Silk Road

Dunhuang, Jiayuguan, Wuwei, Lanzhou, Pingliang My delay in providing this blog has had to do with not being able to get an Internet connection at some of these small hotels. At Dunhuang we stayed at an elaborate hotel shaped like a pagoda with many meetings rooms. Most interesting was the way the dunes of the…

The Ride to Jiayuguan & a Day of Touring We left in the morning for Jiayuguan, an oasis in the Gobi Desert that originally marked the eastern border of the Chinese Empire. Jiayuguan has a fortress, part of the Great Wall, that stretches between two mountains making it impossible to use the mountain pass without…

Hami and Dunhuang China We left our hotel each morning expecting miserably hot Gobi Desert weather, but were pleasantly surprised in both cases. Part of it was due to the high altitude – we reached a height of 6,000 ft. – and the rest was due to uncommonly cool weather. The winds were blowing up…

Ride from Urumqi China Kentucky Fried Chicken has been a favorite of the group. There are several who are addicted to the fried chicken, the potatoes and just hanging out at the place. Before leaving Urumqi, Dennis and I stopped in to get our grease/fat fix, and we were very amused at a large troop…

Yining Kuytun and Urumqi China We left Sasha, our Central Asian guide, when we crossed the border into China. Sasha turned out to be “one of the boys.” Sim, our Chinese guide, is more serious, less relaxed, more absolute, and clearly has more pressure working with China than Sasha had with the other republics. We…

Almaty to Zharkent Kazakhstan On June 3rd we rode through Kazakhstan from Almaty to Zharkent. Part of the ride included a jaunt down into the “Grand Canyon of Kazakhstan”, which is small by US Grand Canyon standards, but had an extraordinary number of tourists. (Why would tourists flock to see that canyon when they could…

Almaty Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, the land of Borat, is not what the movie depicts. Almaty, formerly called Alma-Ata, is a prospering modern city growing rapidly (approximately 12% in the last three years) with a population of about 1.7 million in a country of perhaps 13 million. It has a gross per capita income of approximately $2,260…

Kyrgyzstan We left the hotel in the Issyk-Kul Kyrgyzstan region and rode into the mountains and foothills that were high summer pastures for shepherds. There was snow high in the mountains. We reached an altitude of about 7,000 feet and then visited a shepherd family. They put on a display of horsemanship that was quite…

Departing Uzbekistan, Transiting Kazakhstan, Arriving in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan and Lake Issyk-Kul Kyrgyzstan We left early in the morning on the 29th, crossed three borders, and traveled 400 miles. It was a tedious day. Exiting Uzbekistan took four hours; officials searched our duffle bags and panniers. In the United States, the government searches people coming in,…

More about Turkmenistan In Turkmenistan, one can fill up their gas tank for about $1.00. I believe gasoline costs a little less than 10 cents per gallon, compared to $8 or $9 a gallon in Turkey. All trucks were filling up at the border before passing into Uzbekistan, and diesel fuel flows all over the…