Charklik to Hotaugao
Trip Start
Aug 14, 2008
1
7
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Hotaugao,
China
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Although the blacktop was ended, the Chinese road crews had carried out an impressive amount of work on the road to Shimien Kwang. Nearly all of the many culverts to allow drainage runoff had been completed, in places all that remained to be done was laying the blacktop. Further on towards Shimien Kwang the blacktop had been laid, but trenches had been dug through it at the drainage culverts, rendering it drivable for only short periods before one had to go off-road.
The road's certainly an impressive engineering achievement, but you can't help thinking how the Chinese government justifies it financially. It links an obscure oasis town in the Takla Makan desert with an even more obscure asbestos mining town on the completely barren Chaidam upland desert.
For maybe 2 or 3 more hours after the truckstop it was basically desert terrain, albeit steadily more uneven, as we climbed up steadly through the Altan Tagh mountains.
Laying the blacktop
There were no vertigonous mountain roads to be crawled up, and we followed a old river bed up and through the mountains onto the Chaidam on the other side. During our passage through this valley we sited a small family group of deer, I was later assured they were just common Antelope rather than the much rarer Tibetan antelope. The Chaidam is an extension of the Tibetan plateau north of the Kunlun mountains. Calling it bleak would be an understatement, for great stretches there is no plant life whatsoever and whichever way you turn you face the same grim prospect of bare brown earth. Occasionally you would see a few black dots in the distance and eyes straining you would try and identify what kind of animal they were. As the car got closer you would realise that they weren't animals but just individual shrubs instead.About an hours drive from Shimien Kwang the accident happened. The car was leaving one of the completed stretches of road to avoid one of the trenches, when the accident happened. Ian had mentioned before that when we went over a bad bump there was a kind of slipping sensation that felt like it was within the car, he suspected that there was a problem with the suspension. There was a loud breaking sound and a massive jerk. We all got out of the car and when I saw the damage I thought we were going to be hitching the rest of the way to Shimien Kwang. The left front wheel had risen right up into the front wing and thrown it out of joint. Ian thought that the front connecting rod was broken and that we were going to be walking.
The driver started to jack her up, and the other Chinese guys gathered some big rocks with the intention of using them to prop the car up to enable repairs to be done, although the damage seemed too dire to be fixed there and then.
Antelope by the roadside
I wandered over to an abandoned work camp about 400m away with 2 of the Chinese. They found a couple of wooden poles which they took back and used as levers to hold the car up while the rocks were placed beneath. It turned out the work camp wasn't completely abandoned as appeared at first sight and 3 or 4 rooms were still in use. I wandered into what I found was the kitchen where I found the cook. Ian and the HK guy came over and we all had a coffee safely out of the rain which had started shortly after the accident. The cook - with the HK guy acting as a translator - told us they had been building the road for 4 years. I sympathised with anyone stuck in this place for 4 years, 1 afternoon was enough for me. After the rain had fallen off a little, I wandered over to the car and the driver had made some progress with a couple of other guys assisting him when they could. The front connecting rod itself hadn't broken but the balljoint connecting it had, and amazingly enough the driver had been carrying a spare of this part. The driver had replaced it and it was just a matter of putting the wheel back on and removing the rocks using the wooden poles again. It had taken the driver 3 hours and a lot of sweat to effect repairs and under the circumstances it was a good effort.
When we reached Shimien Kwang it was everything and worse you would expect an asbestos mining town to be. The streets were unpaved and just dirt with no plantlife whatsoever. People were walking and riding around with facemasks on the thickness of nappies.
Our broken car
Bedraggled dogs were rooting through piles of rubbish and the buildings were the kind of grey, drab brick ones you see everywhere in China. The one exception was the new bus station which was still to open. Evidently this was meant for stream of passenger traffic the new road to Charklik is supposed to generate. Good luck to them I say arriving in this godforsaken hole. The asbestos mine itself was an awesome site. It was bigger than I expected. Smoke and dust were rising from it in equal measures and it was surrounded by gigantic piles of slag. I decided immediately that there was no way on earth I was going to spend a night in this hellish spot. The minibus to Hotogau which normally waited for the car had already left so Ian and myself settled on a price of 300Y with our driver to take us the extra 80km to Hotaugau for the night. The HK guy agreed to come with us, although he took some persuading, he seemed to have an unseemly desire to spend a night in this horrible spot. We had no trouble negotiating the two police checkpoints marking our exit from Xinjiang and our entry into Qinghai province.
I wasn't sure whether our entrance into Qinghai would be problematical as we were entering a restricted area which was closed to foreigners. In the event our driver presented our passports to the Qinghai police and after 5 minutes one of the policement came over and stipulated that we had to spend the night in either the Traffic hotel or the PetroHotel. About 5 minutes after we had departed from the checkpoint, one of the cop cars from the checkpoint sped by us at lightning speed. Whether they were going to Hotaugou to make sure we checked into the desired hotels and left the next morning was anybodies guess. The journey to Hotaugau took about 90 minutes and was marked by periodic glimpses of large oil derricks. After Shimien Kwang Hotaugau felt like a real town with restaurants, hotels, shops and even KTV establishments.
The Traffic hotel turned us away complaining they were full, more probably they couldn't be bothered with the hassle of reporting us to the police as they were obliged to do, the Petrohotel was out, as it was way too expensive at 350Y a room. Finally after cruising around the town and being turned down by a couple of other establishments, we finally got the Post Hotel to accept us at 120Y for a double room.
After dumping our bags in our rooms all 4 of us repaired to a Hui Muslim restaurant where we enjoyed a sumptious Chicken feast.
