Buying a train ticket in Ürümqi

Even if it was already a bit warmer again when we reached Ürümqi we decided that we would try to get south as quickly as possible. The only 'deadline' we have on our trip, is to be in Cambodia in December when Peter's mum and brother will come. But due to this one single deadline we are kind of running out of time now. China is so huge and there are so many things to see, but we had to cut things off and make a decision. So we decided to spend the time we have in the south of China, mainly in Yunnan. So I guess we have to come back one day to discover all the remaining places.

Due to our planning, our most important task on our first day in Ürümqi was to get the train tickets to Chengdu, which is the place the furthest south we can get without having to change trains. Last time I had tried to buy train tickets in China, I almost had had a nervous breakdown and in the end decided to get airplane tickets instead, so I was prepared for the worst. We went to the train station, just to find that it was really busy - Chinese train stations are busy by default, but it gets crazy before public holidays as everybody wants to get back home to celebrate with their families. And of course, our timing was perfect as usual, because the day after was the Chinese mid-autumn festival, one of the four main holidays in China. So we queued for what seemed like an eternity, when we finally reached the counter, I almost got the tickets, but then I mentioned that we have two bikes to carry with us - yes, big bikes. From this point in the conversation on, I was lost. So she sent us to a different counter, to a lady who spoke English. That meant queuing again. And same procedure again - all went fine to the point where I mentioned the bikes - she just said 'You can't take the bikes' and sent us away to yet another different place. We got there and this was apparently the place to drop off goods that you want to send by train. Nobody here spoke a word of English, so it took us a while to figure out that we could actually send our bikes from here the next day and they would go to Chengdu ahead of us, so that we could pick them up there once we arrive. But first of all we had to buy tickets for ourselves, which was not possible here - so back again to the first place. Queuing again and after more than 2 hours in total, we finally had our tickets to Chengdu - a train ride that will take us 49 hours!! As there were no hard sleeper tickets left, we had to go for the luxurious version and bought the more expensive soft sleeper tickets, which we hope will make our journey a bit more comfortable at least.

So then we only had to drop off our bikes the next morning, which we did with a bit of a strange feeling. Seeing our bikes, which had accompanied us for almost every single day in the last 4 months, being wheeled away and we were left alone with only a piece of paper in our hands that made us wondering whether we will see them again - but we have hope!

Now finally after everything was organized we had 2 days left to explore Ürümqi before the train leaves. As you can see on the pictures, we mainly explored the food of Ürümqi. They have great freshly-prepared noodles here, while sitting in the small restaurants enjoying your bowl of noodle soup, you can watch the cook in the kitchen swirling around the pasta dough, preparing the next portion. And as we were here for the mid-autumn festival, we also got our fair share of mooncakes - small pastries with different fillings. We tried many different versions: with red bean paste, with yellow bean paste, with nuts, the traditional version with a kind of almond paste and an eggyolk symbolizing the moon in the middle and so on. All of them yummy and with I don't know how many thousands of calories - but this is the advantage of biking: so many calories are always welcome :)

Apart from that Ürümqi is like any other big Chinese city. We expected to see a lot bigger Uighur community, but apart from the food, you don't see much of it here. We would have loved to get out of Ürümqi and to discover the rest of Xinjiang, but we will have to come back here and do that during a different trip.

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Crossing the Kazakh-Chinese border

On the day we crossed the border our initial plan was to camp about 20 km before the border and enter China the next day. We wanted to have sufficient time for leaving Kazakhstan, and thus Central Asia, and entering our 6th country on our journey. In the middle of the day, however, we decided spontaneously to enter China on the same day. The last few days were cold and we were really fed up with the poor food we had on the road. We imagined China, precisely Korgas as the first Chinese city behind the border, as our food paradise.

So we rushed to the border. We didn't know the business hours of the border station but we had something like from 7 am to 7 pm in our head. At 2 pm we were still 30 km away from the border. Suddenly we remembered that China has only one time zone, Beijing time. As Beijing is 2 hours ahead of Kazakhstan, so was Korgas. We were afraid that the Chinese would close the border at 5 pm. So we pedaled even harder. In total it was a 90 km ride to the border with a constant 1% climb on the last 30 km.

At 4:40 pm we arrived at the first Kazakh border post. They told us to hurry up. The border station would close soon. At that time we knew our assumption was right. From the first border post it was still about one km to the second Kazakh border post. The chief officer stopped us and contacted somebody on his walkie-talkie. We could pass but again we were told to hurry up. At 4:45 pm we arrived at the customs and passport handling. We handed over our registration card and got our departure stamp. At the customs they were expecting us. We were the last persons passing through the customs. Nobody showed any interest. They simply waved us through and the closed the border on the Kazakh side after us. The last Kazakh officer told us that the Chinese border would close in 10 minutes time.

On the Chinese side we were stopped by two border posts. The people at the last border post tried to explain that we couldn't go further to the customs and immigration building that was only 20 m in front of us. We didn't understand why and made an innocent face. They looked at the clock that showed 4:55 pm, didn't know what to do, sighed and let us through. The customs and immigration building was a modern building with all the security devices that you would expect at a border station. When we saw all that we realized how poorly equipped the Kazakh side was.

The Chinese customs officer were very curious but friendly. They were interested why I look like a Chinese, what my parents' name are and what they do. They checked our bags thoroughly. Very nice people!

We believe that our very late arrival made the border crossing very easy. Everybody wanted to go home what was to our advantage. There we were in China. We left Central Asia without paying any bribes! Yippiee! A new chapter has started with China and Southeast Asia.

Right after the border skyscrapers, very good roads and many cars welcomed us. What a difference! Only some minutes ago we still saw donkeys. We stayed a night in Korgas in a nice and cheap hotel and took a long shower. That night and the day after we ate at Chinese street rerstaurants. It was definitely the best food since we left home! We are finally in food paradise!

A sleeper bus took us 700 km over night to Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang province. The beds were small but still ok for us. Standard Europeans would very likely have problems with the size. In the morning when we woke up, we were already in Ürümqi. Somehow we were sad that we missed that part of the road. What we had seen in the evening from the bus, had looked like a really nice road to ride by bike.