Kashgar to Narryn in Kyrgystan 7.10.13

Goodbye to Kashgar at 9.45 am Beijing time and accompanied by Abdul and 3 soldiers drove to the FIRST checkpoint stopping at a fairly miserable fruit stall along the way for fruit, if anyone wanted it.  Arrived at the first checkpoint at 10.45am.  Because today was the last day of the Autumn Moon Holiday the checkpoint was closed.  We waited and waited on a bare concrete fore court with no one around until eventually an officer arrived and we all lined up, strictly in order and the first part of the process was gone through, though taking quite some time. Then a 104km drive to the old border post. Along the way another check, another 1/2 hour and another check and eventually we finally arrived at the iron gates to finally leave China and enter Kyrgystan.  This 104km drive took us through the Torugart Pass  (3752 metres high) and some truly spectacular scenery. The pass is mgnificent, through harsh, stunning, barren mountains.     Sadly, the road didn't match the scenery.  It is very bad, rough, broken up, and very slow. 

Torugart Pass mountains

Kyrgystan village mountains and grassland across river bed

Lunch on the road side

Guest house Naryn

Sheep flock

 

We left our bus, said goodbye to Abdul, and walked through the gate into Kyrgystan.   The Immigration checkpoint here is a huge cold bare concrete shed and the toilet  is in a rough shed and is a hole in the concrete floor.  Careful, you don't make a misstep and fall down!  After all that we climbed, thankfully, into a much more luxurious bus and made the acquaintance of our new guide, Katya.  Katya has good English (married an Australian and spent some time in Perth) and seems very competent.  Another security check in another hour down the road.  6 altogether! to go from China to Kyrgystan. Waiting at the Kyrgystan border post was an enormous log jam of empty trucks waiting for the border to opened so that they could go into China to bring goods back for sale.  Literally hundreds packed in two rows waiting for the border to open and blocking the road for kilometres. Our bus was forced to take to a track through the rough ground near the road until eventually we had to rejoin the road.  Trucks then had to moved to let us through.  The scenery was most interesting once we cleared the mountain pass and the valley opened up.  Lovely grasslands backed by the Tian Shan mountains with a surprising number of animals in flocks/herds.  Sheep,  goats, yaks, horses, cows, with their shepherds on horseback.  One of the most remote high altitude roads in the world.  Once we had cleared the last checkpoint the bus stopped and Katya handed out very welcome and substantial lunch boxes.  We picnicked beside the road with a lake nearby.  The 8 hour drive to Narryn was along more ordinary roads although by far the worst section (appalling) was the last hour down a very steep gorge into Naryn in the dark. It became obvious that we  had an excellent driver as we crept down.  Naryn appeared to be little more than a very modest town but the guest house was good and fairly recently finished.  However, there was no electricity when we arrived so a mad scramble to find our torches.  The rooms were nice and pleasant and the power was on and off.   Dinner was excellent, great variety of foods, in the restaurant which is in a separate building in a quite elegant room. 
Kyrgystan gained independence from Russia in 1991 and has become much poorer since and this is obvious.