When we planned our trip to Kyrgyzstan, our full itinerary included the cross of 3 different countries: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China (Xinjiang region).
Now, anybody can argue that the best solution would have been to fly between countries, and that is in fact what we did to cross the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan border, however, for some unknown reason, we decided to cross the one between Kyrgyzstan and China over land.
Anyway we are not first time travelers so we prepped. The Tougart Pass is in fact considered a commercial border, mainly to transfer goods via dusty trucks, they are not really used to manage tourists.
The Kyrgyz CBT agency escorted us till the Chinese border line, on the other side there was somebody waiting for us whose task was to help us get through, eventually help with any inconvenient and then finally drive us to Kashgar, the first town beyond the Chinese border.
As we leave the green valley of Tash Rabat, we start to climb a steep mountain road, the whole surrounding turn grey, till it becomes a desert. The sky does the same and it start to rain. Nevertheless we meet “villages”, shepherds live in these areas, we can’t find a decent reason to understand why someone would choose such a harsh land.
Then we get to the border. Crossing by land can get complicated, Chinese soldier tend to search everybody and they don’t speak English. They get in our small van, they ask to open our backpacks. We are quite and we do everything they ask.
Then one of them point at our book, the Lonely Planet, and after looking at few pages, starts yelling at us, in Chinese.
Our guide translates, the soldier is asking were we bought the book, the issue was the map, representing Taiwan as an independent state vs a Chinese province… He tore the page, put it in his pocket and continue the search.
Next they take my camera and ask for the memory card, they need to check we do not introduce illegal images. We wait more than 30 minutes, locked in our van with a soldier outside. Finally they come back and tell us to go…
I was scared they canceled all my pictures, luckily it didn’t happen! However our Chinese adventure was only at the beginning, it was summer 2010 and the whole Xinjiang (a region as a big as half Europe) was completed isolated due to some tensions between the Uighur minority and the Han, the result: no phone, no internet, soldiers at every corner. But that’s another story (LINK).
