Back-Packed

Finally, we manage to upload the drawing Floris made back in Shanghai. A visual inventory of the items in the backpack. The iPod has already mysteriously disappeared (probably forgotten in some Youth Hostel) and new conents are a new cheap and 'not so ugly' long-sleeved jacket, a pair of slippers and a felt hat. Most of the books we took from Shanghai have already been traded with other travellers for new reading material.

The extremely cool guy is of course Floris, the main difference being there's now a full beard.

Osh, Jalal-Abad and around

Arriving late in Osh meant we had to find a place to sleep in a badly lit, unknown town. We fished out our Lonely Planet from our backpacks and asked a taxi driver to drive us to some of the hotels in town. Most of them turned out to be fully booked, so we ended up in an extremely overpriced Soviet style hotel: there was no hot water, no electricity after midnight, we got locked out the first night (we managed to break in though) and nobody cleaned our room, perhaps not even before we took it.

Osh was a nice city, however: quite small for the country's second biggest town, but with an interesting bazaar, where we found some nice handicrafts (slippers and two hats). As there aren't really overly interesting "sights" in the city, we basically walked around a bit in the bazaar, the park and through the charming, tree-lined avenues.

The population is very diverse, with a majority of Uzbeks, a large Kyrgyz minority and quite a lot of Russians and other ethnicities.

The next day, we headed for Jalal-Abad, the third biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, but with only about 75000 inhabitants very laid back and relaxed. Through the Community Based Tourism association, we found a delightful homestay with a local family. A very clean room in a charming house with a shadowy courtyard, and with hot water!

Here, we took it easy, just looking around the bazaar, which is nice enough but not as big nor as interesting as Osh' or Kashgars bazaars. We also headed to a local rundown sanatorium and healing water spring the next day. The sanatorium was closed and the spring water was disgustingly warm and salty - not a true success in all.
On Saturday, we headed to Arslanbob, a farmers village in the nearby mountains, famous for its walnut forests. We had a walk near the river up to a waterfall which we never reached. Hanna saved some strange bugs from drowning and Floris made a small dam - both not very successful at that by the way.

We intended to leave on Sunday morning, and opted for a shared minibus (marshrutka) to Bishkek. The driver told us we would leave as soon as there were 3 or 4 more passengers, but even after having 6 extra we hadn't left yet. As it was running late already, and with a long drive ahead (10 to 15 hours), we got upset with the driver for the disinformation and left the car.

So, if all goes well, we leave for Bishkek on Monday 01.09.

The bordercrossing at Irkeshtam

We left Kashgar early morning on Monday 25 august. Early, because the border opens at 10 a.m. and there are long queues if you arrive later. We arranged a taxi to the Chinese side of the border for 500 RMB, which is a good deal (travel agencies asked between 600 and 900 RMB...)

The drive up to Irkeshtam was amazing: through mountainous desert, dotted with donkeys, camels and security checkposts. After a thrilling 4 hour drive on a near-empty highway, we arrived at the Chinese border.

The border formalities were very straightforward: at the Chinese side, customs clearance and immigration took about 10 minutes, without any troubles at all. An official then put us on a Chinese truck to cover the distance to the Kyrgyz checkpoint. A brief passport check later, we could walk further to the quarantaine, customs and immigration office. It was a bit disorganised but straightforward enough: we just handed over our passports and got them back in a few minutes, stamped and everything. One final registration later, we found ourselves in Kyrgyzstan.

The next goal was to find onwards transport to Osh or Sary Tash. That proved to be somewhat more of a challenge: there is no organised transport at all, so we walked around a bit until we were addressed by a very friendly Uzbek truckdriver, who would take us. But first, we could change some money and eat something (a nice bouillon).

So we waited and waited, because the driver kept on postponing his hour of departure - later, it turned out he was waiting for his cargo (as we had no common language, communication was the usual smiling and hand signs). We had a look around in the settlement, and we judged it to be one of the most crazy places in the world: there were houses made of containers, fueltanks and old railway carriages, and the place was littered with broken cars and trucks. The only "toilet" in town consisted of a shed with two planks - a delightful place without lighting, reserved only for women...

We looked around for other transport, but driver of the the single Lada Niva in town asked a ridiculous price of 70 USD per person, so we waited more. Eventually, our truck driver informed us that we would leave the following day, meaning we'd have to overnight there. He was obviously a bit uneasy about the postponement, and he and his wife Sonja were very hospitable and put us up for the night.
After a good supper of noodles, we talked some more with our hosts and went to sleep.

The next morning around 11 a.m., we set off in a Kyrgyz "Kamaz"-truck. Two reasonably straightforward checkpoints later, we were at last on our way to Osh...

The drive was splendid, with magnificent views on the Pamir plateau. Rivers, snow-capped mountain peaks, grassland with horses and yurts - simply splendid! The road was however in a complete state of disrepair: unpaved, sandy, full of holes... This caused the truck to have 6 (!) flat tyres in 30 km, which we covered in about 6 hours. We were happy to find other transport on the road: a car picked us up for 500 som each.

Late that night, we finally arrived in Osh after a full day's travelling.

New pictures

Just managed to upload a few more pictures to the webalbum, mainly from fascinating Kashgar. Enjoy!

Kashgar, where minorities form the majority

After a great, comforable but long train journey through vast plains and deserts, we arrived in Kashgar, in the far western end of China, on Friday morning. It doesn't really feel like China, though: the vast majority of the people here are Uighurs, an Islamic people from Turkic origin. There are also Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Pakistani and here and there an odd Chinese. Most people also dress quite traditionally here: women wearing all sorts of colourful dresses and scarfs, men cheap but rather neat vests with traditional hats and children just about anything that fits them.

We stayed in the Chinibagh Hotel, a rather run-down but cheap and nice enough hotel on the grounds of the former British consulate, where we had a room with airco, TV and cockroaches for 70 RMB. After freshening up a bit, we went into the city, where we got even more enthusiastic about the place: the Friday prayer was just starting, and a lot of people where out and about.
We found the old town, the part of the city that has not yet given way to modernity (/ has not been Sinified), especially charming, with small streets, loads of children cheerfully running around, old women chattering on the pavement and chickens sprinting up and down courtyards, waiting to be slaughtered. It is by the way quite obvious that the Chinese one-child policy doesn't apply here: there are children most everywhere.

The city has a long-standing reputation as a trading post, on the crossroads between major east-west and north-south trading routes. This is most clearly evident in the Sunday market, but also on other days there is a lot of activity: people forge knives, make kitchenware, jewelry or music instruments, weave carpets and prepare all kinds of delicious-smelling food. Of course, we eagerly sampled the local cuisine: we had some of the best chicken we had ever, wonderful mutton-filled buns from street stalls and we ate yogurt with honey, drank Pakistani milk tea and tasted weird fruits.

On Sunday, we went to the Sunday market: a mind-bogging place where literally everything is for sale: clothes, scarfs, kitchenware, jewelry, knives, all kinds of traditional hats, bags, shoes, boots, tools,... There must have been tens of thousands of people, selling and buying, chatting and eating, with salesmen from the wider Kashgar region bringing their goods to the market on donkey-carts, camels, motor cycles, bikes, cars, trucks - anything with legs or wheels, really. It is a million times more charming than your average western-style supermarket!
The other market in town, the animal market, was even more interesting. Thousands of locals (mainly men) were fiercely negotiating the price of a couple of goats, lifting bleating sheep on a cramped back of a donkey-cart, test-driving horses and donkeys and inspecting cows with an expert eye. The peope-to-animal ratio must have been around one to one, making it the biggest animal market either of us has ever witnessed.

When we were in Kashgar, there were very few other travellers. The tourist infrastructure (bars, hotels,...) could easily accomodate a tenfold of the current amount of tourists. This is mainly due to China's visa policy, making it more difficult for westerners to visit China during the Olympics. However, there are also very few Chinese travellers here, probably (from what we heared) out of a media-induced fear for terrorist attacks. (A fear, by the way, that is completely unfounded.)

Tomorrow morning, Monday, we leave early by taxi to the Irkeshtam pass, from where we will cross into Kyrgyzstan. Local travel agencies asked ridiculously steep prices of up to 900RMB for a taxi, but we arranged one for 500RMB. We should, if all goes well, arrive in Osh tomorrow evening.

Urumqi and the Kyrgyz visa

The capital of Xinjiang province, Urumqi, is quite like any other big Chinese city, the main difference being that a considerable part of the population consists of ethnic minorities: Uyghurs, Hui, Kazachs and Kyrgyz.

The highrise, smoke-stacked itself isn't very inviting and even with placates in the People's Park advocating its beauty, it is an alltogether depressing place.

However, we found a very nice hostel on the advice of Jenny, a very friendly Chinese girl we met on the train from Dunhuang. Maitian International Youth Hostel, cheap accomodation and an open travellers' atmosphere; a good place to relax for a few days. Here we met Francois, a French teacher who gave us valuable information on crossing the Kyrgyz border, and Samantha, a nice English student who travels across Xinjiang after working at the Beijing Olympics.

The best thing about Urumqi is that we got our Kyrgyz visas: the small consulate hidden away not too far from the hostel was able to provide these in three days, be it at a high rate: a hefty 952RMB.. But with this, we'll be in Kashgar by the end of this week, meaning we'll just on schedule for the Sunday Market, which is supposed to be one of the most interesting ones in Asia.. Our expectations are running high on that market event: the ones we saw so far in China have been quite an experience as well, with all kinds of animals being sold: chickens, crabs, fish, frogs, turtoises, birds and squid. Add some colourful vegetable and fruits stalls and fragrant spices, and there you have your average Chinese market.

Tomorrow, we leave for Kasgar in the far end of Xinjiang province, near Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. We managed to get us two sleepers, after queueing for ages in a packed train station (actually, Floris queued, Hanna judging herself to be still too weak to face the crowds). It's a 24 hour ride, but we have quite comfortable lower berths and a table for playing cards (if we can agree on the rules, that is).

After these two weeks of rushing through China, we will lower our pace and hopefully won't be doing too much overnight travelling anymore. When we leave China, we will have covered roughly one third of our total mileage. So far (up to Urumqi), we have spent about 54 hours, or 4300 km, on trains...

Slideshow and trip tracker

Just a small note to attract your attention to it: we finally managed to upload some pictures. For a visual update, have a look at the slideshow on the right (if you click it, it should go full screen).

The trip tracker, the map-tool roughly indicating the route we followed and the places we halted, is also updated.

Enjoy!

Dunhuang and the Iron Curtain

After arriving in Dunhuang from Jiayuguan on an early slow train, we went to Johng's Guesthouse, a very nice, good-value guesthouse with the quite spectacular sand dunes and camels just nextdoor.

Hanna was feeling a bit sick, so we just had a walk around the guesthouse. Strangely enough, we found that the sand dunes had actually been fenced off, and a bit further down the road we discovered an entrance gate, where tourists are supposed to cough up a steep 120RMB to get access. It didn't feel overly touristy (mainly Chinese tourists, with only the odd Westerner), but handicraft stalls and obligatory camel ride expeditions were of course part of the deal.
We of course didn't pay to get in. We decided to walk along the fence, and a few hundred meters off, away from guards and boys scouting for intruders, we managed to slip underneath the fence and get our free, be it short, original sand dune experience.


The next day, Hanna was not feeling too well, so Floris went to the Mogao caves alone. The 492 caves near this important Silk Route oasis contain ancient Buddhist art, spanning a period of about 1000 years, most of them dating from the Tang dynasty era.
Access to the caves was not cheap (180RMB p/p, including a mandatoy English Guide), but the site definitely is interesting and of immense cultural importance.

From Dunhuang, we took a very comfortable, quiet nighttrain to Urumqi, deep in China's vast Xinjiang province.

Jiayuguan and the Fake Wall

In Jiayuguan, which is far less touristy than Xi'An, we stayed the rather rundown "Youth Hotel". The rooms weren't exactly superb, but costed only 40RMB per night per person (= about 4 euros) - a good deal. The atmosphere was a bit grim: the knowledge that rooms could also be rent by the hour should give you an idea why. But after having spoken with other travellers, it still seems one of the best budget options in town.

We didn't stay too long in the hotel, and had a look around in the town. There was a local market, with the usual fruits, vegetables, chickens and food stalls. Here we had a tasty dinner in a local restaurant: very spicy mutton- and beefskewers, with even more spicy noodles and vegetables.

The next day, we were up to some sightseeing.
Jiayuguan is very famous in China for its fortress, a stronghold at the end of the Great Wall - so we headed that way. As with many Chinese tourist spots, historical sites are to some extend transformed into a fun fair, with a tasteless park, concrete statues and the like - not really things we were very eager to see. As the entrance fee was rather exorbitant (10EUR per person), we decided to take the cheap way out and just walk around the whole site. We ventured into the desert, and had a great (free) view on the fortress and the Great Wall.

We then explored a bit beyond the site and ended up in a tract of traditional Chinese countryside, which was really charming. We came across sheep and a donkey amidst colourful corn-, onion-, potato- and rapeseedfields.

Later on, we headed to a second sight: the "Overhanging Wall", a bridge-like stretch of the wall 'hanging' above a river. Rebuilt and not really interesting at all. We could also walk on a bit of the wall, winding its way up a hill overseeing the desert. From afar it is actually quite impressive, but knowing that that part had been rebuilt in 1987 (which wasn't posted anywhere, however), gave it more of a "Fake Wall of China"-feel.
A mandatory 'culture park' with statues of pink camels and concrete Silk Route traders, made the whole experience quite unearthly. The view from atop the wall over the desert and the nearby oasis was however worth the climb.

Back in the town, as we set out for dinner, we came across a group of elderly Chinese women performing a rather complicated local dance with small drums, joyfully observed by the local elderly men. This seems to be a common practice in Jiayuguan (and other places in China), as the previous day we also saw two groups like this, one performing with fans and another with scarfs. Hanna was cheerfully invited to join the dancing, to the great amusement of the locals.

Itinerary Kyrgyzstan - Kazachstan

The idea is to cross the Chinese - Kyrgyz border through the Irkeshtam pass, head to Sary Tash and Osh and continue towards Bishkek via Jalal-Abad and Tash-Kömür. From Bishkek, we plan to head to Karakol via the southern shore of the Ysyk-Köl lake. We will leave Kyrgyzstan and cross into Kazachstan near Kegen.

In Kazachstan, we will spend some time in and around Almaty, before taking the train towards Shymkent. From there, we travel further to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

The plan is to cover the above outlined itinerary in about three weeks.

Computer Related Frustration Syndrome

It was rather expected: we have been experiencing some problems getting on the web... The Chinese computers we have come across so far, have been of the 5-year old, trashy, HIV-infected kind with unnumerable weird windows popping up. You know: slow and unreliable, keyboard either not working or the typing language set in unalterable Chinese pinyin characters.

Getting pictures from the camera is proving to be an ever bigger headache.

But hey: that's what it's like and we'll just have to cope with it. So don't be surprised if it's a bit quiet from time to time: we expect Central-Asia to be not much brighter in this respect...

Xi'An

Our first stop on our journey was the ancient city of Xi'An. After a pretty good sleep on the night train, we arrived early morning in a rainy Xi'An. As we knew that getting train tickets could at times be quite a challenge, we immediately bought onward tickets to Jiayuguan.

On leaving the station, we saw a small Chinese boy dutifully urinating in an empty noodle box. But just as we were impressed by his cleanliness and aiming skills, he joyfully threw the box and the contents in the air... A warm welcome to Xi'An indeed.

We found a nice youth hostel near the Bell Tower, right in the centre of the city. It was good value for money, and there was a nice and easy travellers' atmosphere. A good breakfast and a adorable kitten made the picture complete.

We then set off to the Terracotta Army, about 1 hour bus drive out of the city. It was still pouring down with rain, but as the terracotta army is sheltered in several buildings, this didn't bother us.

The army itself was quite amazing: about 8000 life-sized statues of warriors, archers and horsemen, burried underground for over 2000 years. This incredible undertaking was ordered by emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. He must have been quite afraid of being conquered after his death, or plainly mad - or both of course.


On the following day, back in Xi'An, we wandered about at a relaxed pace. The city was quite nice, but not so very different than other Chinese cities we had seen before. With the old monuments (bell tower, drum tower, great mosque and of course the city wall), it felt quite "Chinese" (i.e. less Western than Shanghai), but knowing that the monuments are mostly replica's from buildings that have been destroyed during the cultural revolution gnawed more than a bit off of our wonder and amazement, especially as it was nowhere shown that it were replica's..

However, the Muslim quarter was quite a nice place to stroll around in. Nice small shops, vendors selling dried fruits and road-side restaurants fuming out inviting smells of foods. All this in the backdrop of the great mosque, which is built in Chinese architectural style - rather weird but interesting. Our visit to the mosque was quite enchanting: we visited it at nightfall, when the last prayers were performed.


We enjoyed a dinner of a local speciality: different vegetables and meats, boiled in a spicy broth and dipped in a tasty sesame-paste. Really nice.

Xi'An was a good place as a first stop. From there, we took a night train to Jiayuguan, deep in Gansu province.

So far so good

Dunhuang, somewhere between East and West, in the deserts of China's Gansu province.

So far everything has been going very smooth: we always managed to get train tickets, hotels and transportation easily. And no quarrelling so far, disregarding arguments over card game rules (but that's just Hanna cheating!).

The 2nd class sleepers on the trains are quite cheap, and really good value. Not always air conditioning, and a little bit short on leg space for Floris, but hey. As Hanna is of a more standard Chinese female size, she's all happy. Travelling by train has been quite charming so far, with friendly Chinese offering us fruits and with very impressive and diverse landscapes.

We will (hopefully) be coming back with more impressions on the places we visited, but let's suffice to say for now that we are happy we decided to halt in some places in China. It will leave us with very different impressions of China than what we experienced while working in Shanghai.

Ready, steady... GO!

Inspired by the Olympic Spirit, we are counting down towards our departure.

The last few days have been quite hectic: stuffing our belongings in boxes, sending them to Europe (including getting a bit frustrated at the Chinese customs regulations: no liquids, powders, batteries, Cd's,...) and handling all kinds of small tasks that we have been postponing for some time now.

Today is our last day at work and as we are returning our laptops, from now on we will only be able to post entries on this blog from hot and sweaty internet cafés, packed with coke-boozing computer fanatics.

After a final relaxing weekend in Shanghai, we will leave on monday afternoon by train towards Xi'An.

Got it!

Iranian visa, finally! We were, after a promising start of daily phone calls, already in the worrying "don't call us, we'll call you"-stage with the charming Iranian consulate secretary when Hanna's phone rang Wednesday around midday and we were told that we were only one official letter short of getting our visas. Our company would have to provide a statement that we really work here and are really really going to Iran as tourists and that the company really really really is not involved in any dubious activities. We wrote the letter ourselves and then found somebody to stamp it with the biggest and reddest stamp available (this company has a wide selection of stamps, believe us) and rushed to the consulate with it. And about one hour later, almost unable to believe our luck, walked out of the consulate about 80 euros poorer but with two precious pieces of paper glued in our passports promising us both 25 days in Iran.

We celebrated the visas with a couple of beers (Duvels, to be precise) and an old James Bond movie. Tadadadaa taadadada... kippis!

Orange Ornaments

--

No, we haven't suddenly become ardent supporters for the Dutch Olympic team and neither are we on a carrot juice diet.

We are (silently) protesting! And as we are quite unexperienced as hippies, we are protesting for a cause.

Train Ticket Madness

We went to the Shanghai train station yesterday afternoon, intending to buy a ticket to Xi'An.

The situation is as follows: we know tickets are only available 5 days in advance, so we went on monday to get tickets for saturday. We also know there are about 10 trains daily between Shanghai and Xi'An, each of them easily carrying over 1000 people.
We aim to leave on Saturday, but in case we by then still don't have our Iranian visa (see other entry), we'd take a train on monday.

A reconstruction of the events at the Shanghai station ticket counter:

Hanna> We would like to buy a ticket to Xi'An, please.
Clerk> When? Today?
Hanna> No, on saturday 9th August. We'd like to take the fast train at 16:30, and book two sleepers.
Clerk> Sorry, no have. Only slow train. 20 hours. You want?
Hanna> Is it possible to get the ticket refunded if we would like to change our departure date?
Clerk> No.
Hanna> Well... we will take it on another day then. What about monday 11th august?
Clerk> Sorry, only can booking 5 days advance. You must return the day after tomorrow.
Hanna> Ok. Is it fine if we come here around 5pm?
Clerk> No, no. One hour, everything sold out. Gone.


So we learned that getting on a Chinese long-distance train is best compared to trying to buy concert tickets for a very popular rock band: there are over 10000 tickets available, but actually getting one mainly depends on your luck of getting through the overburdened telephone network.

Just imagine: 10000 tickets, gone within an hour! Every day!

Iranian visa

We have a problem. Or at least, we might have one: it has been more than three weeks since we submitted our application for an Iranian visa in the Iranian consulate in Shanghai, but as yet - we still have no news.

This puts us in a somewhat difficult position: on the one hand, we really want to travel into Iran, because from what we've read and heard about it, it's a great country. It's also on a key stretch of the Silk Route, and without it we will not get a Turkmen visa, which then in turn implies we will probably not be able to make the trip "overland", as we intend to. We then could very well be "stuck" somewhere in Uzbekistan, having (because of our visa-situation) no alternative but to fly to Azerbaijan or any country on our itinerary where we can get a visa on arrival.

But on the other hand, waiting here without any concrete information as to when we'd get that visa -if at all- doesn't make much sense either, since we've been waiting for quite a while already.. A situation which is somewhat aggravated since we have to buy our train tickets to Xi'An well in advance (see other entry).

So we decided to stay a few more days in Shanghai, leaving on a jet-train on Monday 11 August. Thus, we hope for the visa to be granted this week, or next monday at the very latest.

Help us hope!

Xinjiang Unrest

According to the latest local and international news reports, there has been a "terrorist attack" at a border post near Kashgar in Xinjiang Province, China. 16 Chinese police officials are reportedly killed.

Kashgar is on our itinerary, as a final post before travelling into Kyrgyzstan.

For those of you who might be concerned for our safety: don't worry about this too much. We are aware of the situation and we will keep ourselves duly informed. And obviously we aren't going to be in any anti-Chinese manifestations, nor do we intend to make bold political statements when travelling there. Moreover, chances of a new attack are generally believed to be low - and even if there is some attack, they will be directed against Han Chinese officials, not against foreigners.

So: no worries!

Bai Bai Shanghai!

After weeks and months of hard and arduous labour (dramatisation, may not have happened) on Chinese shipyards under inhuman conditions, we are finally ready to leave our positions and start our "Long March" towards Helsinki.

However much we are looking forward to travelling, we must say that Shanghai proved to be a nice place, of which we will keep good memories.

The work, our pro forma "raîson d'être" in Shanghai, was reasonably interesting, mainly because of the rather crazy work environment: shipyards are always buzzing with activity and full of fascinating scenes, but Chinese shipyards definitely add an extra flavour to that picture.
Imagine a remote but unforeseenly charming island with small but crowded villages, quite a nice natural environment and some small rice paddies and a few orange orchards. Add a huge, dusty, messy shipyard, with enormous rusty old ships, some newly erected workshops, a dozen of towering cranes and thousands of yard workers dressed in raggy overalls, covered in dust and engaged in something that resembles welding: there you have your Chinese shipyard.

Being on that kind of place and -at times, we have to be fair here- contribute to building better and safer ships, was in all quite an experience. That is, before the general boredom set in and we basically sat out our time at work, longing for a brighter future.

But apart from work, Shanghai was a nice enough place to stay. There is good food, lots of small shops, cheap massage parlors, charming streets and some nice museums. It has been interesting to get an inside view on the way China is building its future, and to get a feel for the Chinese culture and people.
As we stayed on the shipyards islands for the better part of the week, we never really settled in in the city: we didn't join dance lessons or sports clubs, didn't show up at expat gatherings or things like that. When we were in Shanghai, we were happy enough to see each other and spend time doing things with the two of us.

Now, we are packed and ready to leave.
Or, well, we still need to buy our train tickets to Xi'An, send our parcels back to Europe and we need to find a way to pass the last working days (do I hear 'surfing the internet'?). Oh, and our Iranian visa is still to be approved and collected (Insha'Allah, of course)...