And into Aksu

Day 41 466 km ( 12382 km total)

Mobile delays and a long ride to somewhere else

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We had spent 2 hard days getting into and becoming legal in China, day 3 further challenged everyone's ability to stay positive.

First you need to understand chinese time. 

 Officially there is only Beijing time, a single time zone that spans the entire country. But China is so vast that it spans at least two, possible three 'normal' time zones. So in Xinjiang province, it is officially 8am when it is 'actually' 6am. This discprenacny manifests itself in curious ways.

Hotels (at least the one we were staying in) operate to Beijing time. So when we went for breakfast at 8am Beijing time, it was still dark outside & all the staff look tired as they presumably work on local time & had been up at '5am' to prepare.  

On the other hand, our first task for the morning was to get a local mobile sim card, so we could easily keep in touch on the road. The phone shop seems to work on local time however, as it didnt open until 10am beijing time (8am local time) - weird. I think that the 3 hour lunches the police were taking yesterday were somehow tied up in this 2 hour time difference - maybe a way of getting one up in Beijing!

Anyway, the seven of us toddled off to the china mobile phone shop to register for a sim card - more passport copying, signing, stamping & paying. The staff worked through an interpreter with us and made every effort to avoid any eye contact, a trait I noticed generally with many 'front desk staff', strange as people on the street were very friendly.

The process took a couple of hours and so it was a late start to the day with a long ride ahead of us.

We headed out of Kashgar past independance square with its large statue of the chairman and then north east towards Aksu via the toll road, once our guide had negotiated access.

Whilst driving out of Kashgar, we briefley past the old town, which we had completely failed to see, due to the time spent messing around with various bureaucracies -

Kashgar is actually one if the historic silk road towns and would have been worthy if some time to explore properly.

  The road therafter was flat & straight, with mountains in the left and desert on the right - a pattern that was to stay with us for 2 days and some 1000 km. The sheer scale of everything, especially the geography, in this country is mind boggling.

Not much to say about the journey, a long straight ride with the occasional toll booth, police checkpoint and barricaded fuel station to navigate.  

7 hours later we were in Aksu.