Originally Posted by
spc354
Great report Jiejie... I remembered my trip to Turpan, Urumqi, Kashgar and Karakul in 2003. I was lucky to be able to visit the Spice bazaar in Urumqi in one of its last days of operation. I am reading "Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud" by Shun Shu Yun now where the author chronicles her attempt to retrace the journey of Xuanzang, which adds a third dimension. Someday, soon, I plan to travel the KKH through the Hunza.
I had been planning to do a grand trip from Istanbul through Syria, Iran, Pakistan, China and Kyrgyzstan for last fall, but it fell through because of the problems in Syria, Iran and Pakistan... I love trains, so I had traveled Beijing-Urumqi by train, and then flew to Kashi for time constraints. Missed out on your stops other thn Xian.
Will you be back in China soon? I will visit Xichang in January '13 for a week and again go back to Beijing/Xian/Shanghai in May for a month. Would love to meet up with you then.
I have one question: Your 3G dongle! Is the hardware locked into a Chinese provider? Do you need a post-paid account to use it? Can you get an unlocked dongle and use SIM cards that can be picked up anywhere?
Once again, great TR. Thanks.
You're welcome, it was a great trip. Three comments/responses on the parts of your post I bolded above:
1) Consider alternate routing from Istanbul via Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazhakstan. I don't think the problems in Syria, Iran, Pakistan are going away anytime in the foreseeable future.
2) I'm sure I will at some point, not until end of Oct/early Nov this year at earliest. Have some family obligations to deal with. Sure if I'm around, I'd love to meet up. And don't discount the possibility of meeting some of the other China-resident FT'ers on this forum, who are also founts of wisdom and funny tales.
3) I had a friend's USB 3G plug-in device by China Unicom and he told me no need to ration using it, but I don't know the details of the plan he was on. A better resource thread on this forum is
this excellent one, where you should post new and specific questions after you read it.