The few days I have in China are coming to an end. Today I travel towards the border with Pakistan, along the famous Karakorum highway.

It was a leisurely start, at 11am. I had breakfast at the hotel and then went to purchase a book about the governance of China from the Xinhuq bookstore. This was a book of official translations of each of XJP’s carefully crafted policy directives from 2022-2025, which feels like something relatively important to read to better understand China’s actions into the future.

Ready to set off!

Then I met with the guide, filled up with the help of her ID card and then proceeded along the way. The road to the border ran mostly south of Kashkar, along autumn boulevards for most of the way. Altitude remained ~1500 and gradually increasing for this stretch, and there seemed to be a mix of agriculture, but also police/military presence. This presented itself through there being guards sitting on the roadside at most of the intersections along the way; presumably controlling access to whatever facilities lay down the road.

Cotton(?) fields along the highway

Today’s route in blue

By 12:30, I had reached the foothills of the mountains, and a beautiful layering of rocky brown mountains in the foreground, with snowcapped peaks in the background, was there to enjoy.

Foothills (canyons?) of the mountains

Mountain layers

The road was quite full of tourist traffic, and it seemed like this area was in peak season.

After a few photo stops on the road I checked to see where the guide was. She was ahead! The driver was quite a fast one that overtook aggressively.

Shortly before the first major attraction was a police checkpoint, to register my presence. It went very smoothly (they were very friendly) and even had a police operated cafe offering red tea for tourists! I love how non adversarial the relationship is between authorities and the citizenry in China (and how it’s more like a parental relationship in many ways).

Selfie at the police cafe

30 minutes later I arrived at “白沙湖” (white sand lake) which is a spectacular lake in the mountains (in its current form, a hydropower dam), with rolling sand dunes which appear quite out of place on the mountain shores. This was quite a sight to behold. I skipped the tourist attraction itself (there were hundreds if not thousands of people walking along the viewing platforms) and parked by the roadside in a closed off shoulder for some pics, before continuing on.

White Sand Lake (白沙湖)

Close up of the dunes

By now the altitude was a quite reasonable 3000 ish, and the road continued climbing to 3600 for the first highway rest area where I stopped for lunch. My guide also stopped here, and was unfortunately suffering from altitude sickness, so I recommended that she keep going to town (which was a more reasonable 3200masl) while I had lunch and made plans for the afternoon. She had mentioned a tourist attraction on the mountain, where you could go and see a glacier, and since I had ~4 hours of sunlight left to spare and ~1 hour to town, I thought I could make it up and down in time.

Altitude map for today’s ride

It was reasonably fun, although not the most mindblowing experience. It involved an initial visitor centre where you can buy tickets, a 12KM mini bus trip close to the summit (it was fun chatting to the aunties and uncles here, who were very curious about my trip), then a ~1km climb to the glacier itself. I was feeling lazy (and the altitude was 4600 MASL so I didn’t really want to exert myself before riding once more) so I opted to ride a horse up to the glacier, and then walk down.

Selfie with the aunties and uncles

In hindsight, it probably would have been better to walk, given the line for the horse was a ~40 minute wait, and the horse was led by a guide (who was already tired by this point) who walked at the same pace as if I had walked. Plus I felt a bit guilty for the horse, who was on its 7th climb of the day (and I am much heavier with my motorcycling gear than your average customer).

Dressed up for a different type of ride

The glacier itself was smooth and icy, but otherwise unremarkable. I guess it is nice to see these things up close at least once to get a sense for what they are like in reality.

Ice (presumably old)

Glacial pond

The way down was quite fast, only 15 mins walk, and then onto the next bus. Again I was thrust into conversation with uncles and aunties around me. One guy had been thinking about buying a bike his whole life, and I may have provided the encouragement to avoid regret and just do it.

More selfies with more aunties

Final stretch to Tashkorgen

Final stretch to Tashkorgen pt 2

Tashkorgan is much smaller than I had expected it to be. It has a few hotels, a few military facilities, and is otherwise filled with restaurants for tourists. The main offering seems to be yak meat hotpot. Interestingly enough, there are people who look like they could be Pakistani, but speak Chinese. They wear the shalwar kameez and I have seen them working in service jobs (and also as informal street vendors of cigarettes).

After going back and forth along many of the restaurants to optimise my pick, I eventually landed on a local but still nice ish place which was decently occupied. I had hotpot for one at the shared table (which was initially empty), until I was joined by another guy who had been living in Tashkorgan for the last two years.

My dinner companion

He was originally from Chengdu, and had his family (wife and 13 year old son) there. It was an interesting interaction; there was some conversation, we were each on our phone for other parts, he was videocalling his family and friends as he ate, and telling them about me. We started drinking together; first his home distilled moonshine (made of roasted corn) which tasted like a stronger vodka (and was actually pretty good), then a bottle of little lamb baijiu that I bought, and then wusu beers of local origin.

Moonshine

It was funny because he was calling his mate who was also drinking, and we had a few three way cheers via video call.

“dfh” (drink from home)

Tomorrow; Sost!

Some stats:

• 24.8L fuel added
• 50g coffee consumed
• 298 KMs traveled
• 6 unique interactions

Part 2 route to date

Complete route to date