Typical view from the bus - not a lot of roadside scenery
From Turpan the first stop was the large but very unremarkable town of Korla. Korla is a big oil town in China and it sure isn't backpacker friendly. Korla was the town that takes the record for the most expensive room I was forced to take because no other f&§king guesthouse or even moderately priced hotel would take me. It's certainly not a good policy as far as I'm concerned to force foreigners to stay at $50 or $60 or $100/night hotels when perfectly good rooms can be had for $12 - we're not all made of money as everyone in China seems to think - but this is Xinjiang and they do things a little differently around here. After much frustrated searching (and doing all this while feeling like shit with some kind of stomach illness I should add) I found a 'budget' room for 120 yuan (about $15). You may think I'm insane for worrying about this but this was 50% more than the most expensive room I'd paid for in China in over 2 months and I was upset at the stupid rules that arbitrarily restricted where I could stay. What did they think I was going to do? Steal the free hotel soaps and so destabilise the political and social structure of China? Foreigners have influence in the workings of China? What a surprise, I hadn't realised. Forcing me to stay in a certain expensive hotel rather than a cheap one lessens the risk to China's social/political stability? I don't see how their logic works, but then maybe my assumption of them brining logic into this is where I am mistaken. Anyway I had no choice. Welcome to Xinjiang.
Next stop was the town of Ruoqiang where I began to have the same hotel issues as I'd had in Korla - only one place in town would take me (this is a small town) and they want 160 yuan for a room that should have been 70 or 80 at the most. I decided to take the matter to a higher authority and took my complaint to the cops (technically the PSB - Public Security Bureau, but it's the same thing. They are responsible for foreigner's residence registration and the go-to guys for any problems we might have in China). Using my best Chinese I talked to a nice officer and explained that for me 160 yuan represented a day's food and accommodation, or more, and that I needed a cheap place to staying in his crappy little town (I missed the last part out). He seemed understanding and made a phone call. Next thing I knew I was checked in to the very same hotel as I had visited before at the Police-sponsored special price of 60 yuan! Now we're talking!! I have beaten the system for like the first time....ever.
From Ruoqiang the next stop was Qiemo, another 1.5 street town surrounded by irrigated farmland then desert. I'd planned to camp that night so I did a bit of a recon around just outside the town in the afternoon, ate, drank and chatted to some locals to while the PM away, and returned to pitch my tent around 10 or 10:30 (dusk is pretty late in the far west since they work on Beijing time). I had found a little spot on the edge of a field and I considered shielded from view on 2 sides since it was about 2m down a bank below the farm roads, and open on the other sides but across several hundred meters of cropland. I was sure I'd be fine. As I was settling down to sleep I heard voices and soon a cop with a torch and 4 locals show up. The cop checks my ID, asks me what I'm doing here and wishes me a good night. They had me worried for a minute but then they left and didn't seem worried. Disaster averted? Not quite. After the first cop intrusion I was fairly sure there were voices and people not too far away, maybe watching me or what I didn't quite know. About 40min later another 2 police show up this time with a police car and 3 or 4 locals again. I'm still not sure if one of the cops was the same one from the first visit, or if my camping had been called in twice, by 2 groups of locals. Anyway I tried to explain to them that I had already been checked and that the cop had let me be but these guys insisted that I couldn't camp here - too dangerous according to them - and stood with their lights on me for 15 minutes as I packed up my tent and gear and they took me back to town in the cop car and deposited me at the bus station guesthouse. The place wasn't very special but at least it was cheap. And so ended my first attempt at free-camping in China, with a ride in a cop car -- thankfully not to the station, and they wee very nice, but I would still have liked to have camped there. Nope, not allowed in Xinjang -- and we enforce it!!
After my night of adventure in Qiemo I took my seemingly 4000th bus ride to Hotan. This was an odd one - a sleeper bus that took me 600km by day, leaving at 10am and arriving in the late afternoon. My very average accommodation for the evening was to be the Jiaotong (Traffic) Hotel with its stinky toilets, rough customers and don't-give-a-shit staff. Wonderful. Actually there was very little to see in Hotan so I spent the free morning I'd allowed kind of wandering. I also used China Southern Airlines' English customer service to book myself 2 free air tickets (using miles) to speed my exit from Xinjiang so I wouldn't have to do another epic bus or train journey to get out. Two things of interest in Hotan were the soldiers in full riot gear practicing in the main town square - that's one way to keep the peace I suppose (keep fear in people's minds) - and the little kids swimming in the city river park area, and more specifically their undying interest in me. During the day I sampled some of Hotan's melons, yoghurt and rice/vege pilaf. All not bad, very non-Chinese in style, and nice for a change.
My next bus to Kashgar and signaling the end of my Silk Road epic was to be the worst of my Chinese bus journeys. The bus was for starters filthy, the sheets covering the 'bed' hadn't been changed in probably a month. And worts of all they had assigned me the SMALLEST seat (bed) on the bus. I mean it was easily 4 or 5 inches shorter than many of the others occupied by kids and 5 foot Chinese ladies, barely long enough for me to sit on (not that you have head room to do so)and despite my requests to change the driver just dismissed me. At that point I took matters into my own hands and took over one of the front beds - longer and with no person in front so my legs could dangle over the end. Of course the last person to board the bus was the guy whose seat I'd taken. I didn't care, I wasn't moving. After yelling at me a bit and then sitting on me some another girl volunteered her seat to the guy and took mine, thereby defusing the situation. I felt a little guilty but at least I had a bed I could kind of use for the 12 or 14hr ride to Kashgar, despite its infectiously filthy nature. At long last we pulled into the Kashgar station and much to my pleasure I was able to buy and onward ticket to Lake Karakul, which was to be one of the highlights of my trip. Southern Silk roan by bus -- completed. Bring on Lake Karakul!
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