John & Mick's BIG AdventureEscape from Korgos
Day 34 – 109kms (9917 kms total)
Breakfast in the usual place – they know us now, and our weird habits of drinking coffee instead of tea and not having a large plate of “Plof” (pilau rice and animal/lamb/sheep: read – meat), or large bowl of noodles. We compromise on bread and salad, which was comprised of tomatoes, cucumber, onions and lots of chillies. Certainly wakes your taste buds up in the morning.
Despite assurances of a morning meet, we wait until lunchtime for our agent to show up and then tells us that a signature is required at customs and the officer cannot be found. We go to a very busy customs office at 4pm (when lunch is over) and sit for two hours while people try to process our paperwork. At 6 we are told there is a problem. The insurance document hasn’t been sent from Urumqi.
However, somehow the gang of agents working on our case, pull some strings and we are rushed off in a car to the bikes.
We are then chivvied along to drive the bikes out of customs and then follow the agent down to the customs agent’s offices.
This all seems slightly odd and is compounded when we are told we must now check out of our hotel and leave, despite our protestations that it’s too late to go anywhere. The customs agents are adamant – we must take the bikes now and follow our Agent to Yining. Tonight!
We surmise they have pulled some strings but need us out of town before anybody can change their mind. Highly suspicious!
So, reluctant to avoid further delays, and keen to move, we pack our bags and follow our agent 100km to Yili (aka Yining), where we check into another hotel and told to wait until tomorrow.
Somewhere in town more bureaucracy awaits us for our Chinese number plates.
Dinner this evening was great! Three dishes and rice, 2 beers, (.68 ltr) and 2 coffees – €4.20 the lot. Same again please.
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