The Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility

From Ürümqi we made it onto the night train headed for the border at Khorgos. We are going up in the world - soft sleeper this time, so 4 to a cabin and more space to actually sit and chat. Had the essential train noodles and watched the world go by for a bit.

Around 4am we were about 10km from the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility, which is the place on the globe furthest from any ocean. It was dark and in the middle of the desert, which seems appropriate, and there a photo to prove it (sort of).

Xinjiang is on GMT+8, and Kazakhstan on +5; it's the most misaligned time zone in the world, to the extent that they have tended to use +6 locally to give them some sunlight in the morning. Instead the sun rose just before 8am and went down at 9:30.

Off the train, a taxi to the bus station that would take us over the border and to our mild concern they'd sold out of bus tickets to Almaty that day, so we bought a ticket to wherever they'd take us (Zharkent) via customs and border checks. This took an unfeasibly long time with a lot of long queues, to exit China (entering Kazakhstan was a breeze). However we gained 3 hours after the queues so we still had plenty of time, and were jetlagged without the jet.

We spent all of 10 minutes in Zharkent in a sort of fever dream before finding a shared taxi with a family and a toddler who spent the 3.5 hour high-speed drive to Almaty (we hit 174km/h) crawling all over the car and making friends with Merlin, our meerkat, who has enjoyed having his tail chewed.

Arrived in Almaty in the sunny late afternoon having only eaten a handful of peanuts all day and all round quite exhausted and confused. Were delighted to discover that there are three Georgian restaurants within 250m of our hostel, ate our body weight in Khachapuri and went to bed - we are truly in Central Asia now.Read more