Mechanical Woes: The Epic begins…(15th Sept - 27th Nov)

For the past two and a half months we have experienced constant mechanical problems, which have proved to delay, frustrate, baffle, endanger and – at times – entertain us. These began in China, in the city of Ansi, just as we prepared ourselves for the home run to Australia, believing that – in true Driving Home style - we had left the challenging part of our journey behind. In China we visited more mechanics than tourist sights. In fact our mechanical woes proved to be a tourist attraction in themselves, as we began breaking down in the most inopportune of places – in the middle of busy intersections, while filling up our tank at the garage or at toll booths with a cue of traffic behind us. As a result, I have learnt a hell of a lot about diesel engines thanks to Col who I subjected to a daily barrage of questions on all things mechanical. It has also consequently increased the employability of our Chinese Guide (Louis Long) who’s English Vocabulary has tripled – (he is now proficient in mechanical terminology) and will no doubt impress future self-drive tourists with the Guinness Book of Record’s speed in which he can disconnect and reconnect an air inlet pipe, in order to pump it with quick start spray, to start our engine.

Here is a brief synopsis of the key mechanical related events which took place from 15th September 2010 until the present date. (To do justice to some of the places we visited, Col will later post blog entries on the interesting, non-mechanical aspects of our trip)


15th September 2010 (Hami to Ansi – Exploding Mountain)
Alongside hundreds of lorries we drive through a great ball of dust for an entire day and well into the night, after Chinese road workers detonate a nearby mountain, scattering boulders all over a main thoroughfare and forcing us to take many off-road diversions, which would make any off-road driving enthusiast, green with envy. Miranda is really smothered in dust.

16th September (Ansi to Jiayuguan – The Erratic Idling Begins)
After starting the engine, we are surprised to find that Miranda is idling erratically. We suspect that our air filter may be clogged from our dusty drive, so we drive to Jiayuguan and find the first mechanic (that understands Louis Long’s wild gesticulating impersonation of replacing an air filter) to replace our air filter. The new filter doesn’t help and Miranda is worse, as the engine turns but is difficult to start. We are told to visit a local diesel mechanic who replaces the fuel filter, suspecting it’s clogged. It takes three hours for him to bleed the air out of the fuel line, which involves lots of engine turning whilst revving the accelerator. Eventually the car starts, but is still idling erratically.

17th September (Jiayuguan – Cheap Sightseeing)
Miranda won’t start again. Ford Mechanics pay us a visit but cannot help as she is “Jin-glish made” and too old for them to fix her. Suspecting that there is still air in the fuel line, we ask the local diesel mechanic (who fitted our fuel filter) to bleed our fuel system again. It doesn’t solve the problem and he only starts Miranda, with the aid of quick start spray (a highly flammable fuel), blasted into the air inlet. We follow him to his garage. Miranda is put on the high-lift and many Chinese mechanics scurry about underneath, looking for holes in her undercarriage where air could get in. They find nothing so we drive to the Great Wall of China, but are worried about turning the engine off (in case she fails to start), so we end up erratically idling in the car park and call Gary from Frogs Island 4X4 UK to ask for advice. He suspects air getting into the fuel line or a broken fuel injector pump. We hope it’s not the costly latter! We take a memorable photo of the Great Wall at the ticket booth, probably looking like the tightest tourists in town.

18th September (Jiayuguan to Xining – The Quick Start Spray Fix )
Miranda won’t start again but we know the drill and have bought our own quick start spray. So begins the maiden attempt of our new daily ritual. Louis Long dismantles the air inlet pipe and blasts in some quick start spray, while Col turns the engine on and I rev the accelerator. The whole process takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes depending on how quickly Miranda takes to the spray. Apparently there are no other mechanics in town who can fix our “Jin-glish” engine problem and we are advised to go to a big city to find mechanics with more expertise. We drive to Xining over the foggy Tibetan Plateau – where we originally hoped to camp, before our engine trouble started. Just as the weather clears and we spot our first yak, the sun sets, at which point Miranda’s Oil Pressure Warning light also comes on. This prompts Col to drive even more carefully, to avoid putting Miranda under pressure and so we snake our way slowly along the 12,000 foot high roads in the pitch black, until we climb down to the capital of Qinghai province.

19th September (Xining – Rejected)
After starting Miranda with quick start spray we head to the local Ford Service Centre to be told that they can’t fix Miranda as they only deal with petrol based engines. A passer-by Good Samaritan takes us to two more mechanics (who also turn us down) until a Diesel Mechanic, familiar with Ford Transit engines, offers to help. The mechanic is initially perplexed by our foreign engine, but then confidently states that the problem must be our injectors and he can replace them for us, if we order new parts from the UK. An hour later \and he changes his mind, admitting that he wouldn’t feel confident working on our “Jin-glish” engine and advising us to go to an even bigger city to find more experienced mechanics. Feeling defeated we search Ford Transit forums for advice. One expert suggests injector cleaner, in case Miranda has been filled with dirty diesel.

20th – 21st September (Xining – Rejected the Sequel)
We quick start spray Miranda to life and decide to visit a Buddhist temple, but en-route we notice that the erratic idling is worse and Miranda is almost stalling at idle speed. Whenever we come to a stop, I have to put Miranda straight into park so that Col can rev the accelerator (in boy racer style) to prevent her from stalling. We cancel the sightseeing and look for a new mechanic and some Injector Cleaner. We try many places where diesel cars are found: Land Rover, Toyota, Lorry depots and Tractor mechanics all over Xining. No one has injector cleaner and no one wants to fix our “Jin-glish” made engine, staring blankly at it like it was made on another planet, even when Louis Long translates at lightning speed, gesticulating emotively. We are surprised, as we thought the Chinese could build and fix anything! During our search we begin stalling at traffic lights and intersections. Luckily, Col is able to quickly restart the car each time, so that we don’t cause too much chaos for long. Louis Long also finds some injector cleaner, which we pour straight into our tank at the nearest Fuel Station.

22nd – 23rd September (Xining to Lanzhou – Bad Injectors)
We try to quick start spray Miranda but it takes a lot longer than normal to get her going and we need time out so that we don’t bust the Starter Motor. Eventually Miranda starts and we drive to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province - a bigger, skyscraper dominated city, with more mechanics. The day we arrive is a public holiday and so the following morning we are up early to look for mechanics. The first mechanic looks promising due to the variety of 4WD vehicles in his garage. He can’t fix our “Jin-glish” car but he suggests someone who can and drives us there. Just as we begin to give up hope, that anyone will ever help us, a mechanic gives us the thumbs up. Suspecting that it’s an injector problem, he removes one and tests it. Under normal circumstances fuel passing through an injector should do so under such high pressure that the fuel atomises. Ours doesn’t and so we order new ones from the UK. It will take a week to arrive, so we arrange to send them to Chengdu, a city where we hope to be in one week’s time.

24th – 30th September

(Lanzhou to Chengdu via Xian, Foping & Langzhong – RIP Starter Motor)
The injector cleaner appears to have temporarily alleviated our tendency to stall and with our parts ordered we decide to do some sightseeing in Xian (famous for the Terracotta Warriors) and Langzhong (with it’s UNESCO heritage listed old town), rather than taking the direct route to Chengdu. Unfortunately, by the time we arrive in Xian we are stalling on a whim. To add to our troubles we discover that our starter motor is now broken (probably from overturning the motor one too many times). Starting Miranda with quick start spray used to be a necessity only in the mornings, but now without a starter motor we need to use quick start spray whenever we turn off our engine or stall it. What’s more without a starter motor, we need to use a grater quantity of quick start spray to get the engine restarted. Over the next week, stalling in inopportune places en-route to Chengdu becomes a reality which either puts us in dangerous situations and/or fuels road rage, from a nation already inspired to sit on their horns continuously.

1st – 7th October (Chengdu – The Waiting Game)
We get to Chengdu to meet our injectors, but have no idea that China’s Annual Golden Week (seven day public holiday) will commence the day we arrive. The injectors make it to Guangzhou from the UK in record time but due to the public holiday they spend the entire week in Guangzhou despite our optimistic efforts to check the FEDEX tracking website daily. We are now running behind schedule and have to apply for an extension on our Chinese Permits. Incidentally Col has acquired a pressure sore from long days of driving, so on a positive note, waiting for our injectors, leaves plenty of time for bed rest.

8th – 9th October (Chengdu – False Hopes)
Our injectors finally arrive and Tracy from Chengdu based NAVO tour (who organised our Chinese permits and guide for us) arranges for her friend, a retired mechanic, to fit our new injectors for us. When the old ones come out they are covered in soot but unfortunately after all our waiting, the new ones fail to stop the erratic idling. The retired mechanic calls some local mechanics to have a go fixing our starter motor. They don’t know how to fix it, fail to find a replacement at the local market and actually break a bolt on it trying to get it out of the car. We are back to square one, but have to get a move on, before we overstay our Chinese Permits any longer. Col calls Gary to order the new starter motor to be sent to Laos and we make a plan to leave China.

10th – 12th October (Chengdu to Kunming via Zhaotong – Clumsy Chrissy
We race to get to the Chinese border in record time but are faced with a new challenge. During my maiden attempt to quick start spray Miranda in Kunming, the nozzle Louis Long gives me to make the job easier, is sucked off the bottle and into the air inlet pipe. This delays us for a day, as we seek the help of local mechanics to dismantle the piping to the cylinders. After a quick inspection, followed by a three hour lunch break, the local mechanics inform us that they can’t dismantle the pipes as they don’t have the correct tools. Luckily Gary from Frogs Island 4X4 UK comes to the rescue, informing us over the phone, that the plastic tip would have combusted and won’t be a problem. Even though we have lost time I am extremely relieved that I won’t need to buy Col a new engine for Christmas!

12th – 13th October (Zhaotong to Mengla – Stalling like it’s going out of Fashion)
We are running behind schedule again and are faced with more challenges. Miranda is not only idling erratically, but even at driving speed she is beginning to vibrate. What’s more, we are now stalling more than a learner with a driving phobia, being forced to drive through an Iranian traffic jam at gunpoint.
I.e. the stalling is now such a big problem that whenever we begin to slow down to 1st gear, Miranda conks out. This is despite my efforts to slam the gear stick into park upon coming to a stop. We are now quick start spraying at toll booths and every traffic jam, traffic light, roundabout and crossroads. We are running out of quick start spray and losing the will to drive but upon arriving at the border town of Mengla, we decide to treat Miranda to a quick car wash, in the hope it will mask her mechanical problems during tomorrows’ border crossing. This ends up being a bad move. Col stalls a total of twelve times trying to reverse out of the carwash**. We call a local mechanic, hopeful for a last minute diagnosis, but as per usual they haven’t got a clue what’s wrong with our car due to its “Jin-glish” make. Fed up with Chinese Mechanics, we bunny hop along to the first hotel with a front end parking space that we can quickly screech into without stalling.

** Col would like to remind readers that he is not a bad driver. Miranda has an automatic transmission so it’s virtually impossible to stall, unless something is wrong with the engine.

14th October (Mengla to Udomxai – Anal Chinese Border Officials)
We are up early for our border crossing, but our last minute attempts to withdraw money for a tank of diesel delay us, as every ATM and cash exchange appear to be out of cash or out of order. Despite the delay we manage to hobble to the border in time, although the place we choose to stall, irritates the stroppy border guard. He wants us to reverse as apparently we have prematurely overshot an (invisible) border crossing line before going through the necessary red tape. This results in a fifteen minute argument between Louis Long and the Border Guard. It is only when the Border Guard perhaps grasps the gravity of our engine problem and the danger it could present on Chinese Roads that he not only lets us stay put, but appears to run us through the necessary paperwork at record speed – as though he hopes to get us out of China ASAP.

14th October (Mengla to Udomxai – Laidback Laos Border Officials)
Louis Long quick starts our engine one last time, as we say our goodbyes and drive to the Laos side of the border. It is here that Col conveniently chooses to stall right outside the mandatory insecticide spraying stand. While Miranda gets de-bugged, I run through the most laidback border procedures on our trip to date. Border officials are too busy playing online poker and eyeing up their Laos Edition Playboy centre-fold ladies, to bother too much about border formalities such as checking our carnet or car. I double check that there is nothing more we need to do and explain that once we start our car we cannot stop for anyone due to the stalling problem. No one seems phased by this revelation or worried about the danger we could present on Laos roads. Given the green light, we quick start Miranda, with the help of a border official (to take the place of Louis) and drive the remaining 2km to the Laos entrance. We are disappointed to see one last customs checkpoint up ahead, which would mean that stalling would be inevitable, but luck is on our side. As we drive up to the gate, none of the customs officials bother to look up from the card game they are playing. So we tear through the gate and into Laos like we have just robbed a bank, without anyone batting an eyelid. We are extremely lucky, that Laos border officials are so laidback as we cannot imagine any other border post to date, letting us through with an engine in such bad condition!

14th October (Mengla to Udomxai – Speed)
Upon entering Laos I am immediately struck by its beauty – lush green tropical vegetation, massive butterflies and a perfect blue sky, but unfortunately poor Col needs to concentrate to make it to Udomxai. The drive is less than 100km but the roads are windy, very narrow and at times unsealed. Stalling (and then having to quick start spray Miranda) on one of these roads, with its numerous blind spots would put us in danger, due to the oncoming traffic (4wd’s and trucks) hurtling along the roads.
But, the hair pin bends make it difficult for Col to maintain speed. So to avoid stalling, Col starts driving like a police car in a high speed chase sequence (albeit in first gear he looks more like he is driving a police car in a high speed chase sequence at slow motion). I.e. he begins switching lanes at last minute, running through stop signs and doing anything possible to avoid stopping and thus stalling. We must give foreign drivers a bad reputation as we career through villages, tear around dogs, pedestrians and even steamrollers and construction sights without ever stopping or giving way.
The adrenalin rush from these moments is electrifying. It feels like we are in a runaway train hurtling towards the end of a line; or in a computer game where the object is to win a car race without hitting obstacles. At times we even feel like Keanu Reeves in the movie “Speed” where we need to keep the car moving or the car will blow up. This approach serves us well and Col impressively manages to get us to Udomxai before nightfall, as we screech into the first guesthouse car-park we can find before stalling it for the first time in Laos.

15th – 21st October (Udomxai, Meeting Hercu-LEE-s)
Due to the hair-raising drive from Mengla to Udomxai, coupled with Miranda’s deteriorating condition, Col and I talk about the options we have left for Miranda. Col’s expat friends in Vientiane (Kenyan born Katrina and her hubbie John Dingley) own a Ford and are confident in their local service centre – Laos Ford City. We plan to get Miranda there, but Vientiane is over 300km away, which on more windy, mountain roads equates to at least 16 hours more driving. We talk about hiring a transporter to take Miranda to Vientiane, but after some investigation we find out it will cost us over $1000, so can that option. Enter our equivalent of a knight in shining armor. While Col and I enjoy some tasty Laos fare, Col spots two passing Landrovers (one towing the other) – through a narrow gap in a wall. Excited by the prospect of meeting fellow overlanders, I dash outside and we become acquainted with two over-landing families, who have impressively driven from the UK and are also headed for Australia – Andy, Anne, Jessica and AJ (the Towee’s) and Helen, Beverley and Lee (the Tower’s).

It seems that things do happen for a reason. Not only do we enjoy spending time with them over the next few days, who are held up due to their own mechanical problems, but Lee (or HercuLEEs as he could be nicknamed) just so happens to be a great mechanic. Lee is a Salt of the Earth kinda bloke. Although, you’d never want to piss him off (his forearms are e so wide that he has managed to tattoo a world map with his overland route on one of them), he has a heart of gold and not only does he kindly fit our new Starter Motor, which is shipped out from the UK in record time, but he offers to take a closer look under our bonnet.
Upon closer inspection he suspects that the problem is most probably our Fuel Injector Pump, but in the meantime he notices that our fuel filter is blocked. Since we don’t have a spare fuel filter, he reconnects the pipes, so that they bypass the fuel filter. With a new starter motor and bypassed fuel filter, he manages to start our car for the first time without the aid of quick start spray. While Miranda is still idling erratically, this bypass also curbs our tendency to stall. Col and I are thrilled!

22nd – 26th October
(Udomxai to Vientiane via Luang Prabang & Phoukhon, Leaking Fuel)
Col and I are delighted. We are able to drive from Udomxai to Vientiane without the risk of stalling. While we are still erratically idling more than Krakatoa, it is so nice to stop the car at traffic lights or enter a traffic jam, without worrying about stalling, popping the bonnet and having to disconnect the air inlet pipe (in order to quick start spray the engine) without getting run over. We only encounter a couple of problems. In beautiful Luang Prabang, we drive to the local Shell Garage and find that our fuel cap is jammed. 30 minutes later, with the aid of WD40 and some pliers, a service station attendant manages to crank off the lid. We are also alarmed to smell diesel, upon stopping for a pit stop in the mountainous region south of Luang Prabang.
It seems that bypassing the fuel filter has caused fuel to drip out of the inlet pipe, but after a few phonecalls to Ford Lao City, we are informed that driving with leaking diesel is not dangerous so long as we drive carefully and look out for signs of smoke. In no time at all we are relieved to be dropping our car off at Laos Ford City to mechanics who already seem to understand the problem, aren’t perplexed by our “Jin-glish” engine and most importantly, speak English!

27th October – 27th November (Vientiane, Intermission)
Miranda has been at Laos Ford City for an entire month and we have been staying with the amazing, kind and extremely hospitable Dingleys in Vientiane for the same time. Vientiane is a great place to be stuck and we have been very lucky to have landed a bed in such a welcoming house and gotten to know the fun and entertaining Dingleys. It has taken so long to fix our car that we have met many of Katrina and John’s friends and now feel like one of the locals running into someone we know on most trips to town. Whenever we do run into someone they always ask us the same question “how is the car”? We always give the same answer “well…that’s the million dollar question…”.

While Miranda is on the road to recovery, the delay has been two fold. Firstly, ordering parts from the UK is an extremely time consuming process. We needed to order a new fuel filter and an entire fuel line, due to the mechanics suspicion that air was getting into the fuel. But this failed to solve the erratic idling problem and now it seems that the only remaining cause of our erratic idling, is the part we always hoped it wouldn’t be – our expensive fuel injector pump. It is likely that dirty black market fuel may have led to Miranda’s downfall – clogged our injectors and buggered our fuel injector pump. Since there is no fuel injector specialist willing to calibrate our pump in Vientiane, we have had to send our pump to the UK. This will set us back another two or three weeks.

As a result we have been delayed considerably and sadly it doesn’t look like we will make it to Australia for Christmas, but that is part of the challenge of travelling. On a positive note, being stuck in Laos has given us time to see Vientiane, attend to miscellaneous overdue errands, visit interesting places (such as a local NGO building wheelchairs for disabled people amongst other things),attend events linked to the recent International Cluster Munitions Conference and it has even sparked new ideas for the future. Vientiane seems to be the equivalent of an “intermission” on our trip, but we hope to be back on the road before Christmas, ready for Part 2 of our journey to Australia!

NB: This blog is dedicated to the amazing, one and only Christy, who quite rightly, in no uncertain terms, told us to pull our finger out with the blog. This ones for you daarlin!

Travellers on the Silk Road, Towns in the Desert, (12th - Sept)

From ancient times and even to this day, the towns that we drove through, that lay along the waterless northern edge of desert, owe (part of) their existence to an amazing ancient feat of engineering. Roughly 2000 years ago (during the Han Dynasty) the inhabitants built rainwater/snow reservoirs in the mountains. They then managed to dig underground drains/canals that carried the melted water over a distance of 1000km. Every 20 meters along the Karez you’ll see what looks like a huge termite mound popping out of the desert. These mounds enabled them to dig downwards to build the canal initially and then joined the underground sections of the Karez together. Later, these mounds acted as a way of gathering the gravity fed water along its length. Amazingly, this underground system quenched the thirst of many merchants travelling along the Silk Road and allowed the inhabitants to grow large quantities of crops in the desert!

In this day and age of technology and sustainable projects, this ancient idea that still sustains thousands of lives and livelihoods, is hard to beat. What’s more, this system makes a mockery of the soviet built canals in Central Asia, where thousands of liters of water either soak into the desert or evaporate under the hot sun – and are bleeding the Aral Sea dry.


During our aforementioned first day of driving 650km (the equivalent distance of driving from London to Edinburgh) in China, we finally had arrived at 2am in the town of Kuqa. On the second day of driving we aimed to cover the same distance before arriving in a town called Turpan. En route evidence of the Karez came out of nowhere as we drove along the edge of the desert (Tarim Basin). At one point we thought we had just witnessed a biblical occurrence as we passed sections that looked like they had been stained red by blood that had seeped out of the layers of deep sand. On closer inspection we realized that what we thought was clotted blood was actually red chilies that had been laid out in the desert to dry. Even so, we were perplexed at the time as to how they even managed to grow in this hostile environment in the first place.



As we drove on that day we passed through smaller towns that bustled with activity and as the sun began sinking in the sky we gradually ascended up to a point that looked like a Mars-scape. The road that had been carved through enormous mounds of ochre rock made me imagine that this section must have been a nightmare for a Silk Road trader as they weaved in between these juggernauts of obstacles. In comparison we continued with relative ease into the night.

From the darkness in the back of the van Louis informed us that Turpan is located 80 meters below sea level and the lowest point in the area that we were driving towards was 150 meters below sea level. Unfortunately, informative information wasn’t the only thing to emerge from behind us. At times the aroma in the van smelt like we had a large Labrador dog in the van as a stale fart wafted from the back like thick smog given off by a Chinese coal station. At the point the smell hit Chrissy and I, we’d both look at each other; realise that neither of us was the culprit; try not to start laughing and then one of us would say to the other, ‘Oh, I’m a bit hot, I think I’ll just open the window’ or ‘I feel a bit tired. Can you open the window’. Really, we were both dying to say, ‘Chrikie Moses, what the hell is that smell?’ It soon became apparent that poor old Louis was dying for a number two when we would hear a gasp of fear and then a plea to pull over for what he said was a ‘number one’. After a while it became clear that in China a ‘number one’ actually means a ‘number two’ in Jing-lish. We finally convinced him that asking us to stop was far less of an ordeal than putting up with farts that hung in the air like a napalm bomb.

As the night wore on we finally started descending towards the ‘Oven’ – Turpan’s nickname by the locals because it is supposed to be the hottest place in China with just over 150 summer days and temperatures above 40 degrees. To me it felt like we were all of a sudden reincarnated into a Buddhist afterlife realm and we were driving towards hell on earth. The main reason for this was because we were being battered by a ferocious desert wind that felt like it swirled in all directions around the van and gave us the feeling that we were just about to be lifted off the road and flung into the desert like a tonker toy. Added to that, the noise the wind created was so loud that we had to shout to each other just to be heard. All this meant that despite the fact we were heading downhill we had to slow right down to less than 20 miles/hour. Then out of nowhere it felt like the devil him self would tear up behind me and blind me with huge spotlights. After 10 minutes he would then tear straight past us deafening us with a loud shrill. In reality it was just hundreds of over laden trucks that we had overtaken on the uphill stage of our journey that weren’t worried about the gale force wind and were using gravity to its full effect i.e. warp speed. It felt like we had driven for hours and as it was pitch black, we couldn’t see any lights of Turpan anywhere in the distance. As time wore on we realised we had accidently taken the wrong road. Luckily it was a minor road that still headed in the same direction but unfortunately it added hours onto our journey and we finally arrived in Turpan after 12 midnight.


In Turpan the next day, despite feeling tired we visited the Ancient City of Jiaohe that was destroyed by Genghis Khan and the Emin Minaret, which is the largest ancient Islamic tower in Xinjiang. (Incidentally in the picture above of the Emin Minaret, the massive hole in the wall on the right has been created by desert winds like those we had experienced driving to Turpan)

Leaving Turpan we visited Grape Valley, which exists thanks to the Karez irrigation system. The grapes have been grown on short stands here for hundreds of years and are exposed to a high amount of sunshine, which increases the sugar content and as a result the grapes that are grown and dried here taste delicious. Although it was extremely touristy we managed to get away from the crowds and drive through villages that hadn’t changed for years. The entrance to these houses had amazingly decorated doors.




We then visited the ‘Desert Park’ just out of Shanshan. If you view it from google earth on ‘satellite view’ you’ll see how it’s a small sandy desert which is encroaching on the town of Shanshan. You’ll also notice the green patches to left of the desert, which is probably Grape Valley. Although the Chinese have a slight tendency of making a location slightly tacky it was an amazing experience being able to push along a path in middle of the desert. Feeling extremely exhilarated by the experience I thought to myself, ‘Where else in the world could I do that?’. Wooooo Hoooooooooooooooooooooo!

Travellers on the Silk Road, China is Dam Big, (11th of Sept)

If you take a brief look at Google maps you’ll see that Kashgar sits at the North West corner of the Xinjiang province and the Taklamakan Desert. You’ll notice that the desert is so big that it even dwarfs the neighboring Stan countries in surface area. To me, it looks like a huge basin where the sand is only prevented from spilling out of the edges and spreading further by a huge barrier of mountain ranges to the east and north and an enormous plateau to the south. There is no natural water sources in the desert, which means that even for the hardiest of silk road traders this desert was an obstacle too treacherous to contemplate crossing and lead to two branches of the silk road forming – one to the north and one to the south. Armed with this smidgen of knowledge I knew that we were in for a serious stint of trucking over the next few days and just as we were about to leave Kashgar our guide Louis Long, who was wedged into the luggage in the back of van said, ‘You know what Taklamakan means?’ In return to my ‘No’, Louis replied, ‘If you go in, you will not come out’. The only reply that I thought could give the translation justice was, ‘Shizer!’


The morning we set out on the northern route we were still surrounded by a dusty haze, which according to the locals was a result of either a dust storm or weapons testing in the desert. After our thorough frisking at the Irkeshtam border by the army, I imagined that it was the latter. Driving in the haze had the strangest effect! Looking around gave me the perception that within a 10 mile circumference there was no dust at all, however, after that point there was a thick layer of dust that obscured the desert to the right and mountains to the left. I thought that if you looked down on us from above we would have looked like a scurrying ant that was protected from the gigantic dust cloud by a huge glass cylinder that moved along at the same speed. Stranger still, the single lane highway that we travelled on had -along its length- teams of women that were sweeping the roadside! Their only protection from the desert and the terrifyingly heavy laden, red trucks was an orange florescent waist coat and garments, which they had covered themselves from head to toe in, leaving only their eyes exposed. Given that the road was surrounded by sand I considered their jobs to be as difficult as pushing a water-buffalo, backwards up a hill.



Initially the roads were in great condition until out of nowhere and without any warning a huge mound of soil as high as the bonnet of a car blocked the road in both directions. This was the only warning that we had before encountering an undulating diversion that bypassed the repairs to the potting road ahead. After we had accumulated miles of road beneath our tread, we thought that we had become accustomed to the bobby-trapped road, but on one such diversion we were in for a shock.

Within minutes of approaching another diversion, a police car sped past us. At the diversion, I crossed in front of the soil blockade and slowly rolled Miranda off the side of the road. As we lurched from side-to-side, until I felt all four wheels roll off the tarmac, I could see at least five policemen bunched together looking down the diversion at a black sedan car that lay on its roof. Its sides looked like a tin can that had caved in, but the cockpit was still in one piece, which made me say out loud, that the drivers must have survived the accident. As we bumped down the diversion it looked like the accident had only happened half an hour ago. Passing the crumpled car I was shocked by what lay hidden from view. In the desert, twenty meters from the road I saw a man lying face down in the sand. His body looked like a ragdoll with his four limbs placed in contorted positions. Shockingly, I noticed that a pool of blood had soaked into the sand around the man’s damaged head. In arms reach of the body, a lady sat in the sand with her back to the man. Her knees were tucked into her chest as she stared into the desert with lifeless eyes. As we drove on I was struck by the lack of dignity in the way the dead man had been laid out.



Later, miles of road stretched out in front of us and all I could see was the image I had just witnessed. What we had seen confirmed how treacherous our journey could be and that any lapse in concentration -on what you think is a mind numbing straight section of the road- could have dire consequences. For the rest of the day we only stopped to fill our tank and to empty our guides tank (I think he had a serious case of Delhi-Belly). Apart from that we continued into the night until we arrived (knackered) in the first city Kuche (Kuqa) that sat on the edge of the desert. The 600km we had just driven was the first real experience of driving in China. It felt like we had driven across the whole country, however, when looking at the map later, it revealed that we had barely made any progress at all. What we didn’t know was that our first challenging day trucking was going to be the template for our time in China.

Travellers on the Silk Road - Kashgar, China (8th to 10th Sept)

Curious Chinese truck driver leaning in through the van’s window: ‘Where you fwom?’
Colin: ‘England.’
Chinese truck driver. Large smile: ‘Ah, jingle-land!’
Colin: ‘No England’
Chinese truck driver: ‘yes… JIN-GALL-land!!’
Colin: ‘Ok, I from jingle-land’. Long pause: ‘Where are you fwom?’
Chinese truck driver: ‘Pigeon’
Colin: ‘Pigeon?’
Chinese truck driver: ‘yes Pigeon’
Colin: ‘where’?
Other Chinese truck driver: ‘Peking…Bei-jing’
Chinese truck driver: ‘Yes, Pigeon!’
Colin: ‘oh Beijing… I get it?’



I can’t describe how privileged I feel to have travelled thousands of miles from one end of the ‘Silk Road’ to the other. Like hundreds of travelers before us we have crossed ferociously hot deserts; snaked our way over numerous mountain passes; learnt about dozens of religions and ancient empires; reaped countless acts of human kindness and witnessed the aftermath and horrors of human conflict. These unique experiences have provided us with a glimpse of what it must have been like to risk life and limb to transport goods from east to west along the ancient Silk Road.

In days gone by it would have been far easier for traders to head north towards Siberia where it would have been much cooler and flatter for the heavily laden caravans. However, marauding horseman tribes set on ambushing the precious loads, soon stopped that option. To the south, tropical diseases, more marauding tribes and dense forest left the terrifyingly hot deserts and treacherous mountain passes as the only possible option. The prospect of setting out into land that was quiet literary thought of as the end of civilization must have seemed absurd at the time. In modern days terms it would be like going on the BBC’s Dragons Den and trying to persuade a millionaire to part with his cash to fund a nudist theme park for Eskimos in the middle of the Sahara desert. In short, setting out on sections of the Silk Road must have seemed destined to fail from the very start. For those pioneers who risked their lives they may never have known that their journey was going to create a highway where valuable goods, technology, education and religion would travel along for hundreds of generations.



Testament of this fact occurred a day after arriving in Kashgar. That morning, whilst we watched the sun rise over the main square in Kashgar I was amazed at how the warmth of the sun was stifled by a thin dust cloud that had enveloped the whole city for days. In the cool orangey morning air we watched thousands of men swarm into the square and line up row after row. Standing shoulder to shoulder, three generations of men from the same family rolled out their prayer mats that had been tucked under their arms, kicked off their shoes and stood expectantly on their colorfully embroidered mats. The Chinese city of Kashgar lies 200 kilometers away from the Irkeshtam Pass, which we bumped over the day before. Despite having arrived in the city at midnight we were still on a high after completing the most challenging section on our route and could now laugh about all the near misses and breakdown. Moreover, we could see that the Irkeshtam pass’s destiny lay in the hands of the Chinese as they hurriedly laid a tarmac snake over the 2000 year-old pass, so we felt incredibly privileged to complete it before it changed forever.



The next morning I didn’t think we were about to witness a religious ceremony of such enormous magnitude. Ignorantly, I hadn’t expected there to be such as vast community of Muslims in the north west of China. By 9am an eerie hush had fallen over the sea of men and my perception of Kashgar had changed completely. As fate would have it we had arrived on the final day of Ramadan and the ancient ceremony began as a prayer rang out from the mosque that the lines of men now faced. Moments later the same hush fell over the crowd and the high pitch flutter from the wings of startled pigeons was the only sound to break the silence. Seconds later a rumble that sounded like it came from the depths of the earth moved over the crowd like a wave as the men replied to the prayer. The tone was so low it seemed to pass right through me. In union, the sea of men then bowed into the praying position and a gush of air seemed to be expelled from the crowd. Another prayer rang out from the mosque and in reply the men leaned forwards so that their heads touched the ground and again they replied in unison. 20 minutes later the ceremony was finished and within seconds the prayer mats disappeared under tightly squeezed armpits and the men dispersed into the streets surrounding the square. It was the single largest religious ceremony that I have ever witnessed and I was hard not to be impressed with how powerful human faith can be when it comes to religious belief. This experience made me imagine how a trader on the ‘ancient silk road’ could have quiet easily become mesmerized by a foreign religion and brought their new beliefs back with them on their return journey.



As we joined the crowd to exit the square I have to be honest and say that it was nerve-racking. Just like sheep in a race, we were all of a sudden surrounded by hundreds of men all heading in the same direction. We were bunched in so close to each other that the toes of one man would knock the heels of the person in front. For me, being at bum level was neither fun nor pretty but there was no avenue to escape this sea of people. I’m sorry to say that due to misguided western media influences, my mind filled with images of the crowd around me exploding into a chaotic mess as a suicide bomber detonated his load.



My mind was brought back to reality as we shuffled past several disabled and ill people who had been loaded into wheelbarrow sized karts. Their legs, that were doubled up under them, were draped in a blankets and I noticed one lady’s complexion was a mottled grey color and there was barely any sign of life in her face. Beside them stood women - who I guessed were their mothers – who were wearing hijab and were weeping silently. As we passed by the karts, I noticed a pile of paper money and coins that had been tossed on top of the blankets by the tide of people. It dawned on me that one of the ‘Five Pillars of Islam’ is the Zakah, which is the obligatory alms giving, given according to a persons accumulated wealth (roughly around 2.5% of their income) and this was the reason for the outpouring of generosity to less fortunate people who we had just passed. It also struck me that this must have been the reason why so many Muslims tried to give me a hand out whilst we travelled through Central Asia.

I later wondered whether this generous giving of wealth was the only income that the disabled people and their families received on an annual basis. As my thoughts continued I imagined that if I was born in Xinjiang province of China and I broke my neck, that I could have been bundled into a wheel barrow with my mum weeping next to me right now. Guiltily, I was struck again - as I have been many times before - by the thought that ‘No matter how tough one thinks their life is, there is always someone worse off than you’.



As it turns out Kashgar, which is a historic trading town on the Silk Road, is home to the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority. Unfortunately, it seems that their identity is being diluted faster than the appearance of the ancient city, as prefabricated concrete buildings with neon Chinese writing seems to be going up everywhere. One source told us that the Uighur people have been seeking independence from China for years. Instead of granting this wish to them, the Chinese government has built roads and railroads to Kashgar and as a result there has been a major influx of the entrepreneurial Han people seeking economic wealth. The good jobs go to the Han even if there is an equal Uighur candidate. All of this means that you can really sense the tension between the Uighur and Han people.



An example of this happened when we went to get Miranda’s damaged undercarriage inspected– which although it had been temporarily fixed by the lorry drivers at the Irkehstam border, still needed a seeing to by some local mechanics. Whilst we were there, the Uighur mechanic totally ignored our Han guide’s questions and barely recognized the fact that he was even there. Luckily, they were able to weld up our broken bracket that had taken most of the impact from the hidden rock days previously in no-mans land, however, the tension in the air was obvious.



Throughout our journey on the Silk Road we’ve read time after time how ancient empires (which include Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Russians, the British and the Chinese) have forcefully acquired civilizations against the will of the people who occupied that land. Observing the Uighur situation in Kashgar gave us the smallest of insights into how it must have felt to have been a defeated community under the rule of a foreign power in ancient times. However, I can imagine that this is just a glimpse into the full impact of the situation.