Day 39: Hotan - Kashgar

Kind of a special day with the last longer stage through China. We hit the road in Hotan after checking out a local jade market and a stroll around the block.

The rest of the day was a bit heavier with a few too many checkpoints, trying to find ways to solve  the still pending customs documents question, considering our options for Plan B... 🙄

Tomorrow will be make or break day for the next stage of the tour: trying to get the customs documents for the car. If it still works, we have two happy campers leaving on Thursday 😁 — but if not we will have to rearrange quite a bit of our plans... 😳

Day 38: Kuche - Hotan

Crossing the Taklamakan desert from North to South have us another slightly lengthy drive through a fascinating landscape. Before hitting the road we paid a visit to the restored King Palace in Kuqa.

Day 37: Urumqi - Kuche

First stage on the passenger seat - and we did 750 km today along the northern side of Taklamakan desert!

Day 36: Urumqi

No self-driving today - we spent the day in Urumqi Museum, Hongshan mountain, and People‘s Park - tomorrow will be different with a 700+ km stage.

Day 35: Turpan - Urumqi

The team is getting bigger again: Andreas, my predecessor in Beijing, joined in Urumqi after flying in via Astana - welcome!

After transferring from Turpan we met at the hotel and spent a part of the afternoon at the local VW-dealer to get my car checked for the next 10.000 km - happy to hear that it fared well through the heavy use of the past weeks! And it looks all new and shiny now 🤩

In the evening we strolled a bit through the Uighur quarter of the town, returning now after a very tasty welcome dinner!