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.