Day 42+10 weeks: Kashgar - Nanjing - Bremerhaven - Braunschweig

Almost ten weeks after leaving behind my car in Kashgar it has started moving again! I have finally found a solution to get it transported to Germany now, first on a truck through China, then via container sea freight to Germany.

 

Thanks to the super helpful hotel staff, my colleagues in Beijing, and the guys from the trucking company my C-Trek left Kashgar already yesterday. It even had my spare parts box from Beijing on board besides all the luggage I had to leave behind. Last but not least, the car even started without problems after the ten week wait in the hotel garage!

I’ll keep you posted if it all works out like planned - the whole procedure may take around two months depending on how well it goes through...

Day 58: Ashgabat - Istanbul - Frankfurt - Freiburg

Our last day of this trip started without real sleep as our flight left Ashgabat around 3 am. Our stopover in Istanbul was a light rush... We still made it but not our luggage not which we learned later in Frankfurt. Here Andreas and I bid each other farewell after three weeks together on the road - thanks a lot, that was a great journey!

While Andreas took the train to the North, I headed south in a rental car to complete the ‘...to Freiburg’ part of this slightly shortened road trip. Avis did its best in trying to compensate for the C-Trek with a GTI which also had to stand in for the finishing photo in Freiburg and a short race up to Schauinsland in the Black Forest. 

 弗赖堡到了 - fú lài bǎo dào le - finally in Freiburg!

Day 57: Ashgabat

 Last day before heading home! We explored first the ruins of ancient Nisa outside of Ashgabat before it became too hot... Later we stopped at some of the monumental architectural sights that give this city its ... ehm ... special look...

We‘re now off to the airport, heading to Frankfurt via Istanbul... 

Day 56: Darvaza - Ashgabat

We have arrived in the last city of this tour, Ashgabat! On the way, we stopped at another crater left over from gas drilling, bubbling along through a thick salty brine. Ashgabat then greeted us with a surreal futuristic look in total contrast to what we had seen of Turkmenistan so far.

Day 55: Nukus - Darvaza

We left Nukus in the morning, heading with a driver to the Turkmen border where we were dropped off in safe distance to the border post. Checking out of Uzbekistan was surprisingly quick, and after a short walk through the no man’s land between the countries we could finally make use of the last visa on this trip- after a somehow lengthy customs procedure...

Konye-Urgench offered us a few sights from the times when the Mongols were here and a lunch break before heading off to Darvaza Gas crater. There, we arrived in the early evening after almost 300 km on a grueling road mostly consisting of potholes.

Darvaza Gas Crater is a special place indeed: It started as an oil drilling site in the 1970s, but instead a gas cavern was found under crumbling ground. The rest is mystery and legends, but the gas coming from the bottom of this 70m diameter crater has been burning since then...