{"id":101,"date":"2010-09-05T15:02:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T09:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/?p=101"},"modified":"2010-09-05T15:03:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T09:03:43","slug":"baby-steps-from-inner-mongolia-to-the-border-of-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"Baby steps from Inner Mongolia to the border of Kazakhstan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As soon as we had crossed into China, we managed to hop on a bus to Hohot, the capital of the Chinese province \u201cInner Mongolia\u201d. Short-distance buses in China, i.e. anything up to a 10 hour ride, leave often hourly of half-hourly and you can get a ticket almost instantly. You just show up the counter, battle with the crowd to get to the window (queuing is a word that doesn\u2019t exist in Mandarin and all the other local languages…), point at the Chinese writing of the location you want to go to, pray they can read it, say \u201cjintian\u201d (today) or \u201cmingtian\u201d (tomorrow), lift two fingers for two tickets, repeat this like a mantra, don\u2019t give up if they shake their head and usually you\u2019re successful after a while. Check that all the details are correct on the ticket and then take a couple of breaths to release the tension. Now you may have been given a ticket for a bus that leaves in 5 minutes or so. Then you have to run for your life, get through endless security checks, wave your ticket at anyone that looks somewhat official so they can point you in the right direction. Once you\u2019ve found the right bus and you\u2019ve dumped your luggage in the luggage compartment, you\u2019re faced with your seat generally being already taken because everyone sits more or less where they want. At least you know you\u2019ve a seat somewhere else in the bus. Not like in other countries where the bus ends up being full and you spend hours sitting on a small wooden stool in the aisle.<\/p>\n

Getting train tickets is not so chaotic though you need a lot of patience. There are usually massive queues in front of the counters but there is security making sure that things are somewhat civilized. This give you enough time to prepare what you want to say once you\u2019re at the counter.Then the same spiel starts except now the goal is to get hard sleeper tickets for long-distance night trains which are the hardest to get. Yes we\u2019ve spent an awful lot of time trying to get tickets to move from A to B and we\u2019ve mastered the survival skills to get through this madness without despairing.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately August is the busiest time to travel in China and getting train ticket on the spot is practically impossible.. This is when most people take their holidays and students go back home to see their families. So instead of zapping through the Northern provinces we took every day as it came and took whatever tickets we could get. The places we ended up in are generally not on western tourist\u2019s highlights routes but it added a lot to our overall China experience. Don\u2019t get us wrong, this is China. We\u2019re still talking about cities with 1-2 million people, small for China but still big by most western standards. Maybe because this is rural China for the Chinese and not many westerners travel through we were met with a lot of smiles. Frequently we\u2019d have people testing their basic English language skills on us which totally surprised us. Some would secretly take pictures of us and we often heard \u201chellos\u201d from distance. We had instances where taxi drivers would round down the fare or some restaurants wouldn\u2019t even let us pay the full amount. We\u2019re not sure if this happens to Chinese as well but it was definitely a very different experience to the east coast and the south when we were there three years ago.<\/p>\n

Our next stop after Hohot was Yinchuan, the capital of the next province Ningxia, where we arrived on \u201chard seats\u201d on the night train just after midnight. We\u2019ve had our fair share of them three years ago and you could fill an entire blog just on hard seater rides. So here is a little taster. The train was absolutely jam-packed as expected and we decided not to get up from our seats if it could be avoided. Unfortunately I had to go to the toilet once – it was a 12 hour ride after all. This meant having to somehow get through two cramped carriages and back, pushing for your life, climbing over people, being shouted at by conductors and finally having swollen toes because of the metal wheels of a food trolley that a sales guy drove over my bare feet as he couldn\u2019t wait for people to climb up the seats and tables to make space. James decided to hold it… Generally a little community tends to form around every row of seats and there is a lot of friendly chatting going on. However, at the same time everyone is also super apprehensive to find out who gets off where and when. Then the battle for the empty seats starts. Two old ladies had already indicated with sign language that they wanted our seats and they literally sat under us as soon as we had lifted our bums when it was our turn to get off. After those pretty exhausting hours on the train we ended up in a lovely cheap hotel in Yinchuan where our double room turned out to be a suite. The receptionists must have really taken pity on us looking the worst for wear when we arrived in the middle of the night on the hotel\u2019s door step.<\/p>\n

The next morning we took a bus to the next big town Lanzhou, a major transport hub for long-distance trains going in all directions and also known for being one of the most polluted towns in China or in fact in the world since the top 20 are all in China anyway. Our expectations were therefore very low but we were surprised that Lanzhou turned out quite a pretty city and the sky didn\u2019t seem that polluted after all. It was also the first time that we saw a big Muslim community in China and couldn\u2019t wait to dig into some of those delicious skewers, naan bread and crunchy vegetables at the night market. From Lanzhou we hopped on a bus to Xining in the Qinghai province close to the border to Tibet. Qinghai is a melting pot of many different minorities, mostly Tibetan but also Hui, Mongol, Salar and Tu. We spent two relaxing days in Xining wandering through the streets, taking in the different cultures, tasting the various specialties on offer and visiting the main mosque, one of the largest in Northwestern China and hiking up to Beishan Shi a mountain temple.<\/p>\n

Our next destination was Golmud, quite a nice little Chinese town (400 thousand people or so), from where we took a bus North to the desert town Dunhuang in the Hexi Corridor. It was a pretty strenuous 10 hour ride – hot and very dusty – and we also had to get a special permit to cross the land. But the scenery was simply spectacular. Our driver was a bit of a madman and he had his foot on the gas on those windy roads through the mountains and the desert. We got there all in one piece in the end. Dunhuang which is surrounded by some impressive sand dunes is also called the \u201cBlazing Beacon\u201d. We got a taste of that as there was a pretty strong sandstorm while we where there. A bit like a few months ago in Sydney when the entire city turned orange. It gave the town quite an eerie feel. Dunhuang was always a definite on our trip West because of the famous Mogao caves – hundred of caves of various sizes full of Buddist statues, art and wall paintings of various dynasties dating back as early as 366 AD. This is definitely one of the most impressive sites of all the highlights in China and we\u2019d highly recommend it if you happen to pass through this corner of the world. Apart from the monasteries in Tibet, this is the only famous place that we\u2019ve seen that has an old, original feel to it as it hasn\u2019t been repainted and restored to unconvincing perfection.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be pretty tricky to get transport out of Dunhuang to our next destination, the Uighur town, Turpan because neither are on a major train line. We got there in the end after changing from a bus to a train and again to a bus and even managed to sleep for a few hours on the train. Turpan in Central Xinjiang is quite an oasis albeit a hot one at 154 meters below sea level and temperatures in the low forties. It\u2019s a fascinating place to visit because you really feel like you\u2019ve taken a step back in time. We spent two days here exploring the surroundings, most notably Tuyoq, a traditional Uighur village, and the Jiahon ruins, one of the oldest and best-preserved ancient towns in the world.<\/p>\n

The last week we spent in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjian However, not out of choice but out of necessity as we had to get our visa for Kazakhstan here. Urumqi is not the most exciting place in the world. Like Tibetan cities it has undergone a big change in the last decades when the government started to relocate Han Chinese workers here and the Uighur community can be now mainly found in a district in the South of the town. But it\u2019s a clean, modern, typical Chinese city with the luxury of good bakeries and decent coffee. Something we\u2019ve been craving for for quite a while now. Getting the Kazakh visa took some paperwork and three visits but we got total preferential treatment as tourists. The guard would wave us through without queuing and the people working there were quite ok too. At first it feels bad to jump the queue but you realise pretty quickly that you wouldn\u2019t get anywhere if you didn\u2019t take advantage of it. We also saw some pretty poor attempts of bribing going on in the embassy which didn\u2019t impress the people working there at all. What to expect in Kazakhstan? Who knows but we\u2019re sure it\u2019ll be worth an adventure. So off we go tonight on a 24 hour bus ride to Almaty…<\/p>\n

\"HohHot<\/a>
Click for the photos of HohHot to Urumqi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As soon as we had crossed into China, we managed to hop on a bus to Hohot, the capital of the Chinese province \u201cInner Mongolia\u201d. Short-distance buses in China, i.e. anything up to a 10 hour ride, leave often hourly of half-hourly and you can get a ticket almost instantly. You just show up the … Continue reading Baby steps from Inner Mongolia to the border of Kazakhstan<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3dengineer.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}