Early in the morning we roll towards the border again and hope that today we are allowed to pass. The evening before we were stopped by the Kazakh border officials because the Chinese closed the border (read here). Thus we had the opportunity for a night in a hotel and a shower – but not a single penny left. Therefore we plan to finish the border controls and find a restaurant before lunchtime – and an ATM before of course. We are not the first to arrive at the border, a long queue of trucks is already waiting. Luckily again we are allowed to overtake them, the gate is opened for us and we roll towards China. Our hearts start to beat faster…
Our visa are valid for 100 days, we plan to use every single day. The whole distance to Laos is 5000 km, among them 1600 km in the Autonomous Province of Xinjiang. On one hand this province is still in military and political exceptional state, on the other hand lots of Chinese tourists go there to visit the Chinese part of the Tienshan mountains. One Chinese motorcyclist, who travelled a lot in Europe, describes the area as “like in the Italien Alps” – great, that’s where we came from!
But first things first, we haven’t entered the country yet. First we have to cycle 7km in No-man’s-land, barbed wire fences on both side. A lantern every 30m. On every lantern a video camera. We feel really safe here! Completey alone we are the first to arrive at a giant airport hall. All border official have lots of time for us, they even have one english speaking officer who accomapies us all the way. Plus the machines speak our mother tongue after they read our passports: „Please put your thumbs on the screen!” – wow, zumindest die erkennen unsere Nationalität im Pass. In the end we have to rate the service with smileys, with three policemen peaking over our shoulders! We both choose the smiling one and wonder afterwards if they had still allowed us in the country if we had decided for the angry smiley.
Relieved we leave the building, just to find ourselves in the first police control. When they ask where we come from, we turn and our nose almost hits the border building. We point there with a surprised look – and are even more surprised when he accepts this answer. The whole conversation takes part without words, as we don’t have a common language. From now on we are illiterate again, but in contrast to Iran we don’t recognize anything. Not the hotels, nor supermarkets or restaurants. Only the police, they glow red and blue at every corner. We quickly take care of the typical tasks: Withdraw money, purchase a local sim card and buy some food. We are relieved, almost all the Chinese people have well working translator apps on their smartphones - while Google Translate offline translates a lot of bullshit and we still have to figure out how to type in Chinese to make it more than a one-way app.
To order our first lunch we walk around in the busy restaurant and use the plates of the other costumers as a menu, we simple point at what we want. And everything is so delicious, all the spice and flavors! Plus lots of vegetarian dishes, we really appreciate this after the meat&oil-food in Central Asia. Afterwards we leave the city. The traffic is very relaxed and there is enough space for all participants, we just have to get used to all those electro scooters making almost no noise… We arrived in an agricultural area when we look for a place for our tent. We had been told many times to hide very well. Quite some travelers who had been spotted got visited by police and escorted to hotels. Not because it is forbidden to camp, just for their own safety. As most hotels in Xinjiang province only host mainland Chinese citizens, they often ended up in luxury hotels – the price definitely exceeds our budget. We hope not to make this experience and disappear between apple trees.
We sleep tight during our first night and only after a short while we arrive at the first large city. The traffic stops. All passengers walk through metal detectors, their bags as well. The ID cards are scanned, the cars get controlled. Everything look very quick and professional, just disturbed by two foreigners with bicycles and without Chinese language skills. It takes about an hour until we are allowed to proceed. Next stop: Restaurant. Afterwards we go for a walk full of new impressions.
We mainly cycle on alleys and enjoy the shade of the huge trees almost as much as the people here: They seem very reserved, but still open-minded and curious. We are just not as much in the center of everybody’s attention any more.
Suddenly a police car overtakes us. Blocks our way. Sirens howl, speakers shout at us in Chinese language. It doesn’t take long until we find ourselves between 4 police cars. Friendly but confident they ask us to wait for the headmaster. We have to say, that in general all the policemen and –women are very polite, most even friendly and helpful. Unfortunately now we get to know one exception. He looks at all our photos on the cameras, and we have to listen to a speech of how we must not break rules, otherwise we have to leave the country. What a pity for the interpreter, not only because she seems embarrassed to translate all the accusations and warnings, but also because she is on duty at her school the whole weekend. Together with four colleagues dressed in bullet proof vests, helmets and sticks they guard the empty school building – which is blocked by a high fence and tanks traps anyway. The reason: Defense of terroristic attacks! We are speechless. This doesn’t change, when the overweight police chief offers to answer questions. Behind him a chin-up bar. We would love to know how many he can do, but even more we would like to continue our tour after the two hour interview.
The Tienshan Mountains get close and underneath our road – which leads towards 3300m above sea level. Here we observe the locals packing up for the winter – yurts get disassembled everywhere and huge herds of cattle are on their way to lower areas. We have a blast on our way downhill; we even overtake many trucks – which feels weird. This weird feeling increases, when we reach the next checkpoint: We are not allowed to go on, the road is not open for foreigners. The alternative: 1000 km instead of 300 km. We try to talk the police officer into an exception – his answer is “you can always go back to the last airport, every plane is open for you. This road is not!”. Further Discussion: pointless! Go back: not an option. Our map shows an additional dashed line in the middle of nowhere, which promises almost no detour. So we give it a try, it turns out as gravel road, with endless amounts of junctions and dead ends. We can only guess which way to choose…
Finally we give up – after roughly 30 km we end up back on the forbidden road – at least 8 km behind the police check point. We decide to continue, well aware that the uneasy feeling won’t stop until we reach the next junction, 100km away. Next village, next check point. Nobody is interested and we sneak through unnoticed. Right after it: 3 busses, bad luck for us! The tourists are outside, smoking or taking a little walk on the road, when they spot us they cheer, applaud and take lots of pictures of us. The noise level reminds us of a football game. We go as fast as possible, we don’t want to risk the policeman checking on what’s going on. When we finally reach the next junction, the uneasy feeling turns into happiness. Here we don’t mind the police registration, and we finally have enough routine to recognize and answer the questions. After a little while, we are allowed to go on, they even wish us a nice trip! Unfortunately it is only a goodbye for a short time, only ten minutes later they are back with bad news: Again we are not allowed on the road we chose from here on. They „offer“ to escort us a fair bit so that we do not „get lost“ again. This time it is only a 120 km detour, so we agree almost happily. Unfortunately it also means that we have to exchange the green mountains for a dry, hilly stone desert earlier than we had planned for. Whatever, we enjoy the downhill tour and at the latest when we go swimming in the river, we feel happy and free again.
Unfortunately this feeling doesn’t last very long, in the next city we look for a restaurant and find one with free and fast Wifi. While we happily make some phone calls, suddenly we are surrounded by police men. If we were not so hungry for food and news from home – we might enjoy the next hour: The policemen remind us of Laurel and Hardy, only with automatic weapons around their necks. Their statements are contradicting all the time: One says „You cannot sleep in our county“ – while his colleague suggests „better you stay in our city for the night“, followed by „You can leave now“ – „Stay here“ – „Follow us tot he police station“ – „You are free to leave“
We follow the latter after almost 90 minutes and cycle towards the sunset. We start to count down the days to Turpan – there we plan to rest some days in a hotel. The landscape and route is rather boring, the highway services are the highlights of our days. We avoid the few villages on the way as they always involve additional police check points. It is necessary once, hungry and tired we reach a village – the anticipation of delicious food is stopped abruptly at the police check point: they ask us to wait, and wait, and wait. Nothing seems to happen. We try to speed up things, not successful. After more than one hour another police car arrives: We guess the bad-tempered boss. Wrong, only a friendly policeman with a bag of apricots. Just harvested, probably that’s what occupied him the last 60 min. Is that supposed to become our dinner? We find out he will be our escort in the village. After great food and some stops at food stores he accompanies us to the highway. We try to evoke a fit impression as we told them we we will cycle another 100 km to the next city. When he finally leaves us, we almost fall off our bikes into the tent under the next drain.
The plan fort he next day is to roll as close as possible to Turpan and camp one more night. Thus we should reach the city relaxed andbefore lunchtime, helpful fort he necessary patience at the police registration. Wind is rising in the evening, so we choose a more or less protected campspot. During the night the wind turns into a storm and keeps us of sleeping. It sounds like our tent is getting sandblasted. The storm is getting stronger and stronger. It is a hard choice to make, but the wind blows our doubt away. Take down the tent. The first bad outside oft he tent gets bown away by the storm. Christian runs after it and fights his way back tot he tent. The sand gets everywhere, the eyes fill with dust and tears…
Kommentar schreiben