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The lovely people at the Ming Nuojin hotel got us a taxi to the fort (guancha), and I now know three words in Chinese. It should have cost us about … Read more

The train arrived precisely on time at 21.12 and, having come from Urumqi, was already full. It was the “fast train” which took 9 hours to get to Jiayuquan as … Read more

A long and boring day. The hotel called the genial taxi driver from the previous day and he took us to the Tu-Lu-Fan-Bei (North Turpan) railway station where we passed … Read more

Traveling by ourselves, we were able to see things we missed in 2018, especially Gaochang ancient city and the Flame Mountain. The only problem was getting there. Fortunately a young … Read more

On driving to Turpan the previous day, we had to stop and register at a checkpoint outside the city. A very pleasant young lady examined our passports and wanted to … Read more

Luckily we ran into the only member of staff who could speak some English and he reckoned the easiest way to get to Turpan was by taxi for £60. He … Read more

We got to Almaty Airport at 17.30 on the 25th and the plane left at 06.40 on the 26th so we had a very long and intensely frustrating wait, broken … Read more

After leaving the hotel we walked around looking for the bus stop which was 20 metres in one direction so we walked 500 in the other direction before somebody sent … Read more

Day 41 (24th June) Almaty. A useless and expensive day. We ordered a taxi to take us to the Great Almaty Lake, one of the city’s alleged tourist attractions. We … Read more

Day 40 (23rd June) Almaty. Went to see the Panfilov Park, named after Ivan Panfilov, leader of a group of 28 soldiers from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan who were all killed … Read more