The ninth largest country of the world welcomes us unpretentiously. Located somewhere in the mountains we find two cabins, everything seems very familiarly – we get the impression that all the other passerbys and border officials know each other. Very comfortable. After a while we finished immigration and roll towards the next city. Here we meet a French couple on the way to Kyrgyzstan, we exchange our remaining money, Sim cards and information. Unfortunately we have to go separate ways soon. We stock up our food supplies and quickly disappear towards the steppe. The asphalt roads feel great and we are quite fast. While the gigantic country consists mainly of steppe and desert, the short stretch to China leads us through its mountainous south east, which is probably the most exciting part of the country.
For millions of years wind and the river Charyn sculpted the sandstone to form today’s canyons with fantastical shapes and sculptures. The largest one is protected as a National Park and probably the main attraction. The other canyons in the area formed by several smaller rivers are less crowded and definitely worth a visit as well. To us it is sometimes hard to believe, how many tourists we meet at such spots. We cycle for days in sparsely populated areas and barely meet humans and all f a sudden we are in the middle of countless travelers. First we join a group hiking on the edge of the canyon, in the evening we look for a remote camp spot in the canyon.
On the way to China we meet a Swiss couple who have been traveling for 5 years in a caravan. We hurry to Sharkent, the last city in Kazakhstan, located only 25 km away from the Chinese border. Here we discover an ancient mosque and an orthodox church, which both look Chinese to us – now we really look forward to new impressions after such a long time in the Post Sowjet countries. This applies especially to the food; we really are fed up eating Blov and Shashlik. That is way we are happy to discover a Pizza-Burger-Bar for our last stop here, which results in a big surprise. Suddenly Anton and Gevelyn stand in front of us, we already met them in April in the Emirates, now they just arrived from China and are on their way to Pamir Highway. We had a lot to discuss and time passed way to fast. Especially the experiences in the Chinese province Xinjiang still seemed to keep their minds busy. It is time to say goodbye when sun sets, not only to the two cyclists but also to our goal to cycle more than 100km, we have to find a campspot before it gets completely dark because the traffic here is chaotic. On the next morning we reach the Chinese border, just before we spot 3 packed bicycles. Bingo! A bit later all the bikes are parked in the shadow and a we are caught in a typical conversation. Where are you from? Where are you going to now? Do you have a si card? Do you have money left to exchange? How did you like China? Do you need some advice for Kazakhstan? We open our phones, exchange sim cards and money. All of us are in great mood, the Australians because they finally left China, we because we finally reached China. They tell us about tremendous police restraints in Xinjiang and sum up their experiences: “We are happy we cycled there, but we would not do it again.” They look forward to a good night’s sleep without interruption; even in hotels police came round at 3 am to register them. We tried to gather as much information as much as possible. It is still in a state of emergency and individual travellers are not very welcome. Therefore many long distance cyclists take a train to avoid all the issues, we want to give it a try and hopefully cycle all the way through China.
While we are still talking, a car stops nect to us. The driver is curious as to whether we want to travel to China. After we affirm He tells us to turn and wait in Sharkent. The border is closed, nobody knows for how long. He himself is Chinese and cannot go back to his home country. Sounds like trouble to us. 25 minute later the Kazakh border officials tell us that indeed the Chinese closed the border, no exceptions! We understand we should come back at 8 the following day – at least that’s what we interpret in the Russian of the border officials… A bit nervous we wait for the next day…
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