Day 34 Kashgar to Urumqi

After a sleepless night we went down to the trucking agent to see whether he could ship to Lhasa. After a while he came up with the suggestion of a private truck & it would take at least 5 days & cost about $5,000. He also said that 1 October was a holiday for National Day & there is a week’s holiday.

Morgan crated & ready to be trucked to Shanghai

We have a flight to Urumqi at 3pm so had to make some decisions quickly. Our guide, who had been interpreting and looking after us in Kashgar, a damn good job he did too, phoned a friend who worked in Customs who also repeated the advice that the declaration and paperwork was quite easy and not the almost impossible task as presented by the rally travel agent whose office was in Urumqi.

We had a telephone conversation with our rally director and agreed to go straight to Customs when we arrived in Urumqi to have another go at sorting paperwork. He would organise for the travel agent to have a guide to meet us & take us there.

Children in old Kashgar

Fat tail sheep ready for sale at the open air butcher

School's out: this primary school had an impressive running track

We put the trucking to Lhasa on hold to see what we could do at Customs in Urumqi.

We were also informed that the permits for Tibet were only requested on Monday & may not be ready for any of us to enter Tibet on the planned dates.

We flew China Southern Airlines to Urumqi (one & half hours) and passed over snow covered mountains. Interesting to see the mountains from this angle as we had driven over some very high passes.

Mountains seen on the flight from Kashgar to Urumqi

On arrival at Urumqi….no guide. After an hour she finally turned up & we were taken to Customs. Fortunately we were taken to see a very senior woman (only 6 legislative books, a phone & computer on her desk, nothing in the in & out trays!) and she called upon an English speaking man from another area.

She was very efficient, spoke with Kashgar Customs & the travel agent & we were told that the cars did not have to depart together but we needed the amended permit to ship out of Shanghai. They again scoffed at the idea that the paperwork was difficult, claiming it was very easy and that our travel agent had twice been informed of the correct procedures.  The problem was the trucking agent we were using in Kashgar was not an authorised Customs driver & this needed to be changed by the travel agent.

The Customs people then again rang our agent and demanded that he fix the issues, and appoint a person in Kashgar to sort out our transport in an approved manner. It seems that they have given him an “official “instruction which he must now follow

It seems to us that the travel agent was eager to get us to Lhasa & leave with the others so that he could get his bond back quickly, without regard to the consequences to us.  He has caused a huge amount of worry and angst by his actions over the last week.

This was the best news we had in days & we went to an airport hotel so that we could catch our early flight to Chengdu tomorrow morning.

Still no news on whether our Tibet permit will arrive on time for our Friday morning flight.

(posted from the Victorian head office of the Blog - Noel)