China at Last!

This just in from Our Man in Pakistan, er, China. He sent the following in an email to his secret contact in Boulder, who is reposting it:

I made it to China crossed the landslide, actually it was on the opposite side of the river from the road but it redirected the river and knocked out about 500 meters of the road so I had to hike around it and get the bus on the other side. I spent the night in Tashkurgan, then in Kashgar, there wasn't much to do but I did have my first beer of a long time. From Kashgar it was a 24 hour bus ride to Urumqi where I am right now. I have my ticket to Shanghai I leave tomorrow (29th) and I'll be out of communications for about 48 hours. I cannot post to my blog from China. Blogger.com has been banned by the chinese government.


And this email came to Secret Contact Number Two:

I got out of Pakistan just fine. Had a bit of a scare at the exit of Pakistan cause the guy getting searched in front of me got his stuff dumped on the ground and the guard was pushing him around. They treated me just fine though, made me open a can of sardines and an MRE but nothing else. Well they did stick a knife into the pad of my backpack to see if there were drugs in there. It's a really small hole though so it's no biggie.

The landslide was no problem about 2km hike and I was in shape enough to make it over in the first wave. Most of the Chinese and Pakistanis smoke so they were way behind. A couple Afghans and I were the first ones over and I carried both my packs the whole way. Hooray for me.

Anyway China is way more stressful then Pakistan. Literally no one speaks English and although the guidebook claims that everything is written in pinyun, Chinese spelled with western characters, in addition to normal characters. It's not because I'm in Xinjian province the two languages are Ughair and Mandarin. Neither of which are close to what I can understand.

Probably the hardest bit is the fact that I can't converse with anyone. I haven't for days now and won't for another three Until I get to Shanghai. It's no biggie I picked up some books in Pakistan--Harry Potter some Ann rRice novel and I have my history books that I can reread again. The lack of communication is difficult for me I guess that's me trying to be a pack animal but whatever. I have my iPod and i'll just go all introverted again. I'm saving a clean t-shirt for when I meet up with Ian. I've been moving so fast now that I haven't had time to wash anything. at least with my grubby t-shirt and four days of stubble no one gives me a hard time.