After our failed border crossing from Tibet to Nepal, we have a good 13,000 km ahead of us to travel back home with Shujaa. There would have been no other point on our journey that would have been father away! Ironically, on the very day we receive our extension of permit to stay in China for another 30 days, the land border to Nepal also reopens. However, turning back and driving the disastrous roads to Tibet again is not an option for us, especially since applying for another Tibet permit would take 2-3 weeks!
Naturally, our mood is at a low after all the stress and frustration of the past few weeks, but a world trip isn’t just all highlights – even if many travelers on social media like to portray it that way and create a lot of unrealistic expectations. We’re trying to make the best of the situation: the roads in mainland China are excellent again, so we’re making good progress… always on the more or less direct route westward towards the Kazakh border. Along the way, we visit a few nice sights: the Zhagye Geopark with its multicolored rock formations is very beautiful and we even find a really good and quiet overnight parking spot (by Chinese standards). However, we have to acknowledge once again that many landscapes around the world are repetitive: the Rainbow Mountains in Peru or Turkey don’t look all that different from the ones here… and can be visited without the shuttle bus that’s obligatory in China 😉.
The Great Wall of China is definitely not repetitive in this form and therefore we visit it again in Jiayuquan after our first visit near Beijing – this time with an impressive fortress. Entering the admittedly “tense” province of Xinjiang is like crossing a border into another country: photos taken, passports checked, etc., but all done politely and correctly. Why so many Chinese overland travel agencies still claim that a guide is necessary for Xinjiang or even the rest of mainland China is a mystery to us – only for Tibet a guide is explicitly required!
Two weeks ago, we were at the highest point of our world trip (5,260 meters) in Tibet, but upon arriving in the city of Turpan, we found ourselves at the second-lowest point: -55 meters. We hadn’t realized that this area, nestled between the Gobi and Taklamakan Desert, lies so low: the landscape with its rugged mountains is more reminiscent of Saudi Arabia than China. Other things have changed as well: the Muslim Uyghurs dominate the region: Women wearing light, transparent headscarves, bearded men smoking water pipes, minarets, and Arabic subtitles on the traffic signs. The people look more like they do in the Central Asian countries. Similar to Tibet, Xinjiang is a complete anomaly compared to mainland China and the existing conflicts are quite understandable to us. In any case we feel very comfortable in this environment again… even though we’re surrounded by huge wind and solar farms! Lake Sayram, just before the border with Kazakhstan at an altitude of over 2,000 meters, is another scenic highlight, and we just barely manage to escape the tourist buses, the blaring music, and the shrill voices from the parking lot loudspeakers 😉.
The nearly 4,000 km drive through Kazakhstan, averaging 500-600 km per day, has very few highlights though: a great western style dinner in Almaty, the mosque in Turkestan, the town of Aral (there’s no sign of the lake of the same name anymore), and the Baikonur Cosmodrome are welcome breaks from the monotonous drive through the endless steppe. This allows us to once again overnight in pristine nature and avoid being accompanied by wind and solar farms throughout the entire journey. The transit through Russia is completed in just over a day this time, and the border crossings are smooth and relatively quick.
Once in Georgia, we first embark on a long hike in the Greater Caucasus Mountains, enjoying fantastic autumn weather, before Shujaa receives its well-deserved service at MAN in Tbilisi. It’s incredible once again how few vehicle problems we encountered on this trip which included some truly long and challenging off-road sections – and that’s with 325,000 km on the clock: a replaced AdBlue emulator/deactivator device and a new lock for the drivers cab door were the only issues we encountered. We are incredibly grateful for this, especially when we hear about the issues other travelers face.
Arriving in Turkey, we opted for the significantly more scenic route through northeastern Anatolia in Turkey this time, instead of the densely populated Black Sea coast which we drove in spring. Stunning scenery and two truly beautiful cities, Erzurum and Amasya,… and suddenly we’re at the Bosporus and thus in Europe.
In Greece we relax for 2.5 days on the beach in perfect weather, with long walks along the shore, Greek salad, tzatziki, and delicious fish. After a trip like this, you really appreciate the seemingly ordinary and unexotic things in life. It feels so good! The ferry then takes us from Igoumenitsa to Ancona, Italy, where we visit good friends at their new home in Tuscany and spend a few wonderful days together.
Rarely have the differences between our arrival in Europe and our previous trip been as extreme as this time: two days in St. Tropez round off our “entry to Europe” before we take the ferry from Toulon to Mallorca – our first time with Shujaa on the island!
