Day 60 0 miles 8th May
It is a clear and beautiful morning in Bishkek. After all this time, I awake to an upset stomach, low fever and other obvious symptoms. However feeling much better this evening and I can only marvel that this is the first time I have been hit on the journey. We take advantage of the morning to do a little light shopping. Rather surprisingly, this is more difficult than one would expect. Shops are not clearly advertised and it is easy to stroll straight past even one specifically aimed at the passing tourist. This is a throwback to Soviet times when shopping was restricted to GUM stores and kiosks littering the sidewalk. Also a throwback to these days is the number of monuments and buildings bearing the hammer and sickle motif. While relegated to a secondary position, Bishkek still displays the largest sculpture of Lenin in Central Asia. Changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is an athletic procedure with soldiers marching with a high kick that would not disgrace a corps de ballet. My slight nerves over the missing registration doc for the car, leads me to find Bishkek’s Honorary Consul. Amazingly his name is Mike and he is the proprietor of Fatboys Bar from where consular activities take place. He is friendly, efficient and clearly enjoys his adopted home, having been here for 10 years. The only fly in his ointment was the stint of the last ambassador overseeing Kyrgyzstan from Almaty. He had converted to Islam and clearly had little sympathy for his predecessor’s decision to base HMG’s representation in a pub. All is well now and normal service has resumed. So, having acquired a few official stamps on my document, I feel confident the even the Chinese customs will be happy. Dinner is at an Italian restaurant with lashings of plonk, brescaola and a T bone steak, just like a cheapo half way down the King’s Road, thirty years ago.
Day 61 194 miles 9th May
Those of you who remember the Prisoner with Patrick MacGoohan will appreciate our latest brush with the Central Asian hotel scene. We are on the shores of Lake Issuk Kul which after Titicaca is the largest high level lake in the world. The area was famous in Communist times as a destination for those requiring the services of sanatoria, a fact corroborated by the constant stream of graveyards along the lake road as we approach. Having gone through a quiet period after the fall of the empire, the area is developing phoenix like and sadly, most of what has been built looks pretty tacky. We choose the best of a bad bunch after visiting the Aurora, named after the battleship that shelled the Winter Palace at the beginning of the Russian revolution and where Brezhnev used to stay in better times. A huge concrete monstrosity while our chosen location is a new development - a completely empty village of bungalows and wooden dachas stretching down to the shore. Our only company is a phalanx of rather sinister security guards. Later we enjoy the ambiance of the worst that Soviet cooking can throw at us. Like a thoroughbred horse, it surges past the deficiencies of Palmyra and breasts the tape in front of the Old Town Square in Prague. Etched on my memory will always be the quiet aperitif in the bar after dinner – it is 8.30pm – which we share with the staff who are singing to a karaoke machine, mostly out of tune but with gusto. Luckily I cannot read Cyrillic so no chance of me joining in. Couldn’t hear Jules’s excuse. However, the lake is beautiful, surrounded by high snow capped mountains and the sunset one of the most spectacular with serried ranks of clouds lit up by the fiery dying sun. The drive from Bishkek was equally spectacular as we snaked through a 10 mile gorge between steep sided rocky faces that gave on to a fast flowing green grey river below. We are now remote and high and are about to head into the real back country for the border.
Day 62..155 miles 10th May
We set out to Naryn after forcing the gate despite the protests of security guards who wished to wait for authorisation. Our tactics were to block the gate preventing the exit of a VIP and virtually the only other guest in the complex. He and his police escort quickly overtook us once the drawbridge was raised but we were free. Kyrgyzstan is blessed with the almost total absence of road signs, so a mixture of dead reckoning and judicious questioning gets us out past the lake into one of the most deserted mountain regions in the world. We climb through barren, sharp featured mountains, red tinged with no vegetation. You have seen them in every newsreel of Afghanistan. We climb over a pass at 3000 metres and suddenly the landscape changes – it becomes Alpine. There is water rushing, fir trees dot the green slopes and the high plains are dotted with yurts and horsemen controlling cattle and horses up on the high summer pastures. Old railway carriages towed by tractors create supplementary accommodation and most of the children seem to be with the family, tiny tots aggressively pushing sheep over to better grazing, babies held into the pommel over father’s saddle. The winter must be very harsh and unforgiving. The people come down to the small towns, like Naryn and wait again for the spring and the freedom of the heights to be returned once more. Naryn is belatedly celebrating Victory day and a procession of elderly warriors, resplendent in perky, traditional Kyrgyz white pointed hats, weighed down with rows of medals and drowsy from the many vodka toasts – leave the celebratory lunch. An old soldier animatedly lectures all comers but his message is lost on us. These men come from the group most feared by the German defenders of Berlin in the War, so he was probably reliving happy memories of atrocities committed a lifetime ago. Hard environments create hard people and the hill Kyrgyz are recognisably the descendants of Marco Polo’s Golden Horde.
Day 63 15 miles.. 11th May
We have a day clear in Naryn, before the border tomorrow. We take off into the mountains and toil uphill for a pre lunch walk. It is classic Alpine/High Plains scenery with rolling open grassland leading to pines, snow and the rocky peaks high above. High on a ridge above the road we meet a herder looking after cattle, horses and sheep. We are both surprised, he with more reason – middle aged English gents out for a pre lunch stroll, being the greater rarity – but we exchange greetings and he watches off us into the distance with a lopsided smile. Lunch is taken in a café in the centre of town and turns out to be memorable. Two courses and two beers each are $5 a piece – but the floor show…. The restaurant is empty bar a large table of mostly elderly couples who have clearly reached the toasting stage of the meal as we arrive. Every few minutes one of them sways past us to the bar and purchases another bottle of vodka. More toasting. Then the music is turned up to full volume and their table explodes into a fury of action as the women get up and hit the disco scene. We are sitting targets. First we are approached by one of the younger men ( ie probably younger than Jules). He introduces himself as a director of the bank next door. He asks us to dance. Pretty easy to say no….Jules is next grabbed from behind by a substantial mama and frogmarched onto the dance floor. I was then kidnapped by a gold tooth septuagenarian who danced like Mick Jagger – all rhythm and hip. She jogged and bounced and we spun and jived until breathless. I collapsed in my chair…well we are at nearly 2000 metres. We managed to escape without getting caught in a multi vodka session and waved goodbye to the works outing at a canter. This evening is an early night with a 5.30 start on our long drive to the border. It is 4 ½ hours of dirt track and then a pass at 3,700 metres. Will report in tomorrow.
Day 64 221 miles 12th May
Well, we made it. I am sitting in my room at the Barony Hotel, Kashgar having finished a gargantuan Chinese dinner feeling just a little bit smug that we have crossed into China. From the beginning, it has always been clear that traversing the Torugart Pass with a vehicle was going to be the big test. Chinese bureaucracy required us to get local driving licences, car registration, permission to cross each of the provinces and a guide at all times. We had to meet our guide at the top of the pass at 3,700 metres and he had to have all the requisite items with him on the agreed date. We left Naryn at sun up - 6.00am – and climbed into the wilderness that is the border mountain country of Kyrgyzstan. The road started as rather battered hard top but after 50 miles we were on the dirt for the hundred miles to the border. The first pass took us into a wide valley with the Tian Sian (Celestial) Mountains to the south and the road ran for fifty miles with the peaks glowing in the morning sun on our left. Yurts with smoke rising from breakfast cooking pots studded the open plain beneath the mountains and as we passed, cowboy Kyrgyz were saddling up to start another day with their livestock. Our second pass was less awe inspiring because at 3,500 metres up we were up in the peaks. This was our first check point and as usual we ignored the bus and truck in front and rolled up to the gate. The guide on the bus who was shepherding a group of Dutch, informed us that the guards would process us only after her 20 charges, but as always she got her swag of passports as our two were being given back to us, so queue jumping worked again. 40 k’s on, we reach the border proper. We have followed the line of an old Soviet electric fence until at last at 3,700m and well within the snow line we make to the border. We were across within 20 minutes – no hassle, no bribes, just very cold and then after a kilometre or two of no-mans land, we meet our first, rather surprised Chinese guard. The mist was in, snow in patchy streaks on the ground – think the Highlands in February. The next guard post is a further 10 k’s on and it is here that the smiling face of Jimmy He, the guide, appears. He is loaded with car permits, licence plates, driving licences etc – on time and ready to go! The next and final customs post is after 100 k’s and as we come down a thousand metres it is clear that we are in a different world. Gone are the rolling open grasslands as we wind through narrow gorges past early year paddy fields, bamboo even by the roads. Adobe houses and rock faces fissured and sparkling even in the grey mist on this side of the Celestial Mountains. We are feeling pretty good as we get to the final customs post at 3.15 pm local – two hours on from Kyrgyz time – even when we are told that we will have to wait until 4.30 for the border guards to come back on duty from lunch. The off duty guards gather round the car and as usual show good humoured interest in the rare sight of a car with its steering on the wrong side. We munch through our packed lunch, snooze, read and get our first taste of Chinese public loos. Jules promises that he will – in the light of reader demand – deal with the smells of the trip which have clearly gone unreported. I do not want to steal his thunder so – think of a windowless adobe building whose entrance blocks most of the light from the row of open stalls that greet us. In each is a small hole leading to the open pit below containing the excreted contents of a generation of border guards. A bugle cries from the tannoy and across the car park advances a platoon of guards who line up to receive orders and a pep talk from their officer and we are in business. The process defies all expectations. We are not searched, do not sign a declaration form and have our passports stamped with alacrity. All is well until, Jimmy tells us that he has not got a special car import document and that the agency in Kashgar will have bring on up. “don’t worry, I’m sure we will have it sorted out tonight”. The significance being that the border is closed over the weekend and it is Friday evening. We wait and we wait. We watch all the people who we overtook on the mountain road pass through the system and we wait. At 6.45pm, like Chamberlain, Jimmy appears bearing the vital paper and we are of to our first serious Chinese meal of the trip.
Day 65 0 miles 13th May
Kashgar is a pleasant dusty town. Famed for its Sunday market and key position on the Silk Road it retains a strong independent streak, epitomised by its majority Uyrghur population. The troubles of the 1990’s seem to have receded but it is clear that the authorities remain concerned to avoid any repeat of the violence. The city is in two parts – Old and New – the ancient walls are still in evidence in places and we visit the British and Russian Consulates both built in the late 1890’s and following the clear styles of their creators. A British Raj bungalow and a Russian public building with faded terracotta painted walls, both now looking rather run down in their latest role as annexes to large unattractive modern hotels. In the old town we visit the Id Kah Mosque, probably the largest in China and then across the square we enter to warren of streets in the Old city. The sights and sounds of the Middle Ages ar with us again for the first time in weeks. The lack of markets and life on the street is a feature of the Russian influence in the Stans and it is great to sample the smells, taste and sound of the street in all its pungency. Here a coiled dried snake, there a display of nuts and herbs, an array of vegetables, piles of fruit, melons are prized and celebrated in Kashgar. The news from Greg, who is slated to drop in on the expedition for two weeks vacillates between on time and days late as the mobiles and texts zip between here and Beijing where he waits to fly back six hours to our end of China. We hope to see him late this evening. I’ll let you know we do, but we are off to another great Chinese or Uyrghur meal!
Day 70 0 miles 14th May
Well against all the odds, late in the evening, there is a flurry of activity in the garden outside our hotel where we are enjoying a quiet drink under the stars. A human dynamo pumps in having been dropped by the limo and Greg has ended his long journey out to the small and historic oasis town. He brings news of wives and family, newspapers and other survival packages that are designed to keep the little expedition in good heart for the final month of its travels. Sadly, at the last security check before arriving in Kashgar, Greg is relieved of the two bottles of whisky that he is bringing for the embattled troops – but there we are. Today we sampled the famed Sunday market. Wild stories of a hundred thousand visitors packing the city from the desert towns around had fed our imagination and we taxied off sure that this would put the many souks and bazaars that we have visited to shame. Amazingly, the new market which is almost antiseptic in its neatness seemed eerily deserted – ie not teeming – when we arrived and on display alongside the normal household items were indistinguishable ranks of machine made tourist trinkets which were along way from the delights of the souks in Syria and Turkey. All a bit tame perhaps, but a few carefully negotiated purchases were made and we moved on to the livestock market six kilometres outside town. This was an altogether more colourful affair. The cattle market was alive with movement and sound and smell. The braying of angry donkeys, lowing of subdued cattle, owners shouting to clear a way for their animals through the human throng, all mixed with the sight of carcasses butchered to supply the kepab and lagman stalls feeding the huge hungry crowd. Beyond there was a large space dedicated to horse sales; here arrogant buyers were testing the available talent, trotting cantering and galloping around the stony ground, twisting and turning with a rope bridal and no saddle. Born to ride. Finally we find the two camels in the show, one a rare and moth eaten Bactrian from the Takla Markan. What we witnessed was clearly a tame version of the market of the past. The exotica is now rare and the domestic has taken its place. It is not as antiseptic as Cirencester cattle market but it is moving that way. Strangely, once again it is the people themselves, dressed in grubby grey jackets and little white or black caps who defy the pull by the Chinese state to modernise. These little Uyrghur with their resemblance to Steptoe and Son still carry on the old ways and while they may have been marginalised, they are very much in evidence in their own self governing corner of China.