John & Mick's BIG AdventureDesert Storms
Day 39 – 548kms. 11,611 kms total)
The sunrise is made all the more spectacular buy the dust in the air.
We leave Korla at a more reasonable time and once again struggle to escape the city traffic. The GPS keeps us heading in the right direction though.
All signposts are in Chinese, which we can overcome by jotting down the symbols for our destination from the map and hope to recognise them while we travel. However, inside the towns they only signpost major local roads in Chinese and English.
We finally come across a sign, (surprisingly in English) for “Kashi” (Wednesdays target), so we negotiate the intersection and head out of town. A dust storm has settled over town so visibility is only about 500m. Coupled with clouds above, not very exciting.
We clear the dust after a while, but the clouds linger for most of the day, giving us some cover from the sun, but it is still around 38 degrees and sticky.
As we skirt round the north of the Taklamakan desert, (we decided to skip the cross-desert highway to Hotan, to catch up time), we are watched closely by plastic policemen.
We reach Aksu and deposit ourselves in a fine hotel for a princely sum of 128RMB.
The restaurants in town are all empty (perhaps too early) so we eat in the hotel where the staff are constantly attentive, and even when we order a dish we don’t like the look of, they take it away, we chose another – no charge.
We also get free dessert as its Micks birthday! (and Thank you all for your Birthday wishes)
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