Category: Asia

Welcome to Монгол (Mongolia)

.Reading time 9 minutes.

Crossing the Chinese border is a unique adventure…
You are not allowed to cross it on foot, so we are crammed – with 5 people (including driver) – on the front seat, 2 more between the carton boxes in the back and our luggage on the roof of an old Russian Army Jeep. I hang half out the drivers front door… So we arrive at a small office, buy an exit ticket and walk then to a huge border building. We complete all formalities, wait for our jeep to drive us to the smaller Mongolian border building and then we’re in Mongolia.

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Hohhot (呼和浩特), our last days in China

.Reading time 5 minutes.

We arrive a round 2 am in hūhéhàotè (呼和浩特), which means the Blue City
in Mongolian. A reference to the blue sky arching over the grasslands
of old.
We head directly to our hotel for another couple of hours sleep…
Nonetheless on our sleeper train we could sleep some 31 hours.

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The long train journey

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Here most of our trip through China ends… The next couple of days we
head a three day train journey to the Inner Mongolia (內蒙古) province,
to the capital town of Hohhot (呼和浩特) – called the blue city in
Chinese.
The first leg goes from Kashgar to Turpan (吐魯番 – tǔlǔfān), a 22 hour
trip with only seats available. Loaded with lots of fruit, water and
instant noodles we board the train. Dreading the road ahead, since we
know we’ll arrive broken!
Luckily the people on the train are friendly and nice, so this makes
things sweeter.

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Driving the Karakoram Highway

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Woensdag, 16 oktober 2013 en donderdag, 17 oktober 2013

Vandaag trekken we de Karakoram Highway op als 2 luxetoeristen. We
betaalden een excursie voor 2 dagen met taxi en privé-chauffeur!!!
Het eerste stuk gaat door de rode kloof van de Ghez rivier. In Ghez is
er een officieel checkpoint. Paspoorten en permit laten zien…en
zeker niet lachen!

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