Cigarettes and Show Tunes – A China-Kyrgyzstan Border Crossing Adventure

When preparing to leave China and cross the border into Kyrgyzstan, on foot, over mountains, I couldn’t help but quote the final scene from The Sound of Music.

Maria: “But what about the children?”
Capt. Von Trapp: “They’ll make it. We’ll help them.”

“Climb Ev’ry Mountain” was just one of the many songs we sang to make it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We looked towards this crossing with considerably more trepidation than we did our Mongolia-China border crossing; our Russia-Mongolia border crossing was so uneventful we didn’t even bother to write about it. But this time, especially leaving from Xinjiang, there was reason to believe the process would be troublesome.

We left before dawn in a prearranged taxi. The driver lit his first cigarette before taking the wheel. He cracked his window and lit his second at first light. It was going to be a long 140 miles to the Irkeshtam Pass.

We lost track of the number of cigarettes

‘Long,’ we discovered, was an understatement. Despite clear, perfectly smooth, and straight highways, those 140 miles took six hours. Before being allowed to leave China, we were required to get out of the car at seven stops and surrender our passports fourteen times. We lost track of the number of cigarettes.

One of the required disembarkations was to fill up with fuel. We had heard that the gas stations in Xinjiang were under strict controls to prevent the production of amateur bombs. No joke! This one was surrounded by razor wire, and we were not allowed near it—with ambiguous waves of his hands, our driver communicated that we should leave all of our worldly belongs in his car and walk… there… over there… somewhere, for a reason we hadn’t yet discerned. Nothing uncomfortable about that.

The world’s most convivial invasion of privacy

At another stop, where our family made up the majority of emigrants, we waited so long that we shared photos and stories with the friendly guards. At least, that’s what we thought at first. I used pictures from my phone to show where we had come from, and then the senior official took the phone and started scrolling through my photos. When I tired of this, I tried to take it back; he smiled and didn’t let it go. He continued to scroll until he had seen every picture we took while in China. It was the world’s most convivial invasion of privacy.

The strangest episode was when our driver was given custody of our passports with a receipt, and we were told we would get them back at the border. Shortly after getting back in the car, though, the driver gave our passports back so that we could present them to the next agent. After two more stops, he wrapped them again in the receipt and kept them until the end. It was all very puzzling.

Truth be told, we increasingly became convinced that the security was less about us and more about the mysterious housing compounds we drove past. Surrounded by impassable mountains, barren flatlands, and razor wire, these rows of identical block buildings, and especially their incongruously colorful playgrounds, presented an unsettling question. Were these the Uighur reeducation camps about which we’d heard so many whispers?

Breathing a sigh of relief

After the fourteenth passport check, we breathed a sigh of relief as we took our first step beyond the Chinese border.

Welcome to Kyrgyzstan!

The welcoming committee was tiny—just two jovial truckers who offered to take our picture by the country marker. The welcome was also ambivalent; outside the first set of buildings we came across (the purpose of which we are still debating), a heavily armed guard went on high alert when Chris tried to translate posted information with his phone. NO PHOTO! He took our passports and ordered us not to follow. We spent the next fifteen minutes putting on all our warm clothing—it was cold up there in the mountains—and holding our breath until the guard returned and ushered us on our way.

Our way to… where? There was nothing but a stretch of pavement leading into the distance, lined with grassy shrubs, mountain peaks, and an unsettlingly quiet queue of abandoned semi-trucks. We had no idea how long we would need to walk that road. A few pasturing donkeys looked at us as though they wondered why we were there.

It is hard to describe how empty that stretch of road felt.

So, we did what any rational parents would do. We turned on some music and sang and danced our way down the road with inspirational show tunes.

After three kilometers of song and dance, we found some signs of civilization—truckers chatting outside their sleeping caddies; they joined us for jigging to a chorus of “Istanbul, Not Constantinople.” Even more exciting, we then saw buildings in the distance. Just another half kilometer, and we would be there… in a vacant customs checkpoint. With a smile, they gave us a stamp and pointed us to the gate.

A car on the other side

Only one more hurdle—would there be a car on the other side of that gate? We were still 47 miles from the first guest house on our map. Sure enough! Like a fisherman dozing in the quietest pool imaginable, there was a man with a car waiting for the odd traveler to wander his way. And, as luck would have it, he was willing to take an astronomical amount of our Chinese currency (no banks or ATMs in the middle of the mountains, folks) in exchange for transport to a few beds. (Never before had we been in a worse bargaining position.) We shrugged and squeezed into his small sedan.

Then a friendly young Kyrgyz man opened the car door and, with a smile, squeezed in too. After only four hours with seven people in a compact car, we arrived at our hostel.

We made it!

Related Reading

Our thoughts after traveling through China…

Leaving China – Anthropological Goggles and Surveillance Cameras

Another fascinating border-crossing story…

A Mongolia-to-China Border Crossing Exam

After visiting Kyrgyzstan you logically end up in Uzbekistan…

Uzbekistan Travel Guide – Bazaar Sights on The Silk Road