West Again: Welcome to the Kyrgyz County of Akqi, Stranger!

Travel Log, 20 June.

6PM: I’m in Akqi, near the Kyrgyzstan border, and I couldn’t feel more welcome. I slipped in to this area, also part of the off-limits Kizilsu Kyrgyz Prefecture, by hiring a cab driver in Kashgar who was also up for an adventure, and just as keen to bypass all the police checkpoints we might encounter. We stopped in a couple little towns along the way, chatting with curious shop owners and picking up a couple nice-looking shyrdaks for taking back home. Then, when we arrived in Akqi, I took a walk and then made my way to the PSB, where I fully expected to be booked and shipped out on the next bus to Aksu. Instead I was greeted like a VIP, a status accorded to the first foreigner in anyone’s memory to come through these parts. Apparently the PSB here just never got the memo: foreigners don’t come here because they’re technically not allowed to come here, at least according to the PSB office in Kashgar. I spent a good hour in the PSB office, getting chatted up about what it’s like to be a foreigner, receiving recommendations for a good hike the next morning, and hearing about what development schemes the government has going or planned in these parts (answer: horse breeding, hydropower, and domestic tourism).

It just goes to show: when travelling in China, you never know what you’re in for.  

Postcard from halfway through a bottle of fermented mare’s milk, and to Osh

Winding our way along the Gulcha River down toward the Fergana Valley, between sips of the kumys we picked up at a yurt camp atop the Taldyk Pass, a simple thought occurred to me: there’s a big difference between a Kyrgyz autonomous county and a Kyrgyz autonomous country.

The Grass is Always Greener…

…on the other side of the Chinese border fence. It just takes a bit to get there: a hundred miles of 4-wheel driving through desert mountain moonscape, seven passport checks, a three-hour wait at the final border control (it was lunch break), and a personal PLA-soldier escort down a little goat path and over some old barbed wire to a spot where he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. And then suddenly there we were, in the most beautiful place on earth: Kyrgyzstan!

 

 

 

 

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