The Long Road Home

Well I’ve arrived in Kyrgyzstan. I am completely AMAZED by how very different it is from China, so close. Knives and forks, salads, bead on the table, umbrellas on pavements and people sitting out, blond and blue eyed people on the streets in the mix of different faces. I am going round staring. I had to change my original route to geet here because it tuned out that even if I got all the paperwork for the Torugart pass, I still would need to rent a four-wheel drive car and driver to get up there, because apparently they don’t let you go up alone. So I decided to try the alternative Irkeshtam entry point which you can just ride through. Irkeshtam is west of Kashgar and leads you into the far south of Kyrgyzstan, just north of the Pamir Alay range of mountains that form the border with Tajikistan.

Actually I left Kashgar escorted by a black limousine with four Uighur men in suits inside. I’m not quite sure who they were. They’d appeared in the hotel lobby as I checked out, were very chatty and had a big discussion about which road was ok and where I would find accommodation etc. They decided I should be escorted. So I cruised out of Kashgar behind their black car. Then they waved goodbye.

I headed north west up a long straight dull drag, directly into a headwind. attled along grimly for around 20km slipstreaming tractors where possible, then turned around, and there hung round the horizon were mountains including what must be either the Pamir or Kunlun like a white wall south of Kashgar. So it’s all worthwhile - eventually.

I then went through brown Uighur villages west of Kashgar. There were spits of rain, surprisingly. The long villages were rows of poplars and mud single-storey houses with double doors painted pale blue and pale green and multicolour patterns along the lintels. Two green lorries with Kyrgyz number plates rolled through. Kind of exciting.

I went up onto wide windswept valley of grey gravel. As usual, the climb looked nothing much (ha ha) just empty low brown hills, but ahead there was now proper rain, a dark grey wash drifting over, and thunder was rumbling continuously. Suddenly heavy rain splashing on me. I dashed to a place where a dry river bed goes under the road, scramble off road under bridge. Thunder and lightning. Water pouring off the road. Eat boiled egg and naan bread for lunch sitting in the pebbles sheltering from wind by a bridge support. It was chilly and windy.

Finally I got going again when the storm eased, and found water now pouring everywhere. Whole orange rivers had appeared rushing over brown pebbles. You would hear rushing booming sounds and then round a bend find big scary brown torrents gushing off the cliffs onto the road. The flat areas were now flooded so the trees to the right stood in a sudden lake. There were bits of scattered rock on the wet road.

I went past the turn north up to the Torugart pass. There’s a huge white block house there blocking the road, where I guess they must check your papers etc, way way before the real border. There were loads of container lorries and messy trucks piled with scrap metal parked, and there was a cluster of shacks. Above, you could see lorries creeping along the road, tiny in the distance heading for Kyrgyzstan. The sun came back out, and I headed on towards Irkeshtam. I went through long green sunny warm valleys with nice brooks running over the grass. All my clothes dried. I had some chocolate and a blue butterfly was dotting about. I saw two pale brown pheasants bobbing along quickly into the grass (could not find in bird book), and a huge rabbit with silver ears just sitting there.

Then there were long empty stony valleys one after the other. Occasionally crows flew by croaking, and some smaller black birds with red legs and beaks (I think choughs)

At last I saw a patch of dark trees, and it was Wuqia county town. Last county town before border. The cook where I had dinner went mad and made me 6 dishes incl broccoli, chicken, cabbage, lovely mini tomatoes, mange tout, and pao pao steamed dough and dishes of apricots and water melon. I had to give whole plates away to other people. Outside, men were wearing rather improbable Kyrgyz hats like flowerpots. Actually a bit like the smurfs’ hats, if you remember those, except these ones are black and white and have embroidered patterns on. The town was a weird set of concrete rough blocks, with enthusiastically fancy street lamps and a big dusty square, in the middle of the wide empty hills. There was a karaoke competition in the square that night. Women in hedscarves and old men in those hats were solemnly watching. Everyone was there and children were dashing into the floodlights and running in circles. Two women in heels with microphones announced the competition in kyrgyz and chinese as if it was the eurovision song contest. Some contestants were in very fancy clothes, white evening dress etc. All rather bizarre with the mountains around and nothing for miles and stars overhead. I’m not sure who won.

The next day I stocked up on quite reasonable chocolate and left. The mountains got really weird. Some barren brown chunks piled like towers, then suddenly bright orange ridges, and whole valleys of weird yellow lumps with holes in.

Noone lives up there. I saw a few shepherds moving flocks of brown and white and black sheep in the river beds. Their wives go bumping along on donkeys in the middle of the flock, with strange saddles that make their legs stick up. Dog trotting at the back.

I was doing about 10kph as the road again and again went gradually up over great chunks of land. Every so often I’d get an open view to my left of the amazing snowy Pamir mountains. I hardly dared look.

I met two very cheery german chaps in the middle of nowhere on the way from Frankfurt to Tibet by bike. Quite odd to have a lovely conversation suddenly, laugh and take photos and so on, and then suddenly to be entirely alone again with just the road and rocks and sand.

I came to Wulukeqiati village, a line of low shacks. There’s no guesthouse so I went into the village govermnent compound and asked for help. They put me up in a room. The government and party cadres live in the compound in bunk rooms. The girl next to me had studied computer science at Urumqi university. There’s no running water. The loo is a squat 50m away. We all had dinner together suoman noodles.

The next day I rode on to the Chinese gate. It was sunny bright and cold. Amazingly there were CAMELS roaming wild across the wide mountain valleys. I suppose camels have to be wild somewhere but I didn’t expect them here. Rather mangy looking. Funny faces eyes so low down. They watch me go past, staring. In the afternoon, I saw the border. Red flag flying. A white border house. Lorries parked. I sat with my back against a milepost and ate tomatoes and naan looking at the gate opposite me across a river.

I stayed at a rubbish little guest house with no water and no loo. I went to see the gate and chatted with a border guard who then invited me for dinner and rushed about later pulling up metal blinds to go into little import export offices where he knew everone, to find a computer to go on the internet. He posted a gushing post in chinese which you might have seen.

Some big alsations were in a yard beind my window ay night and were barking and walking about all night. My arm was hurting again. Don’t know what’s wrong with it.

Anyway, the next day I changed my rmb for massive wads of dirty kyrgyz som notes in some dark grocers shops. There were big burly lorry drivers hanging round the lorries in bobble hats, who must be uzbeks or kyrgyz. There was an awfully strong gale blowing from the west ie headwind.

I went through three checks on the chinese side, and handed in my chinese departure form. I ticked the box ‘going home’. Goodbye China! Felt awfully sad suddenly, after all this long time in Hong Kong, and then long weeks cycling to get here.

At the last checkpoint, a guard lifted up a metal barrier pole and I went under, and he clanged it down again. I headed away towards the Kyrgyz entry gate.

I was really struggling against the blasting wind. There was a nice little cottage with white stones aournd flower beds and a green wood kiosk like in a National Trust carpark. Noone was there. Finally someone appeared in a dark green uniform and let me through to a parking area with loads of lorries and broken glass and bits of scrap metal. There was a hut like a brownie hut. It smelt just like the old mobile classrooms we had at junior school. There was noone inside except me. A man in a wood cubicle stamped my passport. I headed off but a guard turned me back again, to go through customs which I’d missed. That turned out also to be in the brownie hut place. Noone was there and the cubicle had been shut up, so I banged around until someone came. A nice man in green took me into an office and wrote something in a big ledger. It all seemed very haphazard. A guard helped push my bike up the slope out of the carpark and some lorry drivers shouted goodbye. And that was it. I was in Kyrgyzstan.

It was suddenly green, green slopes and little yellow flowers. I had a boiled egg and bagel sitting on a grassy bank squashing some very nice-smelling herbs. There was a village of white cottages with shiny pitched roofs of corrugated metal or something. People were playing volleyball on dust with no net and the ball blowing away. It was terribly windy. Birds were sort of going sideways dragged off by the gale. It was bitingly cold as soon as the sun dosappeared. There were huge dark rainclouds. The mountains now were near and huge and scary. Suddenly it started to rain. And then icy bits in the rain. After a nasty set of hairpins I realised that there were too many difficulties - uphill, against huge headwind, on a rough track - I wasn’t going to make it to Sary Tash the next place 70km away before dark. And I didn’t like the idea of sleeping out in the hail and wind at 3500m. So, I hitched a truck. Two cheery Uzbeks driving a Russian truck with 60 tons of coal picked me up. It was a very good thing I decided to hitch. It rained, hailed, and snowed as we battled along the rough high track to Sary Tash. The massive Pamir mountain range all along the south with black skies above. It was brutally cold. There were a few yurt tents on the enormous expanses of grass, with brown horses and foals. A few people bundled in thick clothes were doing things, a woman walking across the green to her tent, two children playing with a marmot (?) on a string. Otherwise empty amazingly beautiful mountains. We did two breathtaking passes shuddering up at about 10kph. We listened to Uzbek rap and the drivers sang along and bopped away grinning banging the steering wheel. Bits of the truck fell off, the speakers first, then the luggage box lid, then I opened the window and the whole glass fell out, and then the left wing mirror broke and had to be fixed back on with wire. They dropped me off at a lorry park 4km out of Osh. This was actually far from ideal as it was now 2am. I bumped nervously along the dark unlit roads until I reached the dark unlit town. It was not really fun at all. Somehow I found a hotel and avoided a nasty dog. Chinese time it was 4am and I was really tired after everything.

But today I’m fine. It is just astonishing to find everything so different. It’s much more difficult now everything’s in Russian or Kyrgyz and there’s been one powercut, but I have really enjoyed the knives and forks, the bread, the raw cabbage salads, the sunny pavements with birds singing and people sitting out having pancakes and tea. Tomorrow I’m hoping to set off north towards Bishkek.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 12:58 am and is filed under China, On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.