 |
| Nearly 5000 meter peaks along the Kyrgyzstan-China border |
After two days of rest, including a day trip by car to Song-Kul, we had had more than our share of
Naryn. It is a town of 35,000 people, which is a good jumping off point for
travel in the surrounding mountains, but which has very little to offer in
itself, especially in terms of restaurants (there were several fancy restaurants, but all seemed to have last seen business in 1989). There were definitely some enjoyable parts of our stay in Naryn: we discovered this Uzbek classic while in a strange outdoor nightclub, we rediscovered how easy it was to bike without 30 kg of bags, and we enjoyed a local art gallery and a scenic day trip to Lake Song-Kul. Regardless, we were well rested and ready to hit the road.
Our 10th biking day started off with a miserable
little climb up a canyon busy with road construction and truck traffic. Our
bikes were quickly coated with mud and we were coughing from all the dust.
Joep’s digestive system was mostly back to normal under the control of a diet
of only bananas. Once we were out of the road construction, we had a
wonderful day of biking. The small range of mountains south of Naryn was scenic
in its upper reaches. We reached a small pass where we saw the first sign for
Torugart, our final destination, 175 kilometers away. From here it was all
downhill on perfect pavement to At Bashi. This 30 kilometer stretch was by far
the smoothest and easiest biking we had the whole trip and, as such, was blissful. With
the snow capped At-Bashi mountain range visible across a large barren valley,
the scenery wasn’t half bad either. The landscape was reminiscent of California’s Owen’s Valley.
At the edge of At Bashi, we were greeted by a Soviet
military monument consisting of a MiG, a tank, and a few cannons. Not at all
the only Soviet monument we saw in Kyrgyzstan, but one of the most impressive.
There were several other impressive statues and monuments around At Bashi
including a large statue of a horse's head, the town namesake.
I was excited about At Bashi because of its Sunday Animal Market, at which we soon found ourselves by following pickup trucks full of sheep. Everyone from the surrounding area gathered for the market to do their weekly grocery shopping and to trade livestock. You can find everything from vegetables, to clothes, to simple electronics, to livestock, or even carpets at the market. The busy market covered a dusty open area along the river with the At-Bashi range as an impressive backdrop. We took turns guarding the bikes while wandering into the market for photography and grocery shopping. I had a great time photographing all the colorful sights of the market. However, while Joep was alone at the bikes, some drunken Kyrgyz person came up and started giving him trouble, even starting to push and shove, either because Joep said something weird in his broken Russian or just because this guy didn’t like foreigners. Another local was nice enough to intervene and lead the drunk away. We decided to move our bikes to the back of the market where the animals were being sold. I thought it was interesting to see the herders out selling their animals, but it was definitely not the best sight for those sensitive to the treatment of animals, with sheep and cows crowded into cramped quarters. I waited there next to some teenagers blasting music and making money from an old boxing arcade game while Joep had his turn in the market. After finishing our sightseeing and grocery shopping, we took a lunch break by the river. We attracted the attention of a couple of 13-year-old Kyrgyz boys and Joep took the opportunity to teach them important world cultural heritage, such as the Macarena, and useful English phrases, such as “sex on the beach”. One of the Kyrgyz boys was quite happy to repeat everything that Joep taught him. If you meet a teenage Kyrgyz boy asking for “sex on the beach”, Joep is to blame.
I was excited about At Bashi because of its Sunday Animal Market, at which we soon found ourselves by following pickup trucks full of sheep. Everyone from the surrounding area gathered for the market to do their weekly grocery shopping and to trade livestock. You can find everything from vegetables, to clothes, to simple electronics, to livestock, or even carpets at the market. The busy market covered a dusty open area along the river with the At-Bashi range as an impressive backdrop. We took turns guarding the bikes while wandering into the market for photography and grocery shopping. I had a great time photographing all the colorful sights of the market. However, while Joep was alone at the bikes, some drunken Kyrgyz person came up and started giving him trouble, even starting to push and shove, either because Joep said something weird in his broken Russian or just because this guy didn’t like foreigners. Another local was nice enough to intervene and lead the drunk away. We decided to move our bikes to the back of the market where the animals were being sold. I thought it was interesting to see the herders out selling their animals, but it was definitely not the best sight for those sensitive to the treatment of animals, with sheep and cows crowded into cramped quarters. I waited there next to some teenagers blasting music and making money from an old boxing arcade game while Joep had his turn in the market. After finishing our sightseeing and grocery shopping, we took a lunch break by the river. We attracted the attention of a couple of 13-year-old Kyrgyz boys and Joep took the opportunity to teach them important world cultural heritage, such as the Macarena, and useful English phrases, such as “sex on the beach”. One of the Kyrgyz boys was quite happy to repeat everything that Joep taught him. If you meet a teenage Kyrgyz boy asking for “sex on the beach”, Joep is to blame.
We decided to take the back roads for the rest of the day,
getting off the nice pavement, but seeing more of the rural countryside in the
valley. Particularly interesting were the plentiful burial monuments along the
road, which were made out of mud brick and slowly eroding into dust. We made a
long push to the town of Kazybek, where we hoped to find a lodging option or
two. While Kazybek was a substantial settlement (having, for example, a bus
connection to Bishkek) there was no guesthouse in town. Our remaining option
was to slowly walk through town hoping that someone would offer us a place to
stay. Sure enough, after being off of our bikes for about 5 minutes, a man
waved us over and invited us into his house. He showed us pictures of some other
foreign travelers who had stayed there and explained that hosting was something
he liked to do. He lived there with his wife and daughter as well as his elderly
father. The house looked basic from the outside, but was quite nice inside.
There was no furniture, but the house was covered in lots of nice rugs, leaving
plenty of space to lounge around.
I took a walk around the town, and was shortly called over
by a crazy looking man on a horse, who then got off his horse and insisted that
I get on it so that he could take a picture. He wanted a picture of me raising
my hands in the air while sitting on the horse. He had an old school camera
phone to snap a picture, but could not figure out how to take a picture on my
iPhone. I continued my walk around town, with this man following me on his
horse for a while. I also stopped to talk to another group where one old man
spoke English. He asked a bunch of questions about how I was traveling and
laughed a lot when I told him I was traveling with another man. We had been
told that all Kyrgyz people would think we are a gay couple, because there is
no other reason for two men to travel together in their culture, but I think this is the only
instance of this actually happening.
Back at the house, our hosts provided us with tea, bread,
and some tasty butter and jam, and otherwise mostly left us alone. Their 10-year-old
daughter showed us a photo album, which consisted mostly of family photos at
restaurants and was curious to look through our travel photos. We would have
liked to get to know the rest of the family better, but they kept to themselves.
This was the most well off family we stayed with and gave a very different
perspective than staying with the herders. It seemed like there was a good
prospect of their young daughter actually getting an education and traveling outside of
Kyrgyzstan.
 |
| Naryn, Kyrgyzstan |
 |
| Lake Song-Kul |
 |
| Herding cattle down the A365, the main road between Bishkek and China |
 |
| The At-Bashi Animal Market |
 |
| The Sunday market in At Bashi |
 |
| Ambassador of the west |
 |
| Friendly, but oblivious Kyrgyz traffic blazes by in a cloud of dust |
 |
| Burial monuments along the road between At Bashi and Kazybek |
 |
| Crazy Kyrgyz man on a horse |
 |
| Kazybek |
Day 13: Tash Rabat and the Russian sauna
We slept in until about 8 am at which point the host came in with a plate of bread and jam for breakfast. It seemed like they had to get going to work/school, and we quickly packed our things and got on our way as well. Of the many homestays we stayed at, this was the first that actually expected money, but we happily gave them the requested $8 for the two of us.
We had been out of water since the previous evening and were both very thirsty. We checked every magazin (Russian word for convenience store) in town, but none of them had cold water. None of them even had water without gas, which was a requirement for me. Joep ended up buying some warm gassy water and shaking it up to get rid of most of the gas. I decided to pump water from the local well and filter it (this might have been the first thing we tried if Joep hadn't had such a rough week digestively). There were already a couple locals hanging out at the well and more gathered as soon as I started pumping water. One man repeatedly tried to convince me using hand gestures that I could drink the water without filtering it, but I wanted to filter it out of precaution, and pretended not to understand. By the time I was done filtering enough water to last the day, there were at least a dozen people around the well. We were making quite a spectacle with our light hair, water filtration technology, and bicycles.
After a short bike ride we were back on the paved road and turned toward China. The scenery became almost completely featureless. We were biking through a vast grassland, the mountains so far away they were almost lost in the haze. Without a reference point, it didn't even look like we were going uphill, but it certainly felt like we were going uphill. Luckily the map agreed. It was an incredibly gradual climb; we gained a few hundred meters over the course of 15 or 20 kilometers. There wasn't a single turn over this distance. I really haven't seen this empty of a landscape anywhere. It was impressive. At some point it started to remind me of wandering off the edge of the map in a video game, where the same scenery starts to repeat over and over without a single landmark. Luckily, I am a fan of vast empty landscapes, so I thought this area was beautiful!
Our destination for the day was Tash Rabat, an old Silk Road Caravansary, where, a thousand years ago, the local lord (who we imagined to be roughly like Jabba the Hutt) welcomed and entertained travelers crossing the mountains between China and the West. One of the most impressive things about Tash Rabat was how remote it was. After traveling something like 40 km from the nearest modern settlement and still over 250 km from the nearest city, Kashgar, we turned up a rugged canyon and rode another 10 km into the mountains. To make it here a thousand years ago must have been quite an undertaking.
Tash Rabat was interesting and well worth the side trip, but I was a bit put off by the amount of trash around it and the oblivious placement of the large gravel parking lot right in the middle of the best picture. The building itself was a stone building set into the hillside with lots of little rooms and one large domed room with a throne set into the wall. It was fun to imagine the types of people who would make it this far into the mountains in the 12th-14th centuries. It would have surely been an interesting place.
There was a yurt camp right next to Tash Rabat, but we had past one on the bike ride in that had intrigued us. We didn't really want to stay right next to Tash Rabat anyway. On our bike ride back down to the other yurt camp, we stopped to talked to some other travelers. They told us that the yurt camp we wanted to stay at was $50 per night, per person! Having not spent more than $10 per person on lodging since Karakol, we were skeptical and assumed we could get a better deal. After all, we only had $40 between the two of us for the rest of our stay in Kyrgyzstan. Sure enough, the friendly guy running the camp said that he liked bike tourers and was willing to let us stay for $20 a person. We bargained him down a little more because we didn't want to be penniless for our last two days in Kyrgyzstan (there was absolutely nothing left before the border, definitely not an ATM). We immediately realized why the yurt was supposed to cost so much. There were fancy sleeping bags and comforters and there was a wood burning furnace in the yurt, which our host (Yuri) came in and lit for us.
When it was time for dinner, we went into the dining room with the other guests. For about the first time in Kyrgyzstan, there were souvenirs for sale, none of which we could afford with our remaining 6-7 dollars of Kyrgyz money. We thought about ordering a beer, which had a western price of $2, but decided we couldn't afford it. At some point a staff member came in and told us that we weren't allowed to eat in the dining room, that we'd have to eat in the kitchen with the staff. This sounded way better to us, so we happily complied. We ate with Yuri and a Russian geologist who was staying at the camp for a while because he was friends with the staff. The geologist was a huge muscular Siberian guy whose name was Vladimir (of course). Joep and Vladimir bonded over both being geologists and Joep was actually able to explain his research in simple enough English (mixed with lots of hand gestures) for Vladimir to understand. Joep still had a bag of siderite samples from Fairytale Canyon, so that helped. Vladimir was very excited about this and offered Joep a rock from his collection. Meanwhile, the meal we were having was delicious. I finally got to try an authentic Russian Borscht, which is a traditional beet soup and one of the first Russian words I learned on Duolingo. The meal continued with a tasty pasta, lots of watermelon, and a few other snacks. We mostly talked to Yuri and Vladimir, but the chef was very friendly to us as well, despite not speaking a word of English. She kept gesturing to us that we had to keep eating, even when we were very full. They encouraged us to try the Russian sauna, which was originally supposed to cost extra. We explained we really had no money left, but they said "no problem, we want to show you our tradition", so we agreed to try. They were asking us whether we wanted the "hard version with Vladimir or the soft version with Yuri". Having no idea what this meant, we responded "maybe a little bit of both."
We had some time to relax in the yurt, because the older tourists who were actually paying for the sauna got to go first. We were beginning to wonder whether we were going at all when Yuri came to get us. We went first with Vladimir into a tiny wooden hut where we wore nothing but funny Russian sauna hats. It was so hot you could hardly breathe. At this point we realized that what made Russian sauna different from other saunas is that you get a "massage" with an oak branch (AKA being hit repeatedly on the back with an oak branch while lying face down and struggling to breath). After that, we went outside to lie for one minute in the cold mountain stream. After two cycles of this, Yuri came outside and told Vladimir not to kill us. We then got a short dose of the "soft version" with Yuri, which involved gentler massage and more singing. So, authentic Russian sauna and skinny dipping in a cold mountain stream in the middle of the night, check, not sure I'll do that one again, but what an experience.
Day 14: Off the edge
of the map
From the Russian yurt camp, our plan was to head out across an undeveloped high altitude plateau for two days before reaching the Chinese border at Torugart Pass. Because Joep had had a rough night, with some residuals of food poisoning, we were quite intimidated to head out into this empty landscape. Since we would be above 3500 meters again, we were mainly concerned that we would once again have a rough time with the cold weather. Our only other option would be to head back to Naryn and get a shared van to the border, but our stubbornness drove us onwards. We thanked Yuri, Vladimir, and the others of Ak Sai Travel for their amazing hospitality and were off again.
We were shortly back on the main road and biking towards Torugart. There were only a couple settlements left on the map and we didn't expect much from them. Sure enough, the first settlement that was labeled on our map turned out to be almost completely abandoned, with maybe a family or two left living there. As we climbed over a small pass, only seeing a car every ten minutes or so, all of a sudden we started to see lots of motorhomes with Swiss and German license plates, including a few from Kanton Zurich. After about 20 such motorhomes passed us by, we saw one stopped on the side of the road and stopped to chat. They invited us in for warm noodles and coffee. They told us all about the group they were traveling with, a total of about 30 motorhomes from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Italy. It seemed to be mostly recently retired couples. They had traveled from Europe to Beijing, mostly through Russia, and were on their way back through Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. It sounded like a great adventure. They also wanted to hear about our trip and told us about their son, who was himself out on a big world trip. The coffee I got from them was (and probably always will be) the best coffee I've ever had. It was just your standard Nespresso or something, but having not had a proper Café Crème since leaving Europe over a month ago, and having not had anything but instant coffee all week, it was incredible!
After this stop, we headed down the hill to the first Kyrgyz checkpoint, marking the beginning of the long border zone. We were pretty intimidated heading into the border zone because the weather looked pretty bleak, there didn't appear to be any shelter anywhere for camping, and we weren't sure whether we could get back out of the border zone anytime in the next two days, which were Kyrgyz holidays. It was just a standard passport check and they let us through a gate. Sure enough, it started pouring down rain and blasting wind as soon as we got to the other side of the checkpoint. We kept biking to stay warm.
We kept on the lookout for anything that could offer shelter for camping. It was early in the day, but we didn't have very far to go and we still had two more nights before our appointment with the Chinese border. The landscape was completely empty and we decided against camping in a small canyon to instead go talk to the owner of a yurt and see if we could set up camp next to them. They allowed us to set up our tent next to theirs and invited us inside for tea. We hung out in the yurt for the rest of the afternoon, reading and relaxing. It seemed the older couple appreciated having us there, because we were able to keep their young grandson entertained. We conversed some with them using our Russian phrasebook, covering things like the fact that they had been married for 40 years and that they had over 600 sheep. We tried to mostly take care of ourselves by cooking our own dinner, since we didn't have any money left to give them. It was a bit awkward, since normally the Kyrgyz want to provide for their guests, but we didn't feel comfortable with this since we had come up to them looking for a place to stay. It was a difficult situation to handle. I ended up cooking some lentils on their stove, which took far too long because they weren't the thin lentils that I was used to. We offered them some of our dinner, but only the kid was interested, and he seemed to later regret taking some of our weird food. They had their own dinner of dumplings, which seemed to be bought from a store in At Bashi and reheated in the yurt. After dinner we went to our tent to give them some privacy and had a fairly warm, long nights sleep.
Day 15: Limbo in the
middle of nowhere
We only had about 40 km left to the border. Mileposts gradually counted down the remaining kilometers as we continued to bike through this vast barren landscape. We were pretty exhausted from the cumulative exertion of the whole trip, but we trudged on. I felt I was going excruciatingly slow, but it could have also been the vast scale of the landscape. There was quite a bit of road construction, with Chinese workers helping to maintain and improve the road that was an important trading route between China and Central Asia, but the construction generally didn't detract from the sweeping views. After climbing a small hill, we were welcomed by some beautiful mountain views and a distant view over Lake Chatyr Kol. It was quite a pleasant sunny day. Then, as we were stopped for a picture, Joep lost balance and toppled over, his bike falling on top of him. His knee popped out of place and he gave out a yell. I hadn't seen exactly what happened, but rushed over to him. He had dislocated his knee before and was able to quickly pop it back into place. After a long sequence of bad things happening to him, from food poisoning, to flat tires, to exhaustion, to more food poisoning, he was understandably fed up. But he still didn't give up. After a 20 minute break or so, and with nothing else to do, he wanted to try to continue. We continued slowly and biking seemed to work for him.
As we continued, the right side of the road was flanked by two layers of barbed wire fence keeping us away from the Chinese border. There was even a guard tower at one point, but it appeared to be abandoned. It didn't take us a lot longer to get to the Kyrgyz border station, which, to our surprise, was manned, in spite of the holiday. Partly because the border fence limited us to one side of the road, we hadn't seen many camping options. The settlement around the border seemed very sketchy. There was a lot of run down housing for the construction workers. We decided to ask the border guard if there was a place we could camp so we could at least say we got permission from someone if we got into any trouble. He pointed us to a small hill 500 meters or so from the border. We went to the far side of the hill, out of sight from the settlement, and set up camp. We had a long day of waiting ahead of us before we crossed the border first thing the next day. Joep was happy to hang out in camp, but I wanted to try to bike down to the lake, Chatyr Kol. This didn't really work out, as I quickly realized that the lake was further away than I thought and that there weren't really any roads heading down into the swampy landscape around it.
Back at camp, we cooked dinner and got into the tent before the cold set in for the night. We had been watching some distant storm clouds with concern, but they never ended up hitting us. It was a really cold evening, too cold to want to leave the tent, so we just sat in the tent, read, and listened to music. It was a cold night, but I was able to keep warm by engulfing myself in my lightweight down sleeping bag. On the other hand, Joep, who still didn't have a hat, said it was the coldest night of his life.
Day 16: Culture shock
We were up at the crack of dawn and ready to cross the border. I could have spent some more time in Kyrgyzstan, but I was ready to make it back to warmth and civilization and to have some better food and a warm shower. The views in the morning were stunning and I took some last time to absorb this amazing landscape and to take some last pictures while packing up camp.
We were at the border about 15 minutes before it opened. We went to the front of a line of trucks waiting at the border, assuming that the procedure for us was probably different than for them. A German guy in a big SUV followed us and we got to chatting with him. He had driven all the way there from Germany (via Northern Africa) and was accumulating flag stickers on his truck from all the countries he had been to. It sounded like it was going to be quite the adventure for him to get his car into China and get authorized to drive there.
The border opened and the guards let us through first. This was just the Kyrgyz side of the border and was fairly straightforward, as we expected. We were much more worried about the Chinese border to come. We got our exit stamps and biked onwards towards the Chinese checkpoint, which was another 9 km away at the top of Torugart Pass, at an elevation of 3752 m. We were both really pumped up to be so close to Torugart Pass, which after all the time we'd spent planning this trip, reading about it, and biking towards it, was somewhat of a mythical place to us. The scenery wasn't any more interesting, but there was an element of mystery and intrigue to the place because of how hard it was to travel here. This was both bureaucratically and physically the hardest border crossing I've ever been to.
Torugart is primarily a border for Chinese truckers and is only open to foreigners with special permission from a tourism company. We had said special permission, but it was not cheap to obtain at $165 per person. This did, however, include an English speaking guide and driver, to pick us up from the border and drive us 5 hours to Kashgar. We were not allowed to simply bike across the border. I was really paranoid about showing my camera anywhere near the Chinese border and kept it packed away from the time we left camp until we got to Kashgar. The German guy had warned us about stories where the Chinese border guards sorted through your photos and other files for hours.
In less than 20 minutes of biking, we were at Torugart Pass where there was a closed gate. The Chinese officials on the other side could not speak English and gave no indication of when the gate would open. We got our tour operator on the phone and, after talking to the border guard, he told us everything was fine and we just had to wait. Slowly, all the commercial trucks crossing the border caught up with us. There were a couple Chinese tourists taking photos with the monument marking the pass and we at least felt comfortable getting a picture of us there with Joep's camera, while I kept my SLR hidden away. Eventually the truckers started to go through, but we had to wait for our tour guide to pick us up with a van, because we were not allowed to cross the border on our own. It wasn't so long before he showed up. We disassembled our bikes and bags and hopped in the van. The bike trip was done. We were headed into China!
The guide told us that there were still 3 Chinese checkpoint to make it through, spread out over the next several hours of driving. The first one was just down the road. This was the checkpoint where our bags would be searched. Whatever questioning and interaction with the guards was required, the guide took care of for us. The whole luggage search was a bit strange, because they did not even really glance in the car, where we had unloaded some of our smaller items like snacks and jackets. Ironically, after all my concern about not taking pictures near the border, the border guards actually didn't even find my camera. Given that it weighs over a kilogram and was exactly the kind of thing they were searching for, this was rather surprising. But my camera bag was in such a ragged state that it didn't look like much.
Without any problems, we were through the first checkpoint and had several hours of driving to enjoy the changing scenery and learn from the guide a bit about Kashgar and the Uighur culture of the region. The landscape we drove through was geologically amazing, changing from a high mountain plateau to a deep canyon full of interesting sedimentary deposits, colorful layers, and an enormous braided river. This continued for an hour or two on mostly dirt road, without passing through much civilization at all. Eventually we encountered the occasional town and the geology became a bit less interesting. We passed through the two remaining checkpoints, which were a bureaucratic mess and took some time, but caused no further trouble.
We stopped for an early dinner at a roadside restaurant. We had some Uighur noodles and learned a bit more of the Uighur customs. Two notable customs were the preference for sitting crosslegged in carpeted booths rather than in chairs and the impoliteness of blowing or wiping your nose, which I got in trouble for a few times because of the spicy food.
After dinner we continued down the hill and gradually saw more and more signs of civilization. As we entered the outskirts of Kashgar, we both stared in bewilderment at all the people driving by on motorized scooters and carts with all kinds of amazingly colorful clothing, head scarves, and hats. When we arrived in Kashgar, we had to unpack our (now partly disassembled) bikes and all of our bags on the side of a busy street in the middle of rush hour, with pedestrians and scooters zipping by all around us. After being all alone in the wilderness for several days, it was pretty overwhelming. We arrived at our hostel and learned that the "private tents" we reserved on Hostelworld were actually spots on the floor of the common area. We were not at all okay with this and managed to upgrade to a private room. Despite this initial misunderstanding, the hostel was awesome, with a very social atmosphere and lots of interesting travelers.
Having made it through this whole Kyrgyzstan trip without getting sick at all, I think my body had had enough of all this. I felt like a zombie for several hours and was completely unable to talk to some of the travelers who tried to start conversations with us. I ended up with a crazy headache, which I later attributed to a rapid decrease in elevation, and had to lie in bed with the lights off for a few hours. I felt better by around 8 pm, found Joep, and we went out to explore the city. As with everywhere in China, there were lots of flashing neon lights. There were also a lot of other interesting sights, like sheep being sold on the street and a lively night market full of lots of weird food. There were, in particular, lots of unusual meat options like a full sheep's head, but we stuck to the vegetarian food we could find, chickpeas, vegetables, and cold noodles in a spicy oily sauce. It was very well spiced and quite different from anything I'd eaten before. We were exhausted and went back to the hostel to sleep, Joep with another 2 days to explore Kashgar, me with 6.
It's amazing how many stories we took away from our relatively short 16 day trip through Kyrgyzstan. There is no country I can recommend more for off-the-beaten-track nature travel and cultural immersion. As for China, there are many more stories to come.
We slept in until about 8 am at which point the host came in with a plate of bread and jam for breakfast. It seemed like they had to get going to work/school, and we quickly packed our things and got on our way as well. Of the many homestays we stayed at, this was the first that actually expected money, but we happily gave them the requested $8 for the two of us.
We had been out of water since the previous evening and were both very thirsty. We checked every magazin (Russian word for convenience store) in town, but none of them had cold water. None of them even had water without gas, which was a requirement for me. Joep ended up buying some warm gassy water and shaking it up to get rid of most of the gas. I decided to pump water from the local well and filter it (this might have been the first thing we tried if Joep hadn't had such a rough week digestively). There were already a couple locals hanging out at the well and more gathered as soon as I started pumping water. One man repeatedly tried to convince me using hand gestures that I could drink the water without filtering it, but I wanted to filter it out of precaution, and pretended not to understand. By the time I was done filtering enough water to last the day, there were at least a dozen people around the well. We were making quite a spectacle with our light hair, water filtration technology, and bicycles.
After a short bike ride we were back on the paved road and turned toward China. The scenery became almost completely featureless. We were biking through a vast grassland, the mountains so far away they were almost lost in the haze. Without a reference point, it didn't even look like we were going uphill, but it certainly felt like we were going uphill. Luckily the map agreed. It was an incredibly gradual climb; we gained a few hundred meters over the course of 15 or 20 kilometers. There wasn't a single turn over this distance. I really haven't seen this empty of a landscape anywhere. It was impressive. At some point it started to remind me of wandering off the edge of the map in a video game, where the same scenery starts to repeat over and over without a single landmark. Luckily, I am a fan of vast empty landscapes, so I thought this area was beautiful!
Our destination for the day was Tash Rabat, an old Silk Road Caravansary, where, a thousand years ago, the local lord (who we imagined to be roughly like Jabba the Hutt) welcomed and entertained travelers crossing the mountains between China and the West. One of the most impressive things about Tash Rabat was how remote it was. After traveling something like 40 km from the nearest modern settlement and still over 250 km from the nearest city, Kashgar, we turned up a rugged canyon and rode another 10 km into the mountains. To make it here a thousand years ago must have been quite an undertaking.
Tash Rabat was interesting and well worth the side trip, but I was a bit put off by the amount of trash around it and the oblivious placement of the large gravel parking lot right in the middle of the best picture. The building itself was a stone building set into the hillside with lots of little rooms and one large domed room with a throne set into the wall. It was fun to imagine the types of people who would make it this far into the mountains in the 12th-14th centuries. It would have surely been an interesting place.
There was a yurt camp right next to Tash Rabat, but we had past one on the bike ride in that had intrigued us. We didn't really want to stay right next to Tash Rabat anyway. On our bike ride back down to the other yurt camp, we stopped to talked to some other travelers. They told us that the yurt camp we wanted to stay at was $50 per night, per person! Having not spent more than $10 per person on lodging since Karakol, we were skeptical and assumed we could get a better deal. After all, we only had $40 between the two of us for the rest of our stay in Kyrgyzstan. Sure enough, the friendly guy running the camp said that he liked bike tourers and was willing to let us stay for $20 a person. We bargained him down a little more because we didn't want to be penniless for our last two days in Kyrgyzstan (there was absolutely nothing left before the border, definitely not an ATM). We immediately realized why the yurt was supposed to cost so much. There were fancy sleeping bags and comforters and there was a wood burning furnace in the yurt, which our host (Yuri) came in and lit for us.
When it was time for dinner, we went into the dining room with the other guests. For about the first time in Kyrgyzstan, there were souvenirs for sale, none of which we could afford with our remaining 6-7 dollars of Kyrgyz money. We thought about ordering a beer, which had a western price of $2, but decided we couldn't afford it. At some point a staff member came in and told us that we weren't allowed to eat in the dining room, that we'd have to eat in the kitchen with the staff. This sounded way better to us, so we happily complied. We ate with Yuri and a Russian geologist who was staying at the camp for a while because he was friends with the staff. The geologist was a huge muscular Siberian guy whose name was Vladimir (of course). Joep and Vladimir bonded over both being geologists and Joep was actually able to explain his research in simple enough English (mixed with lots of hand gestures) for Vladimir to understand. Joep still had a bag of siderite samples from Fairytale Canyon, so that helped. Vladimir was very excited about this and offered Joep a rock from his collection. Meanwhile, the meal we were having was delicious. I finally got to try an authentic Russian Borscht, which is a traditional beet soup and one of the first Russian words I learned on Duolingo. The meal continued with a tasty pasta, lots of watermelon, and a few other snacks. We mostly talked to Yuri and Vladimir, but the chef was very friendly to us as well, despite not speaking a word of English. She kept gesturing to us that we had to keep eating, even when we were very full. They encouraged us to try the Russian sauna, which was originally supposed to cost extra. We explained we really had no money left, but they said "no problem, we want to show you our tradition", so we agreed to try. They were asking us whether we wanted the "hard version with Vladimir or the soft version with Yuri". Having no idea what this meant, we responded "maybe a little bit of both."
We had some time to relax in the yurt, because the older tourists who were actually paying for the sauna got to go first. We were beginning to wonder whether we were going at all when Yuri came to get us. We went first with Vladimir into a tiny wooden hut where we wore nothing but funny Russian sauna hats. It was so hot you could hardly breathe. At this point we realized that what made Russian sauna different from other saunas is that you get a "massage" with an oak branch (AKA being hit repeatedly on the back with an oak branch while lying face down and struggling to breath). After that, we went outside to lie for one minute in the cold mountain stream. After two cycles of this, Yuri came outside and told Vladimir not to kill us. We then got a short dose of the "soft version" with Yuri, which involved gentler massage and more singing. So, authentic Russian sauna and skinny dipping in a cold mountain stream in the middle of the night, check, not sure I'll do that one again, but what an experience.
 |
| Half the town of Kazybek gathers around the water fountain to observe the spectacle of the weird foreigners |
 |
| Looking back towards At Bashi, not a single turn since Kazybek |
 |
| A lone house in the desolate landscape |
 |
| The amazing Ak Sai Yurt Camp along the creek near Tash Rabat |
 | ||||
| The Russian sauna |
From the Russian yurt camp, our plan was to head out across an undeveloped high altitude plateau for two days before reaching the Chinese border at Torugart Pass. Because Joep had had a rough night, with some residuals of food poisoning, we were quite intimidated to head out into this empty landscape. Since we would be above 3500 meters again, we were mainly concerned that we would once again have a rough time with the cold weather. Our only other option would be to head back to Naryn and get a shared van to the border, but our stubbornness drove us onwards. We thanked Yuri, Vladimir, and the others of Ak Sai Travel for their amazing hospitality and were off again.
We were shortly back on the main road and biking towards Torugart. There were only a couple settlements left on the map and we didn't expect much from them. Sure enough, the first settlement that was labeled on our map turned out to be almost completely abandoned, with maybe a family or two left living there. As we climbed over a small pass, only seeing a car every ten minutes or so, all of a sudden we started to see lots of motorhomes with Swiss and German license plates, including a few from Kanton Zurich. After about 20 such motorhomes passed us by, we saw one stopped on the side of the road and stopped to chat. They invited us in for warm noodles and coffee. They told us all about the group they were traveling with, a total of about 30 motorhomes from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Italy. It seemed to be mostly recently retired couples. They had traveled from Europe to Beijing, mostly through Russia, and were on their way back through Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. It sounded like a great adventure. They also wanted to hear about our trip and told us about their son, who was himself out on a big world trip. The coffee I got from them was (and probably always will be) the best coffee I've ever had. It was just your standard Nespresso or something, but having not had a proper Café Crème since leaving Europe over a month ago, and having not had anything but instant coffee all week, it was incredible!
After this stop, we headed down the hill to the first Kyrgyz checkpoint, marking the beginning of the long border zone. We were pretty intimidated heading into the border zone because the weather looked pretty bleak, there didn't appear to be any shelter anywhere for camping, and we weren't sure whether we could get back out of the border zone anytime in the next two days, which were Kyrgyz holidays. It was just a standard passport check and they let us through a gate. Sure enough, it started pouring down rain and blasting wind as soon as we got to the other side of the checkpoint. We kept biking to stay warm.
We kept on the lookout for anything that could offer shelter for camping. It was early in the day, but we didn't have very far to go and we still had two more nights before our appointment with the Chinese border. The landscape was completely empty and we decided against camping in a small canyon to instead go talk to the owner of a yurt and see if we could set up camp next to them. They allowed us to set up our tent next to theirs and invited us inside for tea. We hung out in the yurt for the rest of the afternoon, reading and relaxing. It seemed the older couple appreciated having us there, because we were able to keep their young grandson entertained. We conversed some with them using our Russian phrasebook, covering things like the fact that they had been married for 40 years and that they had over 600 sheep. We tried to mostly take care of ourselves by cooking our own dinner, since we didn't have any money left to give them. It was a bit awkward, since normally the Kyrgyz want to provide for their guests, but we didn't feel comfortable with this since we had come up to them looking for a place to stay. It was a difficult situation to handle. I ended up cooking some lentils on their stove, which took far too long because they weren't the thin lentils that I was used to. We offered them some of our dinner, but only the kid was interested, and he seemed to later regret taking some of our weird food. They had their own dinner of dumplings, which seemed to be bought from a store in At Bashi and reheated in the yurt. After dinner we went to our tent to give them some privacy and had a fairly warm, long nights sleep.
 |
| The road to China goes through a barren mountainous part of the world |
 |
| Looking out at the first border post and the vast no-man's land on the way to China |
 |
| Successfully into the border zone, now our only fear is the weather |
 |
| Empty landscape, rainy weather |
 |
| Huddled up next to a yurt |
 |
| 600 sheep, what more do you need |
 |
| Impressively barren. Note the donkey. Also the 5000 meter peaked mixed in with the clouds |
We only had about 40 km left to the border. Mileposts gradually counted down the remaining kilometers as we continued to bike through this vast barren landscape. We were pretty exhausted from the cumulative exertion of the whole trip, but we trudged on. I felt I was going excruciatingly slow, but it could have also been the vast scale of the landscape. There was quite a bit of road construction, with Chinese workers helping to maintain and improve the road that was an important trading route between China and Central Asia, but the construction generally didn't detract from the sweeping views. After climbing a small hill, we were welcomed by some beautiful mountain views and a distant view over Lake Chatyr Kol. It was quite a pleasant sunny day. Then, as we were stopped for a picture, Joep lost balance and toppled over, his bike falling on top of him. His knee popped out of place and he gave out a yell. I hadn't seen exactly what happened, but rushed over to him. He had dislocated his knee before and was able to quickly pop it back into place. After a long sequence of bad things happening to him, from food poisoning, to flat tires, to exhaustion, to more food poisoning, he was understandably fed up. But he still didn't give up. After a 20 minute break or so, and with nothing else to do, he wanted to try to continue. We continued slowly and biking seemed to work for him.
As we continued, the right side of the road was flanked by two layers of barbed wire fence keeping us away from the Chinese border. There was even a guard tower at one point, but it appeared to be abandoned. It didn't take us a lot longer to get to the Kyrgyz border station, which, to our surprise, was manned, in spite of the holiday. Partly because the border fence limited us to one side of the road, we hadn't seen many camping options. The settlement around the border seemed very sketchy. There was a lot of run down housing for the construction workers. We decided to ask the border guard if there was a place we could camp so we could at least say we got permission from someone if we got into any trouble. He pointed us to a small hill 500 meters or so from the border. We went to the far side of the hill, out of sight from the settlement, and set up camp. We had a long day of waiting ahead of us before we crossed the border first thing the next day. Joep was happy to hang out in camp, but I wanted to try to bike down to the lake, Chatyr Kol. This didn't really work out, as I quickly realized that the lake was further away than I thought and that there weren't really any roads heading down into the swampy landscape around it.
Back at camp, we cooked dinner and got into the tent before the cold set in for the night. We had been watching some distant storm clouds with concern, but they never ended up hitting us. It was a really cold evening, too cold to want to leave the tent, so we just sat in the tent, read, and listened to music. It was a cold night, but I was able to keep warm by engulfing myself in my lightweight down sleeping bag. On the other hand, Joep, who still didn't have a hat, said it was the coldest night of his life.
 |
| Counting down the kilometers to the border |
 |
| A solitary herder, living at the end of the earth. |
 |
| Nearing Torugart |
 |
| A long afternoon and evening of rest before crossing the border the next morning |
 |
| Storms crossing the high altitude plain around Lake Chatyr Kol |
 |
| Chinese trucks stopped along the road after entering Kyrgyzstan |
We were up at the crack of dawn and ready to cross the border. I could have spent some more time in Kyrgyzstan, but I was ready to make it back to warmth and civilization and to have some better food and a warm shower. The views in the morning were stunning and I took some last time to absorb this amazing landscape and to take some last pictures while packing up camp.
We were at the border about 15 minutes before it opened. We went to the front of a line of trucks waiting at the border, assuming that the procedure for us was probably different than for them. A German guy in a big SUV followed us and we got to chatting with him. He had driven all the way there from Germany (via Northern Africa) and was accumulating flag stickers on his truck from all the countries he had been to. It sounded like it was going to be quite the adventure for him to get his car into China and get authorized to drive there.
The border opened and the guards let us through first. This was just the Kyrgyz side of the border and was fairly straightforward, as we expected. We were much more worried about the Chinese border to come. We got our exit stamps and biked onwards towards the Chinese checkpoint, which was another 9 km away at the top of Torugart Pass, at an elevation of 3752 m. We were both really pumped up to be so close to Torugart Pass, which after all the time we'd spent planning this trip, reading about it, and biking towards it, was somewhat of a mythical place to us. The scenery wasn't any more interesting, but there was an element of mystery and intrigue to the place because of how hard it was to travel here. This was both bureaucratically and physically the hardest border crossing I've ever been to.
Torugart is primarily a border for Chinese truckers and is only open to foreigners with special permission from a tourism company. We had said special permission, but it was not cheap to obtain at $165 per person. This did, however, include an English speaking guide and driver, to pick us up from the border and drive us 5 hours to Kashgar. We were not allowed to simply bike across the border. I was really paranoid about showing my camera anywhere near the Chinese border and kept it packed away from the time we left camp until we got to Kashgar. The German guy had warned us about stories where the Chinese border guards sorted through your photos and other files for hours.
In less than 20 minutes of biking, we were at Torugart Pass where there was a closed gate. The Chinese officials on the other side could not speak English and gave no indication of when the gate would open. We got our tour operator on the phone and, after talking to the border guard, he told us everything was fine and we just had to wait. Slowly, all the commercial trucks crossing the border caught up with us. There were a couple Chinese tourists taking photos with the monument marking the pass and we at least felt comfortable getting a picture of us there with Joep's camera, while I kept my SLR hidden away. Eventually the truckers started to go through, but we had to wait for our tour guide to pick us up with a van, because we were not allowed to cross the border on our own. It wasn't so long before he showed up. We disassembled our bikes and bags and hopped in the van. The bike trip was done. We were headed into China!
The guide told us that there were still 3 Chinese checkpoint to make it through, spread out over the next several hours of driving. The first one was just down the road. This was the checkpoint where our bags would be searched. Whatever questioning and interaction with the guards was required, the guide took care of for us. The whole luggage search was a bit strange, because they did not even really glance in the car, where we had unloaded some of our smaller items like snacks and jackets. Ironically, after all my concern about not taking pictures near the border, the border guards actually didn't even find my camera. Given that it weighs over a kilogram and was exactly the kind of thing they were searching for, this was rather surprising. But my camera bag was in such a ragged state that it didn't look like much.
Without any problems, we were through the first checkpoint and had several hours of driving to enjoy the changing scenery and learn from the guide a bit about Kashgar and the Uighur culture of the region. The landscape we drove through was geologically amazing, changing from a high mountain plateau to a deep canyon full of interesting sedimentary deposits, colorful layers, and an enormous braided river. This continued for an hour or two on mostly dirt road, without passing through much civilization at all. Eventually we encountered the occasional town and the geology became a bit less interesting. We passed through the two remaining checkpoints, which were a bureaucratic mess and took some time, but caused no further trouble.
We stopped for an early dinner at a roadside restaurant. We had some Uighur noodles and learned a bit more of the Uighur customs. Two notable customs were the preference for sitting crosslegged in carpeted booths rather than in chairs and the impoliteness of blowing or wiping your nose, which I got in trouble for a few times because of the spicy food.
After dinner we continued down the hill and gradually saw more and more signs of civilization. As we entered the outskirts of Kashgar, we both stared in bewilderment at all the people driving by on motorized scooters and carts with all kinds of amazingly colorful clothing, head scarves, and hats. When we arrived in Kashgar, we had to unpack our (now partly disassembled) bikes and all of our bags on the side of a busy street in the middle of rush hour, with pedestrians and scooters zipping by all around us. After being all alone in the wilderness for several days, it was pretty overwhelming. We arrived at our hostel and learned that the "private tents" we reserved on Hostelworld were actually spots on the floor of the common area. We were not at all okay with this and managed to upgrade to a private room. Despite this initial misunderstanding, the hostel was awesome, with a very social atmosphere and lots of interesting travelers.
Having made it through this whole Kyrgyzstan trip without getting sick at all, I think my body had had enough of all this. I felt like a zombie for several hours and was completely unable to talk to some of the travelers who tried to start conversations with us. I ended up with a crazy headache, which I later attributed to a rapid decrease in elevation, and had to lie in bed with the lights off for a few hours. I felt better by around 8 pm, found Joep, and we went out to explore the city. As with everywhere in China, there were lots of flashing neon lights. There were also a lot of other interesting sights, like sheep being sold on the street and a lively night market full of lots of weird food. There were, in particular, lots of unusual meat options like a full sheep's head, but we stuck to the vegetarian food we could find, chickpeas, vegetables, and cold noodles in a spicy oily sauce. It was very well spiced and quite different from anything I'd eaten before. We were exhausted and went back to the hostel to sleep, Joep with another 2 days to explore Kashgar, me with 6.
It's amazing how many stories we took away from our relatively short 16 day trip through Kyrgyzstan. There is no country I can recommend more for off-the-beaten-track nature travel and cultural immersion. As for China, there are many more stories to come.
 |
| The view from camp over Lake Chatyr Kol and the range of mountains beyond |
 |
| More views from our camp |
 |
| Torugart pass. Big smiles, we made it! |
 |
| Arriving in civilization on the outskirts of Kashgar |
 |
| Kashgar night market |
 |
| The lively streets of Kashgar by night |
 |
| Celebrating an amazing trip with beers on the roof of our Kashgar hostel |
Hello from Jim, who much enjoyed your description of your journey over Torugart Pass, especially since my wife and I made the same journey (but starting in Almaty) in 1993 on bicycles, when the road was unpaved. It was August, but snowing the night before Torugart - so cold! In 1993 the border was open but nobody knew what the requirements were to cross, so we just pedaled up and hoped for the best. Cyclists were a novelty in 1993, and both the Kyrgyz and Chinese let us pass without a hitch, despite having no transport or Chinese agency picking us up on the Chinese side. We rolled into China and a few minutes later I stopped to relish our good luck, and my wife Sonya said: Keep moving, because they might change their mind! So we kept riding, all the way to Kashgar, which seemed like Manhattan after the three weeks it had taken to ride from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for writing your blog. I was inspired by the Takla Makan desert of China to pedal to the lowest point on each continent, and you can read my stories in my book, Into Thick Air.
Hi Robert, first of all, great blog, I really enjoy climate science. My wife values climate change but not so much the science :D In any case, we are considering doing the Torugart pass soon. We see that the "Erkeshtam" pass is less complicated, but it also looks less spectacular. Was it hard for you to arrange a Chinese tour agency? Could you point me in the right direction towards such an agency or how I'd find one? Would you do the same pass again in hindsight?
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot!
Steven