Visas/China

Visas

Seeing as no-one wants to employ me for three months or less and I'll be ending my tenancy here in early May it's been time to concentrate my thoughts on Part Two, the road home.

I've marked out a speculative route which is subject to the usual caveats regarding, well, anything, really. Still, it's a starter for ten. Google Maps doesn't handle Russia (hence the gap) and I've wiggled the route through Eastern Europe just to tick a few countries off the list...

Accordingly, I've drawn up a table of visa requirements which will change over time as more information comes in (it changed twice as I was writing it!). It's looking like everything after Kyrgyzstan will be done on the hoof.

China

I've been in contact with a couple of Chinese agencies who handle independent tourists (including those riding motorbikes) and the 9 day route around Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is going to cost about...$3000. Ouch! I had a breakdown from the one guy where it looks like it's about $1000 for the bike's permits, just over $1000 for the guide's car and just under $1000 for the guide and (3* including breakfast) hotels. There's several 500+km days in there as well so it's hardly lounging about!

Ouch!

For context, I've seen a recent quote online for $2200 for a couple on two bikes to make a 4 day traversal from Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan (ie. without my big loop through the desert).

...looks around for something to flog...looks depressed...

Recent Travellers

Here's something a bit more interesting. A couple of things referenced in a blog from last year:

the trip across the landslide lake on the KKH in Northern Pakistan where you need to have the bike man-handled into a boat:

the road on the Chinese side of the Khunjerab Pass being washed away:

In the blog they say they were 5-10 minutes ahead of the guys doing the filming, ie. there must have been a passable road at the time they went through as they made no comment. At the time the second lot made this film one landslide has already occurred (as the road has been cut through) and they are filming the second.

As a note to the industrious nature of the Chinese, they were able to join up again the next day.

Bahrain

The King of Bahrain has announced a three month State of Emergency or martial law depending on your source. One might question the idea of a defined term for a State of Emergency (rather than it's over when it's over) and even why one is being declared at all. The sefish and insignificance of my interest is that my return flight to India goes through Bahrain.

Website

As a side note, anyone browsing the site in the last month might have noticed that it all went pear shaped if you tried to view any images. I only discovered that when I tried to include the video clip above. By a long series of proof-of-idiocy moves (perhaps there is a reason why I'm not earning any money right now) it turned out there are two databases of information relating to the website that need to be copied when you upgrade/migrate. The absence of video clips was equally dim though in working out what I have learned some more Python/Plone. So it's not all bad.

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