Cherchen to Charklik

• Simondav's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Charklik

Trip Start Aug 14, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing Next
Entry

  Charklik, China
Monday, August 18, 2008

Got up the next morning at 7.00 am to be sure of getting a ticket. Ian had said there was a bus for Charklik this morning but that tickets went quickly. Had breakfast outside and secured my ticket at 8.30, one of the last on the bus. After the usual security checks, i.e. x-raying the bags and passengers, and we were off for 9.00am. An english speaking Uighur in front of me told me the trip would take 5 hours.

I was rather nervous on the journey as I was sat between 2 characters who looked pretty retarded and kept staring jerkily about, focusing on me rather too often for my liking. I couldn't help but wonder looking at them if their was incest involved somewhere in the family. What was interesting was when the bus driver took everybodies id's to give to the police at the first checkpoint, they had no id's, only some kind of signed paper, which seemed to satisfy officialdom however.

After quite an easy trip we reached Charklik at about 2.00pm, which gave me time to look around

The desert en route Charklik

. For sleeping it was the trusty Traffic hotel again at 100Y for a room. Charklik seemed quite a pleasant town with the usual huge formal boulevards that all of these dusty Chinese desert towns seemed to possess. I found a restaurant with a few diners outside and ordered a Chicken dish from the picture sign outside. It turned out to be one of those big platters with half a chicken on meant for 2 people, all of it was too much for me but I made a good stab at it and it was seriously delicious. The guy pointed it out as a baked chicken on my menu translator. He then bought his baby over and insisted on taking a picture of me holding the baby with his camera phone.

I bumped into Ian back at the hotel, and he had been talking to this Hong Kong guy who had been on the bus with us, and they had spoken to the people at the bus station who had told them there was a vehicle to Houtogou at 8.00 am tomorrow morning. Having perused Central Asian travellers excellent website, I suspected that this was not a bus but a 4WD SUV and that the journey was likely to be rough and cramped and I mentioned this to Ian who seemed to think it was going to be a nice comfy bus ride.

We had a few beers outside the hotel that night, immediately adjacent to the hotel was a suspect hairdressers with several girls outside, judging by the coming and going it was obvious that the owner of the hotel didn't make the bulk of his money from the hotel trade.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

More desert

Slideshow Print this entry Share

Previous Entry Next Entry