow and ice – within the still thick falling snow. A few hours later, we noticed our driver was doing no work, simply waiting in his truck for his trucker buddies to catch up to him. Another hour passed and he set himself up in his bunk bed in the truck, we decided to try hailing for a car with the thought that we could be in the truck all night. A car arrived with two seats spare, we thanked the truck driver and switched to the faster option.

The rest of the journey was more mild, with the standard awe of the beautiful landscape. We arrived in osh and paid $25 each for the car journey. Osh was a city of gypsy’s and russians, where people only seemed happy when they’re drunk on vodka. We were definitely out of china.

We could have taken the bus from kashgar to osh, however it only runs once a week and it costs a hefty $100, also, as we found out along the way – the bus wasnt running due to the immense buildup of snow on the pass.

So, we hopped in the car to urchut from kashgar. Only one hour into the journey and my travel companion noticed that the cars coming the opposite direction had snow on their windscreens, I went to look for myself, at the sight of snow I became very excited.

You see, for those who don’t know, for all my life thus far I have lived in Perth and surrounds; Perth is the capital city of western Australia, the state takes up a third of the large country and it snows once a year for about 15min on the top of a hill (which we call a mountain) 600km south of the capital. I had never seen snow until this point, other than a brief trip to Victoria in the east during the end of the snow season in which most of the snow was just sludge. I was very excited, I had no idea at the time that the snow on the windscreens of oncoming traffic was only just the beginning.

Moments later it started to rain, well, I thought it was just light rain – however the rain seemed to float. At the same time I noticed that the terrain gradually turned white, the light rain became heavy; yet lighter in weight. My first experience of snow falling and it was pretty amazing. We arrived in orkut, we knew that we had to find a driver to take us over the china border to the city of osh in kyrgyzstan, we were told that the best and cheapest way was to hitch a truck… although we didn’t see any trucks heading in that
direction… also this is around the time when I discovered that snow is wet, and my only pair of shoes were not waterproof. Before my shoes and socks became too wet, we hailed some drivers and attempted to barter the price – it seemed to be a fixed rate, we assumed this was because only the hefty 4WD cars were able to cross the pass, we also assumed that the snow hazard may be why we didn’t spot any trucks. They wanted $45 each and didn’t seem to budge, the snow was getting heavy and my feet were freezing off. We gained shelter in the bus station that wasn’t being used for buses in order for me to dry out my shoes, I changed socks and put on my recently purchased chinese plastic slippers; took out two plastic bags from my bag and used them to cover my slippers to provide some temporary means of waterproofing. It worked quite well.

With the day turning old and the fear that my companion may not make it to the border within the last day of his chinese visa, we agreed to the extremely overpriced fee and headed in the direction of an icy road that held signs signifying that the path was closed. The 7hr drive was amazing, very quickly everything turned white and the road seemed to narrow as the snow gained territory. Amazing mountains formed in the background, with everything being pure white, it was difficult to tell where the different layers of snow mounds began and ended. 2hrs in and there was construction on the road, assumably plowing, we were forced to take a side track over the snow which was quite treacherous, almost getting bogged attempting to return to the main road. One hour later, we were greeted with a traffic jam, a truck had become bogged in the middle of the narrow road; this was probably the reason why the road was closed. It took one hour for an
alternative path to be plowed in to shape, there was no telling how long the traffic was waiting previously for the plowing machinery to arrive. It puzzled me why the truck couldn’t simply be pulled out by another truck.

We arrived at the chinese border, however considering the delays, the border was closed and we were forced to stay the night. The
accommodation that we found was a small room in a set of storage sheds that was setup with bunk beds and a coal stove. All the guys from our car stayed in the same room, we didn’t see them until very late at night, when they came back all of them were drunk on vodka and half of them had a turn of vomiting outside, we had no idea there was a drinking house in town. Later in the night I head the loud squeaking and scattering of rats which reminded me of the hide back in taman nagara in malaysia. With my past experience I decided to put my bag on the empty top bunk which seemed to prevent the rats from getting to the food in my bag.

The next day we walked to the border, my companion got away with not paying a fine for his visa, we hopped in a truck and headed towards the kyrgy border. 4 passport checkpoints later and 4km, we arrived in Irkistam, with shitloads of snow and absolutely no traffic heading in the direction where we needed to go – word on the street was that there was a new president elected just a couple of days earlier and noone had paid for someone to plow the pass, we were stuck in a shanty gypsy town full of concreted caravans for 4 days until someone would bother to allow traffic to kyrgy from china. The snow, the family we stayed with and the amazing view was well worth the travel delay.

The 30hr train ride to Xi’an was quite fun, I met a hongkong guy who acted as a translator for the fellow cabin buddies, there were a couple of chinese comedians in the same cabin, each person had a turn of singing and were rewarded with a generous shot of rice spirits – after a while I was called up from my bunk and sang Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia fair, when I forgot a lyric I just replaced the word with a random word – as no one understood english except for the hongkong guy anyway.

When arriving in xi’an I was greeted with the sight of a huge ancient wall surrounding the inner suburbs, quite impressive. The city itself is very modern and very expensive in parts; although there’s always a cheap hostel. I stayed in a very nice hostel for $5/night, while waiting for my lady friend from dunhuang to arrive a few days later. Xi’an is most famous for the Terracotta army, 8000 warrior statues that were built to protect the first emperor of china during his afterlife, back in ~300BC. As impressive as it sounds, after I paid for the 25min bus to the site and then paid for the entrance fee ($10), I just wanted to walk out as soon as I walked in – I could barely see anything other than the sight of chinese tourists. The tour groups were so immense in numbers that the typical raising of a coloured flag to signify where the group leader is just didn’t work due to every group leader having similar coloured flags; so some tours had the creative idea of putting unique objects on a stick, like panda soft toys.

The day after arriving in Xi’an, I headed immediately to a visa renewal office, here are the details for renewal:
– you must be within the last three days of expiry to renew, you cannot renew any earlier
– it cost $24 for a one month extension, for most countries
– It involves filling in a reasonably simple form, supplying a passport photo
– a photocopy of a note of residency from the hostel
– a photocopy of your bankcard, with a figure for the amount of money in the account (I put down a guess)
– a photocopy of the passport main page and chinese visa

The processing takes 5 working days, you’re given a receipt of proof that the passport is with the authorities, its also a good idea to have photocopies of the visa and main passport page just in-case you need to change hostels; they do accept the photocopies with the receipt.

In Xi’an I managed to find a long street full of cloth and clothing repair tools, I bought a much needed travel sewing kit to repair the shoulder of my frayed wool jumper. Most of the inner city holds expensive designer clothing shops along with starbucks in close proximity; general yuppiness. The prices are more expensive than what you would buy in the western countries, even though everything is made in china (discovered from some backpackers, as I have never bought designer anything before).

As I put the renewal in on a friday, the processing took 8 days – after which I purchased two train tickets, one to urumqi and one to kashgar; with a two hr wait in urumqi, cutting it fine for if the train is delayed (and they can sometimes be two hours delayed). With some nice luck, I managed to take both trains, totalling 52hrs of train travel with a two hour break in the middle. With some bad luck, I had a cold when I jumped on the first train and ended up with a bad flu by the time I got to kashgar. Kashgar ended up being a perfect place to heal up, healthy markets close to the hostel and the opportunity to call an english speaking doctor when medical assistance was required.

The hostel in Kashgar is within the old town suburb, not a han chinese in sight – the hostel was $6/night, a very old building, shower is only hot for two hours a day and sometimes it wasn’t hot even during those hours – as such I didn’t shower for a few days, the temperature was too cold for my sickness; the shower would have made it a lot worse. I bought honey, garlic and ginger in the markets; for mixing up some healing teas. When the flu was at it’s worst, I had a fever for two days and I couldn’t get my hands warm even under blankets – I called a number for an english speaking doctor which was on the hostel noticeboard, after explaining my symptoms, he smsed me chinese characters for the antibiotics that I needed to buy (you can buy anything over the counter at chemists without a prescription). I stumbled to a chemist to buy the drugs which triggered a quick recovery during the following few days.

Before the illness, on the second day in Kashgar I visited the Sunday animal market just outside of town, it was simply amazing for photos – so many interesting looking old men with central asian style hats, all different kinds of animals were brought to the markets from the surrounding farms. On the borders of the field were market foods, the tasty butcherings from the live animals in the centre, ready to be eaten for lunch; with some fresh bread and broth. Absolutely no pork though, kashgar urgur people are strictly Muslim; quite a lot of females roaming the streets of old town were completely covered by burkas, some even had their eyes covered and wore simply a thick mesh cloth over their body – I could imagine it would be rather difficult to see.

I met up with a Czech guy who I met earlier to xi’an and we decided to travel the ‘stans (central asia) together, to aide in the off chance we may come across some difficulties of which I had heard and been warned about from passing travellers. The first difficulty was only just around the corner, in the form of snow… and lots of it. We paid $5 each to share a car to orkut, from nearby the international bus station, a 2hr drive destined for adventure.

Urumqi is known recently for the bloody riots last year, which were triggered when a han policeman killed a uyghur girl – many were killed but it was difficult to find accurate news of what really happened. Staying in the city I could see the segmentation, all the hostels were located in han suburbs with noodle soup and dumplings close by; although when walking for about 45min suddenly the people change, the buildings change, the food changes and it really feels like you are no longer in china at all – for the first time during my 3 month stay in china, I felt like I already crossed the border to the middle east or central asia. In regards to the conflict between the two vastly different people and cultures, although they seemed to be segmented, in parts they were quite happy to mingle; the most interesting observation was that in the middle of the people’s park (very han patriotic parks, they have one in every city, full of trees and sometimes a lake or two) I noticed many uyghur people dancing freely along to traditional uyghur music whilst han and tourists join in happily with no sense of fear or anxiety. Or perhaps this is all for the observation of tourists.

I met an aussie couple and we agreed to travel together through Kyrgyzstan, although the visa takes 5 days to process, if I didnt get it in on the monday I still had time to go with them; as they planned on heading to turpan over the weekend then back to urumqi. I spent all monday trying to find a photo shop to get some more passport photos processed, which unfortunately delayed the visa application. For those wondering, to get a Kyrgyzstan visa from urumqi you need the following:

– A letter of invitation, but not from Kyrgyzstan, just from yourself; pretty much a letter about yourself, your employer, where you want to go in Kyrgy, and how you like the country (rather pointless)
– A photocopy of your chinese visa and the main page of your passport
– $75, for a 1 month duration, single entry visa
– a wait time of 5 business days

This is all good and true, also quite easy; albeit expensive. I was confident enough that I will get the visa on monday, considering I submitted the visa on tuesday. Unfortunately this wasn’t so easy…

The consulate ran out of visa stickers. That’s right, the one thing a consulate is meant to provide, they ran out of. I had to wait a total of two weeks in urumqi for the visa, due to this, my china visa was to expire in two days upon recieval of my kyrg visa; I couldn’t actually make it out of the country in time, I decided instead to take a train to xi’an in central china to renew my china visa there; which takes a week (although they don’t penalise the wait time from submission of passport). I managed to convince the Kyrgy guy to add an additional week to my visa when I arrived to collect it, what he did was simply cross out the 10s and put in 17s instead, adding a signature and a little note to the already hand-written visa, I was quite worried there would be trouble on the border because of this.

I had my suspicions as to why the consulate ran out of visas. You see, when I submitted my visa, they asked me to go to a bank to pay for it, to avoid corruption the bank supplies a receipt and the money goes directly from the bank to the Kyrgyzstan government; skipping the guy in the consulate. I was happy to do so, although the guy at the consulate quickly mentioned that it may be difficult for me, being a foreigner and not speaking chinese; he offered the choice of cash, I was happy to quickly hand it over. When I went to pick up my visa, I arrived at the consulate with a bulgarian guy who I travelled with to turpan, he had his documents ready to process; however the same consulate guy as before did not give him the choice of cash over the counter. I believe that the shipment of visas rely on the information that the Kyrgyz government gets from the bank, considering the consulate guy and his lackies may be pocketing the visa dosh, the recent shipment was lacking considerably and did not match the statistical average for the current time of the year.

Sooo…. during the wait for the visa, I backtracked south for a couple of hours on a bus, with a Bulgarian and a Croatian, to a town known as turpan. Turpan is the second lowest point of dry land in the world; it is renowned for one of the oldest towns in the world, ancient mud huts which could or could not be remade by the chinese – they looked pretty authentic. I bought some camel fur longjohns in turpan for ~$10, bartered down from $30, I was told by my bulgarian buddy that in the west these pants would cost hundreds of dollars; I had no idea, considering I come from a place in the world where noone ever wears longjohns and half the people probably don’t even know what they are (for those people, longjohns are really warm skin-tight pants that go under the standard pants, used in cold climated countries; I bought it for snow preparation). I initially shrugged the guy off when he told me the starting price, thinking it was far too expensive, this believable action worked well for the rather successful bartering sequence once my friend informed me of the item’s actual worth. The surrounds of Turpan are quite nice, rolling sand dunes and old villages, uyghur people everywhere with european faces.

With the decision to renew my china visa in Xi’an, in order to leave the country without getting a $100 fine per day, I booked a ticket ASAP and hopped on the train… however with the thick security in urumqi, the train station x-ray picked up my pocket knife, the authorities confiscated it. As such, it was a while since urumqi that I managed to trim my moustache, due to the lack of pocket sized scissors.

Enroute to Xi’an! before you say “what the hell nic, why didn’t you just renew the visa in urumqi instead of taking a 32hr train to central china to do it, also why the hell should you bother trimming your moustache anyway, you look fine” well, you see I forgot to mention that in dunhuang I met a pretty amazing english speaking liberal chinese girl, the visa expiry aided in the excuse to meet up with her again as she travelled east. I wont go into details, Xi’an was also great for the terracotta warriors and a rather impressive old fort wall surrounding the inner suburbs, it was also a giant hub for wealthy chinese to buy things that are even more expensive in china than in the west.

Dunhuang is a new city, not an old-town new city, but a nice new city with pedestrian crossings and traffic lights that the locals seem to obey – first time in asia where I have crossed a road without fearing death, I think its because of the lack of population in this town. The city/town is located in the middle of the desert, on an oasis next to a giant set of sand dunes, quite an impressive view even from the main road.

we checked into a hostel and were greeted by many chinese backpackers who knew really good english, really awesome liberal backpackers – some were about to hitchhike to a city 600kms north, which is a big thing for a chinese person; although I find that most of the new generation chinese are pretty free thinking kick ass people, the future for china is bright.

During the next few days, I washed the hostel dog (he was pretty filthy, really cute chinese lapdog, couldn’t resist) and hiked a dune. The main central dune had a hefty entrance fee, that’s right, a ticket gate for… the desert; I was determined to find another way in. After a bit of socializing I found info of a location where there is no more fence and it is right next to a large dune, not too far from the main entrance. We headed there just before sunset to get the most out of the view, it was quite impressive; the bonus being that to get there we had to walk through an apricot and pear orchard, which made for enjoyable scrumping.

The next day we headed to the Mogao caves, a set of caves that were used for ancient (~300AD) artists to paint buddhist paintings in worship and later used for expressive graffiti during the use of the silk road route. There are paintings referring to all religions, there was even an Icarus painting from greek mythology.

I parted ways with my german friend; booked a ticket for urumqi and hopped on the train two days after, urumqi is a controversial city that only last year held intense riots where many were killed; conflicts occur between han chinese and ethnic natives, the urgurs. The current day reality is quite different, however.