kyrgystan (bine)

Sept 8, 2008 - Sept 11 2008

7869 km, kashgar (CN)

border tajikistan - sary tash - border china

after the tajik border the road turned really bad and we could just cycle about 10 km/h, but at least it was going downhill. we met some german overlander with their cars and could change our tajik somani in kyrgyz som. the last few kilometers to the kyrgyz border were paved and we had a nice tailwind. the landscape had changed dramatically: everything was greener, a bit like scotland with green hills. despite the high snow capped mountains. at the border we had no problems. but there were real stone made houses and no container like the ones at the tajik border. the last 25 kilemeters to sary tash, the first small village after the border were really easy. as we had expected there was not much to do or to buy. the first thing we noticed were that a lot of men were drunk and in the small shops you could buy a lot of vodka. it has been a pity that we could not see the mountains behind us clearly. we decided to take a guesthouse, but unfortunately there is no shower. and after 12 days without shower this would have been very nice. we met karine, a very impressive cyclist from france and bamba a japanese mountaineer. so we had very nice company and spend a lot of time chatting together. after one rest day we cycled towards china. we had heard from other cyclists that the gravel road to the chinese border should be quite bad. and that is really true. the first 25 kilometers are ok but after that it is the worst gravel road i have ever cycled. even downhill we could only go with 5 km/h and sometimes even had to push. and to make it worse we had a really heavy headwind. after 60 kilometers and over seven hours cycling we reached the first checkpoint and more important: paved roads. the next day it was going uphill but it was no problem. at the border we met dirk again and did the paperwork together. a little bit later we entered our 10^th country: china!