The 5000 Project

We took a mashutka (public transport van) to the border of kygyzstan and uzbekistan in osh. There was a currency exchange booth just before the kyrgyz border, exchanging just $50 gives us a giant wad of notes, wrapped in lacky bands for every $20 bundle; there are two reasons for this, firstly the largest denomination note in uzbek is 1000 som, 2750 som is equivalent to $1 USD. This on it’s own will provide a large number of notes that makes me look like a total gangster when acquiring the dosh. The second reason for the vast quantity of notes is that the kyrgyz side of the border only has 500 som notes as the max denomination, the relatively small USD transferred required me to dedicate a portion of my bag just for the newly attained uzbek notes.

The border itself was quite interesting to cross, we were queuing up 30min after the border was meant to have opened, about 20 people were in line and noone seemed to be going through, we made ourselves visible to the border guards – they immediately took us through the queue and into the kyrgz side of passport processing. We waited about 10min for the passports to be thoroughly checked, then crossed through a radiation checking room, to ensure we weren’t making sand castles in the middle of nowhere in an ex-soviet country which may or may not have been used for nuclear missile tests. 2min walk from no-mans land and we were on the uzbek side of nowhere, greeted with a very in depth arrival form…. which was all in russian cyrilic. Thankfully my czech buddy could translate it for me, the form itself was very thorough, we had to declare everything in our bags and also all the money we had on us, so that when we leave the country it all matches up – very strange rules. Once entering the country, the rules state that on the third night and every subsequent night there after, a registration slip is to be attained by the hotel in which accommodation is supplied from – there seems to also be a $5 tax which is paid to the government whenever a foreigner stays in a hotel, which means that we could never find accommodation cheaper than $5. Failure to account for every night with registration slips when exiting the country will result in a $1000 fine. They perform this check at every metro station in bishkek, apparently, although only our passports were checked each time – we heard that they check registration mainly if you have big backpacks on.

Sooo… we arrived in uzbek! the only transport to the capital, tashkent, was by shared taxi – $20 fee for the 5hr journey, which turned out to be the most expensive transport by far in all of uzbek, which generally has the cheapest transport i have experienced for my entire trip thus far. On the way we noticed that many cars were converted to gas, as in literal gas not petrol, this is because of the massive gas resources in the country, even so, the gas stations were always full with huge queues – they have a rule where all the passengers need to leave the car when it goes to fill up – i assumed in the early days of this gas transition there may have been some nasty accidents. One fatality is better than five.

The drive up was entirely in fog, quite spooky – another mountain range was spotted occasionally through the thick fog, on par to what we saw in kyrgyzstan. Other than the mountain, the landscape is rather bleak, flat plains of dry shubbery, fields full of cotton. Cotton is pretty much what the soviets decided to label uzbekistan, the country assigned solely to cotton production – a dry landscape with a thirsty crop, not the smartest of decisions, quite a lot of uzbekistan doesn’t make much sense.

Sooooo…. tashkent! we arrive at the couchhosts, a russian mother and daughter in an apartment within a large apartment block, carbon copy with the rest of then, same ol ex-soviet styles as kyrgyzstan. Due to the vast amount of natural gas in the country, the gas stove is on all the time, with simply a brick on the top of the element to heat most of the house. The house was quite primitive, everything was extremely old, the bath was used as a laundry and the ancient fridge was kept shut with a rope and stool – it had a unique charm to it though, I quite liked the many alternatives to modern tools and appliances. Tashkent in general was even more miserable than kyrgyzstan, many frowny faces on the streets, one in every 10 being a stern faced policeman; some of which were armed.

We headed to the turkmenistan embassy the next day, we knew that the only visa for turkmenistan is a 5 day transit visa and it takes a total of 20 days to process this simple request within only a 30day visa of uzbekistan, as turkmenistan is known as the north korea of central asia; it is very difficult to enter in general, we heard from passing travellers that they were denied a visa and were told to fly over in order to get to iran. Well, we rocked up and it was closed, as it apparently is every friday according to the security guard – he mentioned that there is a large waiting list that you have to put your name down for very early, then wait until 11am for the consulate to open, then wait your turn before entering the building; we already knew this, however he quietly mentioned that he could put us at the top of the list… if we are willing to pay a fee – I declined and suggested that we rock up early and just wait it out, my companion thought it might be handy just to let the guard know our names, which he wrote on a bit of paper. When monday came round, we arrived at 9am to find our names very close to the top of the list of about 30 other names, without saying a word to the guard, we were called up and walked into the grand consulate building. To our surprise the people inside were very helpful and friendly, they agreed to process our visas and thankfully we didnt need to relinquish our passports for the initial 20day processing, and it would only cost $35. Quite pleased, we filled in the paperwork and headed out, ready to start our 20day tour of the country – the guard spotted my companion on the way out and politely asked for some money for his services, my companion pretended to not know what he was talking about; the guard replied that he will not help us in the future. I was unsure if this was a good decision to make, not knowing how much influence the guard has with the consulate administration.

Our couchhost is a highschool teacher and she invited us to show our travel photos to her students – we accepted and made quite an impression on the youngsters, one of the students invited us to a breakdancing competition (very popular in uzbekistan). When attending the competition the following night, i was stunned at the level of skill that the young kids had; there was one boy aged about 7 who was simply amazing, I’ll be sure to upload it to youtube as soon as I find a worthy net connection.

The city itself is very new, just a few years back the entire city was destroyed by a massive earthquake, leveling the old buildings to rubble. One thing that I liked about the city, especially the metro, is the complete lack of advertising (bar the odd highway banner) it was very refreshing, the constant mild niggling headache that I always experienced walking through big cities polluted with product brain sensing visuals was no longer there.

Tashkent was done, we registered from an undisclosed source to cover our somewhat illegal couchsurfing and booked a sleeper train to the other end of uzbekistan; with the plan of working our way back to tashkent from the aral sea.

We got out at organch after a 24hr sleeper train journey and tried to find some kind of transport to the ancient city of Khiva.

Ok, I assumed nothing else interesting would happen in bishkek, so I went ahead and blog posted – well this has taught me a valuable lesson, I should always leave posts late and write only after I have left the location in question.

An american guy in the guesthouse of bishkek managed to get in contact with a group of enthusiastic russian snowboarders who offered to give us a lift to a ski field 1hrs drive south of bishkek. On the way we hired some shoes and a board ($10), strapped the boards to the roof and headed out to the vast white in the middle of frikkin nowhere. A sense of nostalgia hit me, memories of heading to the surfing beaches on the southwest coast of my hometown in western australia, when I was quite young we went on many trips to various beaches to feed my father’s surfing addiction – with the boards strapped to the roof. Snowboarding for the first time was of course quite different, being polar opposite temperatures, however the addrenaline rush is similar if not more intense.

We arrived at the slope and paid $10 for the ex-soviet primitive char-lift, which consists of a pole with a tiny seat that tucks between the legs, you are required to do a fast penguin walk with the metal in the crotch, then occasionally moon-jump trying to keep up with the speed of the chain rotation. This was just as hard as snowboarding, but far less dangerous.

At the top of the slope, I put on the shoes and clipped them into the board, the russians flew past me as I was getting prepared, the slope was quite steep – they zoomed past with great speed. One of them shared with me some knowledge before he went down, he said “to slow, go into snow, left right”, I made sure to heed his words. I pushed myself out and damn, It was fast, really fast; I enjoyed it and was even able to dodge trees, shrubs and other obsticles, up until the point in which I built up too much speed and thought that if I keep it up then there may be a chance of serious injury. I took the advice of the russian and cut deep into the snow to my left, instantly the board flipped and I rolled 4 times ending with my face planted into the flour-like powder snow. Battered and bruised, I took a small rest but noticed that my face was starting to freeze after i tried to shake off the snow (at first I used my snow covered gloves to wipe my face, not a smart idea). I jumped out of the snow and immediately the board gained speed after catching free, I tried to gain control but ended going down a patch to the slope of the low to the ground chair-lift – for the next 5min I dodged seats at head-height moving from the lift as I tried to get back up, various russian kyrgys shouted abuse as they penguin-jogged up the lift with snowboards in one arm, total pros – I assumed the were calling me a noob. To make it to the releative ‘safety’ of the steep slope I gave up and unclipped my shoes to walk away from the chairlift. I repeated the fast decent and rapid stop and roll about 5 times per run. Due to this, I only managed to do 3 runs for the day, my body ached all over; I felt that the result was good and that some of the rolls could have ended up a lot worse – especially one where I got stuck in a tree.

On the drive down the mountain, one of the russian snowboarders in our posse decided that it would be a good idea for him to use the car to build up speed while he is on the snowboard, then snowboard down the unprepared mountain face. At first we could see him next to us, occasionally he zoomed down the road before turning down to the unclaimed slope. We drove down the mountain for the next 20min before we realised that we hadn’t seen the crazy russian for quite sometime, we decided to turn around and asked drivers if they had seem him as they drove down – no positive answers. Arriving back at the top we looked over the mountain face, no sign of him; we called out, no response. It was getting dark. The american and I suggested that we should possibly call the police as we were driving back down to the mountain base, the others mentioned that the police would do nothing to help; they seemed oddly calm about the situation compared to us. On the road back to bishkek, at the very ground base of the mountain, we spotted a shadowy figure through the fog – with the rectangular shape of a snowboard next to it. It was the guy. He had been waiting there for 30min. I am still amazed at how quickly he managed to fly down the mountain without a scratch. Crazy mthrfkn russian.

The remaining days in bishkek were reasonably uneventful, although the drive back to osh to cross over to uzbekistan was quite the contrary. After bartering the price of a shared taxi (the only form of transport to osh) to $22 each, we hopped in and drove forth – through yet again a large and beautiful mountain range – making sure that this time the car journey was during the day and not all through the night like what we endured from osh to bishkek almost a month prior. We gained quite a good speed on the long straights, It was quite comfortable enough and before long I fell asleep… only to be woke up an hour later while in the middle of a 360 degree spin over slippery ice, we slammed into the padding of car height built-up snow on the sides of the road twice before spinning all the way around to face the correct direction. I woke up terrorfied, not knowing how long the scenario had been in action and also not 100% sure if it was real life or a crazy realistic dream. The car stopped and we were all silent, the driver got out casually and fitted chains to his tyres, the box for the chains were sealed signifying that this was the first time he has put them on – he seemed to take a long time fitting them on too, although to be honest I have no idea how long it is meant to take. The driver was
significantly more cautious for the remainder for the journey, we had two lengthy delays; the first was a bogged and turned truck, blocking the road horizontally, we waited 30min for a plow to make enough room for one way traffic. The last delay was a police blockage, a scheduled avalanche explosion in order to clear possible hazardous areas, waiting a good hour after hearing the loud explosions to make sure the snowfall did not flow down to the road.

We arrived in osh and prepared ourselves for the border crossing to uzbekistan the next day.

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.

The transition from Jiuzhaigou to Lanzhou was breathtaking, the terrain started with epically high snow capped mountains, slowly mellowed out to rolling green hills; then the grass turned yellow and in the distance large rocky mountains emerged. The people changed just as quickly as the terrain; we stopped at a tunnel entrance for about half an hour and had the opportunity to get out and look around – there was a family on horseback investigating the traffic jam from the vast field, they wore colourful cloaks and looked quite different from the standard han chinese; they almost looked european. They starred at us like we were the first westerners arriving on their soil.

The change only grew the further north we traveled, yet the han chinese (standard chinese) looked the same; it was quite easy to see how there could be racial conflict if the people categorize themselves in groups segmented by the size of their body and shape of their face.

We arrived in Lanzhou with no idea how to get accommodation, in these parts there are no hostels with dorms, only hotels and expensive hotels – reminded me of areas in south east asia. We befriended a chinese couple who were heading to the university area of the city, they mentioned that there are plenty of cheap hotels in that area, so we followed them on a public bus to the suburb. Unfortunately for us, all the hotels that they recommended did not accept foreigners; I got the address for a possibly hostel, except the information online was very old, we flagged a taxi and hopped in.

The taxi driver dropped us off on the side of a busy road and charged us $5 for the effort, we had no idea where we were but didnt have much choice but to pay and get out. Turns out he dropped us in the middle of nowhere. We admitted defeat and decided to check out hotels that we saw in the city centre that were most probably quite expensive, we were quite wrong. The first hotel that we arrived at had a very impressive looking lobby, we were told that a room with two single beds is only $8 – however the catch was that we had to stay only one night, because they were closing down the next day. Thats right, the entire hhuuggee impressive hotel was closing down for good, to get demolished, we couldnt understand why, until we checked out the room and bathrooms.

The room was ok, but nothing was maintained, everything was falling apart. The men’s communal bathroom was very disgusting, the shower was just a pipe coming out of a wall with no nozzle, the shower door was broken, bits of the wall were falling apart; it was quite evident that the building had to go. It surprised me how amazing the lobby was, when the insides were completely different; it made me think that perhaps many other fancy chinese hotels are similar.

The next day we took a train to Jiayuguan, becuse we didnt have much choice; also there is nothing interesting to see in Lanzhou other than a shitty beach on the side of a huge polluted river which requires an entry fee. Beer stalls in the streets at night were awesome, however.

The main purpose of stopping in Jiayuguan was to check out the great wall from the furthest point west, the town was actually built to support tourism for the wall. We arrived in the town via sitting train, which was a cheap but exhausting experience for a 10hr trip – there are people who pay even cheaper for a standing ticket, however they tend to push into the sitting seats; we had 4 people on a 3 person seat, impossible to get any sleep; especially considering we were in the section where the loud social chinese were, the ones who never seem to sleep but love talking louding and carrying on for 10hrs straight. They loved trying to communicate with us without knowing single word of english, usually this is quite fun, but not when we’re trying to sleep in an unsleepable position.

We arrived very sleep deprived and longing for a place to rest our heads, we took a taxi to the main area where hotels and the likes reside, first option was far too expensive (~$30 for a twin) the second option was a success, paying only $8 each, which we thought was acceptable for the situation. We unpacked and started to shut our eyes as our bodies hit the beds… when there was a knock on the door… the manager decided that we cant stay, we had no idea why, but we had to leave; looks like this is yet another hotel that doesn’t allow foreigners. Out in the cold again, I decided to get to an internet cafe to find some more options. Using the most excellent website http://www.wikitravel.org someone placed a note on the Jiayuguan page with specific instructions to a hotel that only has chinese characters for the name; we made it there and were welcomed to a twin room for only $6! after quite a bit of miming and bartering. Sensibly we named this day the rest day and planned our great wall trek for the following day.

The wall had an entry fee, as is expected, however it was quite impressive even though this segment had been reconstructed, they tried to hide it by putting hay with mud and clay (the foundations of the original wall) over the top of blatant brickwork. The wall seemed to connect the gaps on the outside of an impenetrable rocky mountain range, two additional walls branched into the mountains which were once used for scouting from the tall towers at the ends and to surround any army that would come through the narrow passage in the middle of the mountain range. The wall in this area of china was not actually used to prevent the Mongolians from entering, but to stop any western forces from entering the tang dynasty’s realm. This entrance was also the far north west section of the silk road for china.

We took a sleeper bus at 3am to a town in the gobi desert, an oasis town surrounded by giant sand dunes called Dunhuang.

So, we took a bus to Jiuzhaigou, further north – we saw more earthquake damage on the way but the bus ride was relatively cozy.

Due to arriving just on a chinese holiday (they have them constantly, it seems that government employees are always on holidays while the lesser classes work without rest) we had to settle in a chinese hostel for $8/night for dorm bed. Jiuzhaigou is one of the most active touristy locations in china, known for its perfect blue lakes and picturesque mountains. Unfortunately considering how well known it is, the entry fee is quite steep – $40/day ($60 without a student card) within the national park, outside of the very new town-stead.

The first thing we did was scope out the entrance to see if there is any way to sneak in, from our previous knownledge, with all public services, noone seems to mind if you manage to sneak in – it is pretty much certain that the chinese people never will. Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t find an easy way in, as the entrance covered the narrow opening of the large mountain ravine. We admitted defeat and purchased a ticket the next morning, however before doing so we managed to meet some helpful chinese backpackers who told us that there is a place to stay overnight and get the second night free by staying in a house within a tibetian village that resides within the national park. We jotted down the directions and copied a photo of the house (with chinese characters for the sign) to my new phone, in prep for the following days.

At first, Jiuzhaigou was depressing, a constant line of tour busses drive for 20min packed full of wealthy chinese – we had to take the bus as walking is discouraged from the entrance. At every stop the chinese would run out of the bus, take some photos, and hop back in the next bus. We made it to the middle stop, not far from the tibetian village; we decided it would be best to confirm accommodation before checking out the sights – upon walking to the village, a guard stopped us to check tickets, we later found out that they check only in the early mornings, for the first bus that arrives; we would sleep in the next morning to avoid this unneeded annoyance.

We arrived at the house and were greeted by an old lady who spoke no english, after a few minutes her daughter arrived and asked us if we would like to stay… for a small fee of $13 (however this includes an awesome dinner and breakfast). We accepted politely, trying to hide the urgency in our voices and headed outside to the simply incredible scenery… over the heads of an army of chinese tourists.

We took a bus right to the end of the east path, with the plan of walking all the way back. Discouraged by the frequent small patches of tourists at many stops, we came across an area where there are no stops for about 5km, however the forest path was blocked with a warning sign in chinese characters – we decided to ignore the sign and walk around it, it is difficult to know what it means anyway, when its not in english – perhaps it just had ‘hello’ written on it. That was our story for the authorities anyway.

It wasn’t ‘hello’, parts of the path were unmaintained, most probably because no chinese tourists bothered to walk this far – however the damage was very minor and still quite safe. The walk was very peaceful and scenic, well worth the mild rebalism. Now, its difficult to describe how beautiful this place is, you simply need to check out my flickr, or wait until I update these recent posts with images.

After a few hours of trekking, we came across a few buildings; we approached cautiously, hoping that they may have boiling water for our packet noodles that we carried within our packs for lunch. Two men in camoflaged army attire walked towards us, we were sure that this was not an area where we should be. The main guy, who had a few more insignias on his shoulders than the others, knew quite good english and offered us a drink of water – we took this opportunity to show him our noodles, he got one of his minions to take the noodles and prepare the food for us. There was a table tennis table out in the open, I took a glance at it and the man immediately asked me if i would like a game…. I said yes. We played for a while, everytime the ball missed the table, a soldier would be standing guard at each corner to pick it up and hand it back. It was quite a surreal experience. After eating the noodles and drinking the water, the main guy explained that during the winter they would climb the mountain behind us and collect plants to be used in distilling their own pijoe (~50% alcohol moonshine). We were impressed but still a little WTF about the whole situation, must be a lonely post in the middle of a national park, I assumed that they were there to help rescue tourists who attempt to climb heights without equipment, I’m pretty sure only stupid westerners would do things like that – like for instance, taking a path that has obvious warning signs.

We arrived back at the tibetian house for dinner and had a very comfortable sleep with the sound of heavy rain late at night. In the morning we woke to find that, due to the rain, there was now snow capped on the top of every mountain peak that surrounded the house, a very magical moment.

Making sure that we left after 9am, we attempted to walk back to the entrance, halfway we jumped on a bus knowing that it was too far to walk. We spent another night in the town, then took a bus to Lanzhou the next day.