Khotan to Cherchen

Trip Start Aug 14, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Sunday, August 17, 2008

After saying my goodbyes to the Americans who were taking the trans-desert highway to Korla, I took a taxi to the bus station. My sleeper bus left at 10.30 Beijing time and it took us to 14.15 to reach Keriya where we stopped for 2 hours. I had lunch at one of the small restaurants outside the station there. The second leg of the journey through Minfeng to Cherchen took us just over 7 hours. At our stop at Minfeng I saw the 2 Americans on their way to Korla, and we said our goodbyes again.

The passengers were mainly Uighurs and were quite a cheerful bunch. The bus rolled into Cherchen at 11:30pm and after availing myself of a room at the local Traffic Hotel for 110Y, I walked into one of the restaurants outside the bus station which had late opening hours and who should I see but Ian, an Appalachian guy from South Carolina who had been staying at the Chini Bagh in Kashgar too.

He proceeded to tell me a weird story being thrown out of the Traffic Hotel in Khotan, leaving another after waking up in his room to find a hotel member of staff in his room inspecting his passport, and then being accosted by the police who had escorted him to the bus station to get him to leave town. He said the police had tipped off the security guards at the bus station that he was fair game, and they proceeded to go through his bags and remove items at leisure, in protest he then started giving away many of the rest of the contents of his bag to the watching crowd including his shoes. The PSB then turned up and made the security guards and the crowd return all his items, but in what he saw as a point of honour he refused to wear any shoes and he was going about barefooted until he reached Shandong where he taught english.
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