Pakistan ( + Photo Gallery)

Our route through Pakistan took us from Khunjerab Pass down the gorgeous Karakorum Highway to Islamabad. Because of our delays with getting through China, we went down the Karakorum Highway a few weeks later than expected. But as it turned out, early October was just perfect for us: clear skies, moderate temperatures and colourful tree-foliage during the autumn season.

Whilst up in Pakistan’s mountain regions, Len and I split up to go our own ways, and I took a side-trip with 2 other motorcyclists into the Deosai Plains high-altitude plateau: a rewarding side-trip, but unfortunately I had my first major off and injured my right leg (nothing broken, but a fairly swollen foot & knee).

In Islamabad, I took a bit of a rest whilst I was waiting for the Indian visa: camping in Islamabad was cheap as chips, and I had time to get my broken laptop screen fixed, wait for my leg to heal, do some route-planning for India and ‘pakistanify’ the bike with some colourful stickers (still not quite as colourful as the Pakistani trucks).

I followed the Great Trunk Road down to Pakistan’s “cultural capital” Lahore and from there crossed into India. As always, pictures say more than words: For photographs, which include comments & descriptions for a more detailed report, have a look at my Pakistan Album on FlickR.

The full-screen slideshow version can be found here. To view comments during the slideshow, click 'Show Info' in the top right).

Here are some samples from the album:

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China ( + Photo Gallery)

Coming from Tourgart Pass, the road to Kashgar is not much different to the last 200km we had done in Kyrgyzstan: mainly corrugated washboard, the trickiest part of which are the never-ending lines of enormous Chinese trucks on their way to export goods into Central Asia: they hammer down the road and throw up so much dust, visibility is about as good as on a foggy winter morning in the Lake District. And just as the dust-cloud opens, the next truck’s already approaching quickly. General attitude of the truck drivers: “survival of the fittest”

Kashgar lies in China’s Xinjang province, which is predominantly of Uighur (muslim) population & tradition. It is the most westerly city on the Chinese Silk Route and has a very relaxed atmosphere to it. As long as we left the bikes parked at the hotel, we didn’t need a guide for the city, and so we took a few days to relax and enjoy the diversity of Chinese & Uighur food. One evening, our agents from Newland Travel took us out for a meal (or should I say feast?) in a traditional upper class restaurant. I’ve got to say it was the most delicious meal I’d had in a very long time: at least 6-7 courses of local specialities, accompanied by various kinds of tea in different flavours.

Over the course of one long & interesting day, I went to see the Animal Market, Sunday Market and Kashgar’s Old Town. This (and our onwards journey to Pakistan on the gorgeous Karakorum Highway) is probably best described in photos rather than a lengthy blog-post:

I’ve uploaded some more photos into a separate China Album on FlickR, including a brief write-up underneath the photographs. (Here's the same album as a slideshow. To read my comments in the slideshow, click on "Show Info" in the top right corner).

A few sample images:

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Kyrgyzstan to China

On a Tuesday afternoon, we’re told the final ‘go’ for China. We’ve got three days to get from Bishkek to the border (Torugart Pass): the pass has just been re-opened one day ago and will close again in four days for Chinese holidays. Guess we’re lucky for once…

In anticipation of flying to bikes (which would have meant: drain engine oil & petrol for safety reasons), we still have the crap fake Chinese “Shell Super Helix” engine oil from Tajikistan in our bikes. But with the help of a local biker from Bishkek and Yulia’s translation skills, we manage to source some decent Motul oil, which we take with us to do the oil change en-route in Naryn.

The road from Naryn to the Chinese border takes us through the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen so far on this trip, the highlight being the valley around Tash-Rabat, where we stay in a yurt-camp about 3h ride from the Chinese border. It’s the end of the season, and with winter approaching quickly, most yurts have already been taken down. In the morning, we realize that we were lucky the yurt-owner accepted our last (and insufficient) Kyrgyz cash for a ‘yurt & breakfast’: at 7am, the nearby river is still partly frozen – it would have been a freezing night, had we camped out in our own tents.

We leave around 8:00am and get to the border about 2h later. On the Kyrgyz side, the border crossing is reasonably straight-forward (although a bit lengthy due to a bus-load of tourists going the same way as we). About 10km through no-man’s land and we get to the first Chinese check-point. As promised, our Chinese guide-car is awaiting us. Another 5km later, we get to the second check-point: we leave the bikes outside & get taken into the border building by our agents to have some Chinese instant noodle soup and ‘do business’: $1400 change hands (counting twice on either side) – the price for 2 people & 2 bikes to cross for 5 days through China with a guide-car. An insane amount of money, but still cheaper than bypassing China by airplane.

Over the course of our instant noodle-soup meal, we realize how difficult it was for our agents (Newland Travel) to get us into China on such a short notice: the managing director himself had come to the border to pick us up. At first, the Chinese border guards didn’t want to let the guide car through to pick us up at our meeting point – until the managing director made a phone-call to a ‘special friend’ at the Chinese Immigration in Urumqui.

To cut a long story short: after a thorough luggage-check (border guards looking at every single item and opening every bottle from contact-lens fluid to mouth-wash), we’re permitted to enter China. And we know: this time we’re really “off the radar”: not the usual Chinese license plates, no Chinese driving license, no insurance paperwork, no nothing: We just let the guide car go in front & let the agents do the talking at the various check-points on the way to Kashgar. Agent’s connections & bribes. THAT’S where our $1400 went. (Note: doing China on your own vehicle the official way costs the same amount of money – Newland Travel’s price was good, and I can highly recommend them).

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Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek (2)

Something I had been looking forward to in Bishkek was to finally meet someone who’s been really helpful & encouraging via e-mail: Arne, another contact I got through Horizons Unlimited, is a Danish guy and motorcycle enthusiast who’s currently working in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Arne’s job keeps him really busy, working in agricultural projects between the two countries, and I’m lucky to meet him one evening whilst he’s here on a brief visit.

We’ve got a real good meeting in central Bishkek, and very unexpectedly Arne offers us to stay in his flat in the heart of town. He’s hardly there anyway, he says, and the way it looks we might be up for a long-term stay here whilst trying to arrange shipping the bikes… so why not stay in his flat? We happily accept the offer and once again, we’re treated for absolute luxury – just like back at Trevor’s place in Dushanbe. On top of that, Arne introduces us to his project manager Yulia. Over the next week, Yulia helps us with internet access, translations from Russian to English and trying to find a cheap cargo-agent to deal with the bikes. (Yulia, if you’re reading this: you’re a real gem, and without your help things would have been so much harder, if not impossible to arrange – Thank you so much for all your help and efforts!)

As it turns out, Arne is a good friend of Trevor from Dushanbe, and they’ve recently gone for a little ride-out in the same area we’ve been to just a few weeks ago in Tajikistan. Arne also dreams of doing a long-distance motorcycle-trip one day – maybe from Central Asia to Europe. What a great idea, of course, but: One evening, we have a conversation, which turns out to be a bit of an eye-opener for me. Back in England, when I was preparing this overland trip, I often struggled with the paperwork that’s involved with crossing various countries by motorcycle. But when you’ve got Tajik license plates (like Arne does), things get so much more complicated… Where do you get your carnet de passage from if there’s no automotive club in the country? What about bike insurance when you enter Europe? All at once, the paperwork I thought was difficult to deal with in Europe seems to be like a walk in a park compared to what you’ve got to organize when you want to do the same thing, starting in Tajikistan.

One day, Arne and I set out for the outskirts of Bishkek to visit the used car market. I already noticed the large number of German cars on Bishkek’s streets., and the car market is just the same: endless lines of BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, Volkswagen, amongst some Hummers and Toyota 4WDs… and all of them in absolute mint condition. Apparently, they’re all getting here overland – some of them even have the German license plates still on. As one of Arne’s friends in Bishkek explains: there’s quite a large Kyrgyz community in Germany since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they buy second hand cars in Germany. Their Kyrgyz friends come over to Germany to pick up the cars, and with the German license plates drive them overland to Kyrgyzstan. Once in Kyrgyzstan, the cars get polished, waxed and (if necessary) fixed up, until they’re sold second hand. Probably with a healthy profit, considering the relatively cheap labour in Kyrgyzstan.

Back to our ‘dead end road on a bike problem’: We get all sorts of prices from various shipping agents, and all kinds of requests of how to disassemble the bikes to make them small enough to go on an airplane. And in most cases, it takes a good few days, if not a week, to even get a rough quote. Our favoured option (Galaxy Air) turns out to be fairly vague: there might be a cargo plane going to India or Pakistan – but we won’t know for sure for at least another week.

As time passes, I get increasingly annoyed about the long-winded process of getting a definite quote from any of the shipping agents. Thanks to Arne’s offer of staying in his flat, we’re not spending any money for accommodation. We even got television with CNN and BBC World News amongst a dozen of Russian and Kyrgyz channels. But I very soon get tired of all the news repeats about the financial crisis, the US election campaign and the hotel bomb attack in Islamabad… time to move on, or at least to try & see something of Kyrgyzstan. After all, we’ve already extended our visas here, and all we’ve done in this country is to wait for spare parts and things to happen…

After a long time of waiting in Bishkek for 2 weeks, very unexpectedly things suddenly start to happen: during an internet session, I receive two crucial e-mails within a few minutes: One is from Iza and Kamil (Singapore-to-Poland overland bikers we met near Sary-Tash about a month ago), the other is from their Chinese agent. Iza and Kamil somehow managed to cross into China. They know that we are trying to get into China and asked their agent (Taher from Newland Travel) to contact us. The deal is perfect, though it comes at a prize: $700 per person/bike seems a lot of money to cross through to Khunjerab Pass/Pakistan, but we also know that this is the standard rate for a motorized vehicle and the mandatory guide in China.

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