From Bishkek we set off for China. We had a choice of two border crossing points, the Torugart Pass or the Irkeshtam Pass. We chose Irkeshtam, the one that didn’t require expensive paperwork from a tour agency.

 

Irkeshtam is in the far South of Kyrgyzstan so we went via Osh, about half way down, and then Sary Tash, a village right at the bottom of the country near the borders with Tajikistan and China.

 

We had done the Osh - Bishkek journey when we first arrived in Kyrgyzstan in August but it had been warm and dry (and dark, we did it overnight). This time we made the journey with our noses pressed to the window as the miles of snowy valleys and plateaus rolled by.

 

In Osh we stayed with Tara, a friend from Bishkek who’d moved South to study the region. We weren’t quite sure how we would make the rest of the journey to Sary Tash and then over the border. We knew the road to Sary Tash was even more mountainous than the one from Bishkek and we guessed it was probably a 6 hour drive.

 

Some people pointed us towards a shifty looking guy with a car who said he could take us to Sary Tash the next day. His price was ok but the car looked very old and he said the journey only took 2 hours. A bit suspicious. He also wanted a cash deposit from us so we said we had to go to the bank and never went back. Along the street we spotted some old Russian UAZ jeeps so we (Helen) asked around and we found a small guy called Habib with a big fur hat and an even bigger smile. He said he would make the journey tomorrow if he found another 4 people to fill the jeep. He seemed like a sound guy and had bright green eyes and a big smile (did I mention that already?). We went back to Tara’s hoping he’d find some friends for the journey and that he’d still be grinning tomorrow.

 

Sure enough, he’d found a full jeep load and even more surprising everyone was ready to go at exactly the arranged time of 11am. The shitty weather cleared and we had day of stunning views from bumpy mountain roads. Think snowy Alps only not quite as spiky and with areas of red cowboy style rocks and canyons in between.

 

The village of  Sary Tash was a small group of maybe 40 houses on the edge of a high plateau up at 3500m or something like that. Whatever the height, it was a snowy wasteland with a freezing wind. At the edge of the plateau the Pamir range of mountains ran even higher. Peak Lenin being the biggest up at 7500m.

 

The lady in the first house Habib pulled up at agreed to put us up. She and her family were as friendly and welcoming as you could imagine. The 10 year old son took us to the edge of the village to watch the sun go down on Peak Lenin. Even the drunk dad was good company - “if you two hadn’t shown up I’d be in big trouble for coming home late!” he boomed as he came through the door and shook our hands vigorously.

 

They made us fried potatoes – the only food they had. They'd just sold one of their two cows in order to buy enough potatoes and flour for the winter.  After dinner we watched TV whilst the lady spun wool. They chatted about the good old soviet days when moscow supported them with sausages and jobs. They seemed quite positive about the future though and agreed that Sary Tash was beautiful – “just a shame that nothing at all grows here”.  

 

They gave us blankets to sleep on next to the stove (it was minus 20 outside). In the morning they milked the cow and gave us hot milky tea and bread and walked with us up to the main road to help flag down passing trucks on route to the border. They refused our offer of 200 som and took just 50som ($1) to cover the cost of the food. They now have and charming postcard of Edinburgh up on their wall.

 

Catching a truck was a bit tricky as they all seemed to have three people in the cab already. Eventually one stopped and one of the three climbed up onto the bed behind the seats to make space for us. Again the mountain views were set against bright blue skies and again we settled in for another long journey on bone shaking roads. It got a bit scary in places - the road was bad and on the steep icy sections we passed broken, abandoned and crashed trucks. What a journey though. The road to the border seemed to get wilder and more impressive the further we got along it.

 

The border didn't disappoint either. We stopped in a mad max style trucker village of oily engine parts, metal shacks, diesel smoke and lots and lots of rusty old soviet trucks with wild looking drivers at the wheel. This mess actually turned out to be the border itself. In the middle of it all a Kyrgyz soldier with a machine gun walked up and, in the best English we'd heard in weeks, asked where we were from before politely walking us to a little man in a hut who stamped our passports and waved us through.

 

We got another couple lifts in different trucks as we negotiated the series of queues and check points that broke up the 11km of no man's land before the Chinese side. It was all straight out of a Bond film. High snowy mountains all around and wooden watch towers with pacing Chinese or Kyrgyz soldiers wearing furry hats, long coats and old rifles.

 

Once the border was done we still had 300km before the town of Kashgar where we hoped to stay. A man with a reasonably shiny pick up truck was looking for people to fill his seats so for $20 each we jumped at the offer.

 

A final 3 hours of mountain roads. The snow gave way to red sand stone valleys that were cut with rivers to form steep cliffs. Red sunset light and dark shadows highlighted layers of ridged valleys running for miles on either side. When the sun went down a snazzy Chinese DVD player built into where the mirror should be in the passenger’s sunshade on the was the centre of attention. We watched a series of music videos on repeat. The music sounded familiar. This ‘corner’ of China (Xinjiang province, 1000 miles wide) is home to Uiygur people. They look Turkic, like the people in the rest of central Asia, they’re Muslim and they speak a Turkic language similar to Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkish etc. Good thing too. We were a long way off being able to read menus in Chinese.

 

J