Getting into Tibet
Day 1
Rocked up at the Kashgar bus station trying to find out when the bus leaves for Yecheng. Turned out that there were apparently no busses on Sundays. Quick decision : let's go today.
A redbean soup with tofu dumplings for breakfast, and our shopping spree begun. First, a whole department store full of random crap - torches, cooking utensils, guitars, t.v.'s, soap. Was under the impression that you couldn't bargain in a department store : wrong. Best find : an L.E.D. torch powered by a single AA battery for $8.
Then some gorgeous young girls dragged us into their clothing store. Quite healthy actually, given that my only pair of pants hadn't been washed since Uzbekistan, was covered with my own vomit and had two sewed up rips in it.
Finally, food. 20 packs of noodles, a few kilos of dried fruit, lollies... all packed into a Chechen bag. We were set to go... or so we thought.
As soon as we got back to the hotel we were confronted with the sight of yesterday's cops escorting three women into their car - the three women who had robbed us. One of them was holding a fat wad of our souveneir money. Into a taxi and to the police station. Lovely place - spitoons everywhere, fool of green mucus and cigarette butts. Then to a fotographer to fotograph our money. Bastards made us pay for the pleasure and for the taxi. Then made us sit for 2 hours doing nothing, in the hope Jonathan would get his phone back.
In the end we just told them we had to leave, or we'd miss the bus.
At the station, we met the Pakistani (Pashtun) dude who'd been waiting for his visa renewal several days prior. He got the visa eventually, at great pain to his wallet. Still, he insisted on buying us a drink. Lovely man.
The bus was quite an experience. Started with 3 passengers, by Yecheng it had about 30... mostly dirty old men coughing up incredible amounts of phlegm thanks to the dust of the Talakaman desert.
Day 2
Got to Yecheng at 1am. Checked into the cheap-ish hotel next to the bus station, slept 6 hours, then took a taxi with tinted windows to A-ba (6km away), where the road to Tibet starts. Was afraid that the Public Security Bureau (PSB) would bust us.
A word about A-ba. It's a completely Chinese town, built mostly of concrete with white toilet tiles plastered on. Order of buildings looks roughly like this: brothel, mechanic's garage, brothel, restaurant, brothel, restaurant, guesthouse, shop. Dust blows through the place all day, turning the sun orange, or blue. Behind A-ba, stretch fields of corn and other vegetables, tended by impoverished, but in our experience, very friendly Uygurs.
Getting to A-ba, we ate breakfast at a restaurant in front of a huge sign saying : "Foreigners shall not be allowed to travel on the road to Ali without permission." We proceeded to try to get a truck. No luck. Everyone made handcuff symbols, and told us to take the bus.
Buying the bus ticket was easy-ish. The seedy bus driver told us to sit down, put on a video and went off for an hour before bothering to sell us the 500 Yuan ticket. Stayed at the same guesthouse as the rest of the people taking the bus. Slept all day, only to emerge for another feed of awesome Sichuanese food.
Also went for a walk through the fields, to find a wasteland behind them full of rubbish, mangy dogs, and a brand new set of multi-storey apartment blocks with nobody living in them.
Getting back, we found a new arrival in the room. Barry, from England, was making his way to Australia by land, where he works in some shithole in the middle of the outback. Barry does this every year - via a different route. Last year, it included Baghdad and Kandahar. This year, both Congos and Sudan.
Day 3
We were still in A-ba, and the food was still the only attraction, aside from a brief episode at the grocery store. Ended up playing a concert on the owner's son's guitar and then signing the guitar afterwards. Quality.
The bus was meant to leave at 12 but didn't. 8 hours later we were finally on it, crammed into bunks designed for midgets. Then... DISASTER, as the cops showed up.
"It's for your own good. This is a dangerous road. 3 Koreans died last month. If you rent a Jeep with a guide you can go..."
We were put into a van and driven to a designated "tourist hotel," but not before the cop had a severe word with 2 more westerners hanging around A-ba.
Naturally, the place was above our budgets. Soon a taxi showed up with 3 more westerners: Helena from Sweden, Elizabeth from Australia, and Jeff from Ireland. All of us sat on the steps of the depressing hotel, in a depressive stupor for an hour, getting stared at by rich Chinese tourists, before a herd of goats turned up from nowhere.
I decided to walk to the bus station hotel, to work off the rage. Ended up doing a circle through Yecheng after asking directions from various Uygurs in Turkish.
Day 4
Got up and decided I was getting to Tibet, no matter what the PSB was going to do to me. Helena was in the same mind. Jonathan seemed happy to come along. Everyone else decided on a different route. But just as we were sitting in the foyer of the hotel, our friend the policeman turned up.
First, he ignored us, and checked our registration papers.
Then: "Do you really want to go to Ali?"
In unison: "Yes."
"If you get in trouble, you will not tell your governments and make trouble for us?"
In unison: "No."
"There is a good bus leaving tomorrow. You can take that bus. But this is the last time you can do this."
Austrian girl starts dancing.
Day 5.
We rock up in A-ba and the bus driver wants to charge us 600 Yuan. We go back to Yecheng to find our friend-the-policeman so he can get on the bus driver's arse. We fail to find him. Coming back, the driver refuses to sell us the ticket. We give him the cop's phone number. The cop turns up and sorts everything out. Everything is legal...
Then the conductor tells us to hide behind some trees in a field peppered with human shit and toilet paper. Arnaud, a French Tibetan Buddhist joins us, and Nikki, a Scottish girl without a clue as to what she is doing. The bus is going to leave 6 hours late. We eat dinner, using the back entrance of a restaurant, then get pushed into a taxi organised by the bus conductor, and get driven outside the town and told to hide behind a dirt embakment. We wait until it gets dark, then get on the bus which comes out of nowhere.
But there's a problem. The bus is full, and the taxi carrying the other half of the party still hasn't arrived. We stop to load a load of luggage onto the roof, just as a dust storm comes through, mixed with pelting rain. Finally the others arrive. We're on the bus about to leave, but there's a problem and a half hour wait. Some guy comes in a taxi and sits down on the floor since there's no room.
10 minutes of driving, and it becomes apparent that the bus isn't going to get to Ali (Engine sounds like William S. Burroughs reading out of Naked Lunch). We turn back and drive to A-ba to change busses.
Day 6.
The bus is lovely. No room to put one's legs, driver decides to keep himself awake at night with bad Chinese pop, everyone is smoking and spitting. Above 4000m you probably couldn't tell the difference between inhaling fibreglass fumes, and cigarette smoke.
In the morning a check point. The driver does some smooth talking, the surly officer lookes at our passports and waves us through.
Beautiful landscape. Barren valleys, brisk streams, a landslide.
By the end of the day we're on a plateau. I'm very glad we're in a bus. Our driver is a genius, navigating through rivers, landslides, as convoys of trucks stay stuck.
Day 7.
We clear a pass in the morning (above 5000m). Running is painful at this altitude. Elizabeth and Jeff are not feeling well.
Arrival in Ali at 10pm. Total journey time 44 hours. Very short.
Rocked up at the Kashgar bus station trying to find out when the bus leaves for Yecheng. Turned out that there were apparently no busses on Sundays. Quick decision : let's go today.
A redbean soup with tofu dumplings for breakfast, and our shopping spree begun. First, a whole department store full of random crap - torches, cooking utensils, guitars, t.v.'s, soap. Was under the impression that you couldn't bargain in a department store : wrong. Best find : an L.E.D. torch powered by a single AA battery for $8.
Then some gorgeous young girls dragged us into their clothing store. Quite healthy actually, given that my only pair of pants hadn't been washed since Uzbekistan, was covered with my own vomit and had two sewed up rips in it.
Finally, food. 20 packs of noodles, a few kilos of dried fruit, lollies... all packed into a Chechen bag. We were set to go... or so we thought.
As soon as we got back to the hotel we were confronted with the sight of yesterday's cops escorting three women into their car - the three women who had robbed us. One of them was holding a fat wad of our souveneir money. Into a taxi and to the police station. Lovely place - spitoons everywhere, fool of green mucus and cigarette butts. Then to a fotographer to fotograph our money. Bastards made us pay for the pleasure and for the taxi. Then made us sit for 2 hours doing nothing, in the hope Jonathan would get his phone back.
In the end we just told them we had to leave, or we'd miss the bus.
At the station, we met the Pakistani (Pashtun) dude who'd been waiting for his visa renewal several days prior. He got the visa eventually, at great pain to his wallet. Still, he insisted on buying us a drink. Lovely man.
The bus was quite an experience. Started with 3 passengers, by Yecheng it had about 30... mostly dirty old men coughing up incredible amounts of phlegm thanks to the dust of the Talakaman desert.
Day 2
Got to Yecheng at 1am. Checked into the cheap-ish hotel next to the bus station, slept 6 hours, then took a taxi with tinted windows to A-ba (6km away), where the road to Tibet starts. Was afraid that the Public Security Bureau (PSB) would bust us.
A word about A-ba. It's a completely Chinese town, built mostly of concrete with white toilet tiles plastered on. Order of buildings looks roughly like this: brothel, mechanic's garage, brothel, restaurant, brothel, restaurant, guesthouse, shop. Dust blows through the place all day, turning the sun orange, or blue. Behind A-ba, stretch fields of corn and other vegetables, tended by impoverished, but in our experience, very friendly Uygurs.
Getting to A-ba, we ate breakfast at a restaurant in front of a huge sign saying : "Foreigners shall not be allowed to travel on the road to Ali without permission." We proceeded to try to get a truck. No luck. Everyone made handcuff symbols, and told us to take the bus.
Buying the bus ticket was easy-ish. The seedy bus driver told us to sit down, put on a video and went off for an hour before bothering to sell us the 500 Yuan ticket. Stayed at the same guesthouse as the rest of the people taking the bus. Slept all day, only to emerge for another feed of awesome Sichuanese food.
Also went for a walk through the fields, to find a wasteland behind them full of rubbish, mangy dogs, and a brand new set of multi-storey apartment blocks with nobody living in them.
Getting back, we found a new arrival in the room. Barry, from England, was making his way to Australia by land, where he works in some shithole in the middle of the outback. Barry does this every year - via a different route. Last year, it included Baghdad and Kandahar. This year, both Congos and Sudan.
Day 3
We were still in A-ba, and the food was still the only attraction, aside from a brief episode at the grocery store. Ended up playing a concert on the owner's son's guitar and then signing the guitar afterwards. Quality.
The bus was meant to leave at 12 but didn't. 8 hours later we were finally on it, crammed into bunks designed for midgets. Then... DISASTER, as the cops showed up.
"It's for your own good. This is a dangerous road. 3 Koreans died last month. If you rent a Jeep with a guide you can go..."
We were put into a van and driven to a designated "tourist hotel," but not before the cop had a severe word with 2 more westerners hanging around A-ba.
Naturally, the place was above our budgets. Soon a taxi showed up with 3 more westerners: Helena from Sweden, Elizabeth from Australia, and Jeff from Ireland. All of us sat on the steps of the depressing hotel, in a depressive stupor for an hour, getting stared at by rich Chinese tourists, before a herd of goats turned up from nowhere.
I decided to walk to the bus station hotel, to work off the rage. Ended up doing a circle through Yecheng after asking directions from various Uygurs in Turkish.
Day 4
Got up and decided I was getting to Tibet, no matter what the PSB was going to do to me. Helena was in the same mind. Jonathan seemed happy to come along. Everyone else decided on a different route. But just as we were sitting in the foyer of the hotel, our friend the policeman turned up.
First, he ignored us, and checked our registration papers.
Then: "Do you really want to go to Ali?"
In unison: "Yes."
"If you get in trouble, you will not tell your governments and make trouble for us?"
In unison: "No."
"There is a good bus leaving tomorrow. You can take that bus. But this is the last time you can do this."
Austrian girl starts dancing.
Day 5.
We rock up in A-ba and the bus driver wants to charge us 600 Yuan. We go back to Yecheng to find our friend-the-policeman so he can get on the bus driver's arse. We fail to find him. Coming back, the driver refuses to sell us the ticket. We give him the cop's phone number. The cop turns up and sorts everything out. Everything is legal...
Then the conductor tells us to hide behind some trees in a field peppered with human shit and toilet paper. Arnaud, a French Tibetan Buddhist joins us, and Nikki, a Scottish girl without a clue as to what she is doing. The bus is going to leave 6 hours late. We eat dinner, using the back entrance of a restaurant, then get pushed into a taxi organised by the bus conductor, and get driven outside the town and told to hide behind a dirt embakment. We wait until it gets dark, then get on the bus which comes out of nowhere.
But there's a problem. The bus is full, and the taxi carrying the other half of the party still hasn't arrived. We stop to load a load of luggage onto the roof, just as a dust storm comes through, mixed with pelting rain. Finally the others arrive. We're on the bus about to leave, but there's a problem and a half hour wait. Some guy comes in a taxi and sits down on the floor since there's no room.
10 minutes of driving, and it becomes apparent that the bus isn't going to get to Ali (Engine sounds like William S. Burroughs reading out of Naked Lunch). We turn back and drive to A-ba to change busses.
Day 6.
The bus is lovely. No room to put one's legs, driver decides to keep himself awake at night with bad Chinese pop, everyone is smoking and spitting. Above 4000m you probably couldn't tell the difference between inhaling fibreglass fumes, and cigarette smoke.
In the morning a check point. The driver does some smooth talking, the surly officer lookes at our passports and waves us through.
Beautiful landscape. Barren valleys, brisk streams, a landslide.
By the end of the day we're on a plateau. I'm very glad we're in a bus. Our driver is a genius, navigating through rivers, landslides, as convoys of trucks stay stuck.
Day 7.
We clear a pass in the morning (above 5000m). Running is painful at this altitude. Elizabeth and Jeff are not feeling well.
Arrival in Ali at 10pm. Total journey time 44 hours. Very short.
posted by nekonote1903 at 6:08 am
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