China

And so the China adventure begins....rather abruptly. Up to this point, everything was written in Cyrillic, which is at least phoenetic. The humbling and extremely confusing world of Chinese and Uighur language reduced me back to baby-like hand gestures. The Chinese have a rather convenient way of counting to 10 on one hand (surf's up = 6, handgun = 7, pirate hook with index finger = 9), which makes understanding numbers much easier. We had luckily held onto some Chinese money from our previous time in Beijing (around $75), which turned out to be crucial. I'd read on a few travel blogs that the Chinese border town was surprisingly large, with a few proper hotels, supermarkets and restaurants. So I expected to encounter an ATM or at least a bank that would exchange US dollars....which was quickly laid to rest by the hotel proprietor, reminding me of the quirks of traveling in China. Even extremely small towns in Mongolia had ATM's while even some of the bigger cities in China don't have ATM's for foreign cards, nor are the banks interested in exchanging US dollars. So we were about 600 km from the provinvial capital of the largest province in China: Urumqi. Andrew and I decided to stay in our first proper hotel of the entire trip, with a bathroom, shower and wifi in the room!.....then I was reminded of the quirks of Chinese internet (Blogger, Facebook, Google, Skype, pretty much everything that you'd want to use on the internet was blocked), which didn't really matter at the time. We washed the layers of dust from our skin (which we thought was a sun tan) and enjoyed our first proper noodle dish (Lag Mien) since leaving Beijing some 6 weeks prior. We launched off the next morning towards Urumqi.

We made good progress on pavement. 150 km (90ish miles) easy in one day, weaving through rolling hills and eventually dropping into the flat desert stretch that remained between us and the big city. Then came the oppresive heat. 42 C (107 F). Living in Alaska for 5 years has made me soft to this sort of heat....especially exercising in this sort of heat. So Andrew and I made the easy decision to stick out a thumb (metaphorical thumbs....Asian hitch hilking is more like waving a fire with an imaginary piece of cardboard). We sat on the side of the road, sweating, trying to find a truck or SUV heading in the same direction. We successfully flagged a few cars and truck, all of which spoke/yelled at us in Chinese and eventually drove away. One car we flagged rolled down their windows, handed us half a watermellon and drove away. Then we flagged a large bus, which stopped and waved us aboard. We loaded our bikes and found seats on a nice air conditioned bus. After about 10 minutes, a guy aproached us asking for money (at this point we were down to less than $30). We were hoping to hitch hike, maybe sharing our half watermelon with a truck driver. Instead, we found ourselves sitting on a bus that we couldn't pay for (watermelon in our laps).....to which we pulled out our remaining Chinese money and showed that we didn't have enough. We speculated being thrown off at the next stop. We went through multiple iterations of trying to make the hand gesture that we were good for it. We could hit the next ATM....or maybe pay using a credit card? The Chinese guy just looked at us with an extremely confused look (fairly typical for us in China). Andrew even pulled out a crisp 100 dollar bill, to which the guy was completely unimpressed. Somehow I finally got through to the guy using a mime of using an ATM and pulling out money in Urumqi. The guy gave a satisfactory nod of the head, and we continued to speculate being thrown off at the next stop, and every stop until we got close to the city. We were beat tired and passed shortly after we didn't get thrown off at the first few stops (watermelon dripping in our laps) and finally arrived in the big city towards sunset. I sat on the bus while Andrew ran around the bus station, hitting 3 ATM's before finally finding one that accepted foreign cards. We had arrived at the biggest city of the entire trip (3+ million people).

Big City of Urumqi

We met Igor, a self described Russian/Texan, in Mongolia who actually lives in Urumqi. He connected us with his friend, Caleb, who was gratious enough to put us up. We enjoyed some well needed time off the bikes. We realized the Chinese symbol for noodle (mien) in Chinese and explored the city pointing at various noodle dishes on menus (having no idea what we ordered but pleasantly surprised when they brought out some conglomeration of noodles, vegetables, unidentified seafoods and meats). It was quite the change from the remote steppes of Mongolia, eating gelatto and passing KFC's and Pizza Huts, but a plesant change nonetheless. We met a group of Cameroonians living in Urumqi that single handledly convinced us to travel to Cameroon as soon as possible.

We took a day trip to Turpan, the second lowest place in the world (500ish ft below seat level) and one of the best preserved ancient cities in the world. Turpan is a desert oasis, one of the marvels of the ancient Silk Road trading routes, hydrated by ground water giving way to acres of vineyars, watermelon patches and trees in a seemingly uninhabitable desert nothing. An antrepologist wonderland, with the salty environment preserving tombs from BC and the largest minaret in China (constructed in 1777). An amazingly fertile desert oasis with a rich history.

Emin Minaret, constructed in 1777, the largest in China.

Modern Mosque in Turpan

So we decided to skip the desert oven and take a bus across the border to Kazakhstan; the 9th largest country in the world, the site of the first successful space launch and home of Borat. Kazakhstan has an interesting visa policy. They allow 15 days visa free, with the exception that anyone traveling overland must register withing 5 days of arriving in the country. Registration can only be completed in big cities, with the fine of $100 per day for each day that you don't register. So we are racing to get out of the country in 5 days. The bus ride and border crossing into Kazakhstan were complete junk shows, full of bribes, confusion, little-to-no sleep, asian's pushing their way through cues and the redeeming smiling faces. We have to make it to the border of Kyrgyzstan before the end of day 5, which is never music to a cyclist's ears. Luckily we are poised for the challenge and the promise of mountains and sleeping in tents makes the carrot seem that much closer to this horse's mouth. We should be in Kyrgyzstan in the next 2 days.....barring any proper push biking. Wish us luck.