John & Mick's BIG AdventureOn the road again... To Urumqi
Day 36 – 703kms. (10,665 kms total)
Our documents are finally ready !! We leave Yining and are led by our guide May, and a new driver who has been asked to accompany us to Urumqi.
After about 60km we start rising into the hills. A new road is still under construction between Urumqi and the border at Korgos and the first period of our journey feels like it might turn into a repeat of Kazakhstan, but the small patches of roadworks do not last for long and the road itself is generally good.
As we rise into the mountains, the road is filled with herds of goats and sheep, and the small amount of traffic has to work its way through, with much horn blowing. A kilometer later, another herd, and then another, and so we go on for at least 30 minutes. We reach our highest journey point to date at the top, around 2100 metres at Lake Syram.
Lake Syram is very lovely. We were told by the Swiss that it is a fantastic place to camp, but a 90 km trip around the lake will unfortunately take too long.
Beyond the lake, the new road is completed. Suddenly you are on newly surfaced dual carriageway with very little traffic….at least you think so until traffic starts coming towards you in the outside lane! It transpired to be two separate roads, running side by side, but with a central reservation dividing them. It was only after about 5km, when they divided, that this became apparent.
Once we dropped out of the hills the temperature started to climb. Mid thirties in the shade, but mid forties out on the road.
The journey from there to Urumqi was long, boring and hard, with little to look at but the Borhoro Shan range of mountains to our right, where snow capped peaks looked most inviting.
The approach to Urumqi is quite impressive, with a lots of skyscrapers and a large mountain as backdrop.
We arrived in Urumqi at 18:30 and are led to an hotel where the man from the travel agency brings my parcel, (brakes, fork seals etc.), and proceeds to introduce us to our new guide! What?!
We try to explain we had agreed with his colleague that no guide was necessary, but the colleague is mysteriously absent. He says we must have a guide and the guide must have a car and driver. That will be $3000!! We tell him we do not have it, as in UP YOURS MUSH!
Anyway, we have to repair the bikes before we can do anything else. So he leaves to await our answer.
We eat, drink, and meet up again with Helge, the Norwegian we met at the border, who is now traveling onwards by bus & plane.
The usual round of phone calls asking if we want “girls” kicks off about 9:30. We unplug the phone.
For those that are interested, our Urumqi hotel was at N 43.80438 E 087.62944
Day 2 in Urumqi was spent getting Johns front tyre changed at a local tyre shop.
After that I set about Mick’s bike. New front calliper and left hand fork seals to be fitted. All this was done with a about 10 of the locals watching and commenting. We filled the fork with the right amount of automatic transmission fluid as we had no fork oil. ATF has the same properties – its non-foaming.
In the evening we went shopping for a new mobile phone for John. Lost/stolen at a fuel stop. A Chinese SIM was also bought for the new phone.
A dust storm also blew in. In this picture you can just see the sun over the pink building in the centre
We met a couple of ladies when we were trying to get the SIM sorted and they took us to the local middle school, where one was a teacher, to use their PC’s instead of an Internet cafe for uploading to the gallery. They told us they were nice girls so no “hanky-panky”… Us!? They then took us out to dinner!
They ordered way too much food and insisted the restaurant make us up a doggy bag so we can eat it for breakfast!
We managed to loose it on the way back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel, we laid our escape plans for the morning.
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