Generalissimo Jeff reports from China

China Silk Road and Chickens

 

Comrades!!

In my pen-ultimate email, I bring you greetings from Communist China. And I must say it feels like the good old days of the USSR: KFC, MacDonald’s, Pizza Hut, new tar-sealed roads, Mercedes Benz, BMW, internet cafes and the World Cup on every channel.... er, maybe not. Never happened under Stalin!!! Seems the old Maoist doctrine has discovered the joys of western capitalism! Though the 6ft high Terracotta Warrior I bought yesterday was guaranteed genuine ... at least that's what Mr. Dewick 'Del Boy' Twotta said as he pulled it from the back of his little yellow donkey cart!

Anyway, Comrades... its the journey, not the destination that matters! And the journey has been interesting.

After the majestic landscape and beautiful people of Kyrgyzstan, we headed south to the remote, desolate mountain border with China.... The infamous 'Touragat Pass'. This is the eastern most access point into China, and one that was heavily fortified during the tensions between China and the old USSR during the Cold War. For miles on the approach you follow a seemingly endless double barbed 2m fence ... the closest still bearing evidence of ancient electrification! Occasionally a black, monstrous, silent, and fortunately long-deserted guard tower looms behind the fence, the dark slits of pillbox emplacements scattered at its base. This remote 4000m pass was intimidating enough without the military might of China flexing it's muscles ... in the days of communist super-power sword-rattling, this place must have been utterly terrifying.

Nowadays a few sorry looking Kyrgyzstan soldiers (who clearly pulled the short straw to get this duty, stare dejectedly across a worn counter as they stamp you out of their nation, their out of date soviet style uniforms now tattered and worn. This pass is no longer a hotbed of tension. It re-opened in the late-90's to goods vehicles and a few years ago the first tourists began to trickle through. It is open for 3 hours in the morning for traffic to China ... then 3 hours in the afternoon for traffic from China.
That's it. Miss your time and you're stuck there for the whole sub-zero night.

Nearly 6 hours later, we were stamped into Communist China and heading south towards Taxkorgan, a small town in the extreme southwest of China ... about 10km from Tajikistan, 50km from Pakistan and 20km from Afghanistan. This is where the northern Himalayan Mountain Range (the Karakoram) form a jagged 360 panoramic horizon, their 7000m+ fingers reaching up to touch the heavens, glowing fiery red-pink in the cool dusk. We camp at the base of Muztagata Mountain beside the azure blue Kara-Kul Lake. Our 4000m home dwarfed in the shadow of this 7600m, glacier flanked monster. 1000s of sheep graze through the lush grasslands fed by the snowmelt, small yurt villages are scattered across the mountainside. Yes, it does all sound a little bit OTT, a romanticised image. Something from a bygone tourist brochure ... but, as I rested my head back on a lakeside rock and gazed ever upwards to the misty summits above me, an icy breeze caressing my cheeks ... well, if I'd met my maker at that instant, I think I'd have been buried with the smile still etched on my face.

However, as with every tale of glorious beauty, there is always a twist.
Warren's Cook Group. The chicken they had chosen to cook on that stunning evening were old. Old in the way the mountains of the world are young. These had been chickens whose prime of life was back when mankind lived in caves and still fled at the sight of fire. Noah on the Ark had saved these chickens. They had jumped out of the way as Ghengis Khan raised Asia to the ground. They donned uniforms under Mao. These were, to put it mildly, old, ropey chickens. They had, in fact, probably died at the times of the Pyramids... but simply not realised it. And Warren's Cook Group had bought an entire fridge load of them.

After 2 hours of boiling the flesh should have dropped from their bones. But when the flesh is made of the same material that was around at the formation of the planet itself, we had to use cleavers to persuade the two to part.
Alarm bells should have rung. The medivac helicopter should have been circling overhead. But no. We ate it. And so began the longest night of my life.

Within an hour gurgles rattled my insides. As I snuggled into my sleeping bag and the outside temperature dropped sub-zero, I began to sweat. My mouth was watering. Small juddering pains stabbed through my intestines. I curled.
I twisted. I tried, and failed, to ignore the inevitable. After a mere three hours I virtually tore apart my sleeping bag in a desperate attempt to escape before I literally exploded.

A short pause for dramatic impact here in order to discuss sleeping bag zips... why, when a bag is made of some mysterious (and ridiculously
expensive) composite material that would still keep you warm 30ft under a glacier and has taken a trillion years to develop, can they not make a poxy zip that doesn't jam every 2cm and devour the entire bag into its jagged little teeth!!?? Normally this sort of thing would not be worth mentioning, but at that instant, those little bastard teeth were preventing the most critical escape sequence since Steve McQueen tried to jump the Nazi fences into Switzerland!!

Anyhow, I 'just' made it out in time. With my thermal long johns round my ankles (yeah, yeah, last of the great explorers and all that!) I managed to get a respectable 4 feet from the tent doorway before I demonstrated man's first ever-internal thermo-nuclear test. Azerbaijan Mud Volcano erupted below me as a multi-coloured chicken rocketed forth. It was not nice. It lasted for an hour. Then again an hour later. Then again just before dawn. I was not alone that night. Thank God the tent zips are not made by the same people who make the sleeping bags!!

As dawn cast its glow across the summit of Muztagata, the breeze once more caressed my face as a rested my weary head against that lakeside rock. If I'd met my maker at that point, I'd have been bloody pissed off... "why the **** didn't you take me yesterday."

And so we journeyed on, Comrades. To Kashgar, and the legendary Sunday Market of the Silk Road. And what a day it was. The market rocked. 1000s of people and 10000s of animals. A wall of smells, noise and movement blurred the senses and over-whelmed the eyes. Fat-bottomed sheep (their backsides being trimmed and washed to show off their fatty assets!) rubbed shoulders with cattle, donkeys and horses. Crates of chickens were stacked amongst the butcher stalls. Noodle cafes formed a perimeter with more animal-related accessory stalls than you can shake the proverbial stick at. Old men argued with fistfuls of cash for dazed looking animals. It was truly amazing.

From here we sped ever eastwards across the Taklamakan Desert, the world's second largest (after the Sahara). Endless dunes walled in the road as we drove in scorching heat ... it is a mere 35 in June ... hitting a toasty high 50s in August! The Taklamakan is also the world's hottest! Though for us, it appeared as the world's wettest desert, as every time we camped a driving rain-storm would set in. Many a morning we expected to be flooded out or surrounded by lush tropical forests. That's the problem with deserts, they are just so damn wet!!

Before I bore you into a coma, one last place. One last story. Buddhist Monks on the Tibetan Plateau. We eventually (after countless places and cities) crawled forever upwards onto the fringes of Tibet. Once more mountains and valleys surrounded us. It was here we found the Lebrang Monastery in Xiahe. This is a town of two halves ... the tar-sealed roads and modern Chinese town, versus the mud roads and run-down homes of the Tibetans. These really are two peoples who mix about as well as water poured onto oil. The buffer between the two consists of the sprawling ancient monastery of Lebrang and its 2000 red-robed monks. As bells, drums and horns echo from the rooftops, chanting rises from deep within the yak-butter candle lit temples. A sight and sound that would warm the heart of the most cold-hearted cynic. A heavenly experience only slightly marred as you catch a glimpse of a monk's face suddenly lit up in the gloom by the bright blue glow from his Nokia mobile!!!

Yep, this is modern Buddhism. 'You gotta move with the times' as the Great Buddha himself once said ... probably. And so these monks have. The key accessories for the 21st century monk, aside from the red robes, sandals and big banana hat, is (of course): a Motorola Razr, a Sony MP3 and a couple of kids ... that whole celibacy thing was really not popular at all (just look at what those Catholic priests get up to!) The streets of Xiahe are filled with monks - ice cream in one hand, texting a mate with the other, Eminem on the headset. Not sure whether its cool, or a little sad. But whatever, these monks were on every rooftop in the Tibetan town helping the locals build new homes ... so maybe they have got the balance for the new millennium right!!?? Your call.

At the moment I am in Xi'an. My 4* hotel room nice and cool under the constant blast from the A/C. A stack of DVDs wait beside the player. The laundry bag long since taken to be washed, pressed and returned before 2pm ... as one would expect. Later I may have a cool imported pint of draft San Miguel in the piano bar. It's hell here. I can understand why Marco Polo struggled out here!!

Well, comrades, that's China so far. Just 3 weeks until Hong Kong and the end of the epic Silk Road adventure. And an end to these epic emails ("hurrah!", I hear you shout!). So that's me, Generalissimo Jeff signing off. Keep the flames of the revolution well fanned, comrades ... the time is near!

Keep in touch with the gossip. Take care.

Generalissimo Jeff ... laden with medals and red banners.

Ultimate Overland

Comrade Jeff is on 16 week overland trip from the UK to Hong Kong. This is a combination journey that encompasses Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China.
For those wanting shorter journeys check out SOME OF THE FOLLOWING SECTIONMSour:

Mountain Kingdoms of Kyrgyzstan (KYR) - 15 nights Tashkent to Bishkek. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

The Silk Route to Xi'an (SRX) - 4.5 weeks, Bishkek to Xi'an via Kyrgyzstan and Chinese Xinjiang.

Yangtze & Eastern Explorer (YEE) - 23 nights Xi'an to Hong Kong

Other combination trips are available making up journeys ranging from 4 to 22 weeks.

Don't miss next months Comrade Jeff's final installment of crossing of China.