Ka Pai Kiwis

Our hotel, goodbye Kashgar.  It seems like a big day even though we travelled only 270km. We had trouble with paperwork at one of the checkpoints, we stayed out of it and left it to the guide to sort out, which eventually he did. Ten minutes up the road the guide pulled over, in the confusion at the checkpoint he had left his guide card behind, so we lay in the sun on the side if the road for him to fetch it. The scenery has been spectacular again, mountain vistas, lakes both natural and man made, and dry arid deserts.  Our guide ahead of us.  We also touched just 4000 metres today. We are in Tashkurgen, a border town at a little over 3000 metres. Tashkurgen is inhabited mainly Tajik people who are Shia muslims.   Everyone here is saying we are in for a long day tomorrow, so it seems it may be more difficult leaving China than entering it.  We must have driven through about 80km of roadworks today, the road is being widened so it looks like the Karakorum highway...

Happy birthday to my wonderful travel mate. She looks out for me and I wouldn’t survive without the amazing contribution from the other half of the Ka Pai Kiwis team.  Last night we headed out looking for dinner, after perusing the offerings from the food carts we settled for a simple little restaurant that looked popular. The young man operating the bbq at the entrance took a shine to us and helped us to order. We ordered a meat bbq’d kebab each and a noodle dish to share. From the menu it looked like we ordered beef and chicken but we got lamb/lambs fry and probably pork.  I have to take my hat off to Robyn, she tucked in to the lambs fry like a good un. We imagined having to spend her birthday on the loo as the the cleanliness of the place wasn’t perfect, but here we are, all good. Our immune systems must be adapting.  Oops. Spoke too soon. I won’t elaborate.  ( I will - Marks cast iron stomach has not lived up to its reputation today,  needless to say we hav...

Its 8am and still dark outside. This crazy manipulation of time doesn’t make much sense to us, but the locals seem to have adapted as there is nothing happening outside at all.  On a different topic we have made a few plans. We have decided to ship the bike home from Kuala Lumpur. There are several reasons for this, the monsoon will be happening in Indonesia which will inevitably slow us down. To ship from Dili to Darwin could take 3 weeks as the ship goes in a circuit from Dili- Singapore- Darwin. Travelling in the north of Australia at this time is not ideal, and we definitely said we wanted to be home for Christmas.  So it wasn’t a difficult decision when all things were considered. We hope to finish the journey another time.  Our friends Reijo and Barbra who we were with on Santorini will be in Singapore around the same time so we have arranged a few days holiday with them in Bali , we will fly home from there and hopefully collect the bike in Auckland and we should b...

We overslept a little so we ate a hurried breakfast as I had to meet the guide to return to the customs house to collect the bike. Robyn opted to stay at the hotel and do a few chores including getting some money.  The bike process was easy just paperwork really. I was back at the hotel at about 1:30. Robyn had found an ATM that worked so we can eat at least.  We must spend  an additional night here due to the fact that we are two days late getting here and the border to Pakistan is not open on weekends.  Kashgar is a pleasant enough city and I’m sure we will enjoy exploring it.  Our hotel is modern and the room is large with a lounge room and separate bedroom so we will be comfortable. It is centrally located so we can walk to everything.  We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering close to the hotel.  There is a nice craft precinct we looked around so we will revisit there when it is cooler.  Went out again later on and found a really nea...

You might want to pour yourself a long one for this post, I needed one after writing it!   We knew crossing into China was always going to be testing, we decided to up it a notch or two just to make sure our stress levels stayed at supermax. The rain I mentioned yesterday just did not let up and we had puddles on the floor when we woke up. Luckily I realised early on and put everything up high.  We had a pot belly stove which we didn’t light, but on it I put passports and USD for safe keeping. What I didn’t count on was water running down the flue and pooling on top of the stove and our passports and money. Oh shit, shit and double shit. This must be a bad dream. Unfortunately not.  So we headed to the kitchen the only source of heat, the lady was so nice, she sent out a man to start the generator and out came a hair dryer, so here I am at 7 o’clock trying to separate pages of the passports and blotting up the water with napkins and then getting to work with the hairdryer...

So our last full day in Kyrgyzstan and indeed all of the former soviet stans. Kyrgyzstan is a really beautiful country that more people should see. There is huge potential for tourism here but it will take a lot to develop it. So if you want to see a raw and beautiful place this is it. A very pleasant morning our first port of call was a tourism office to see if they could photocopy a few copies of our passports, we have been told we may need them for checkpoints along the Karakoram Highway. The people were friendly and happy to oblige at no charge. Then a nice drive on a good road towards Tash Rabat.  The area is very barren and the further south we got the scarcer the population. I had marked the last petrol station in maps.me but when we got there it has closed down for good. So a 15km backtrack for gas.  Next on the agenda was accomodation, we were hoping for something on the main road but unfortunately it was the same story as the gas, the only game in town was closed dow...