West China 中国西部 April & May 2005 孔思义 & 黄亚萍
 
XINJIANG 新疆省 4 27th May - Escape from Urumqi 乌鲁木齐－》》》》 We packed the bags and checked out of the hotel. Frank was with us. (We had left him behind for most of our daytrips). We got to the consulate, collected Jemi’s passport (with blue Kazakh visa) and gave the woman her fat fee. It started to rain but we were all happy, glad at last to be moving on. A pair of Common Cranes were seen in flight (triplist 243). The weather dried up and the road got worse. We drove along yet another unfinished stretch. A woodpecker was seen in this treeless landscape latching itself onto a wooden telegraph pole – White-winged Woodpecker (triplist 244). We stayed at the unremarkable (but quite pleasant) town of Jinghe 精河 overnight. Behind the hotel we could hear a loud whirring bird call but couldn’t quite place it. 28th May - Jinghe to Yining 精河－伊宁 Away westwards again, we arrived at Sayram Lake 塞里木湖 in mid-morning, beautiful, blue and surrounded by pastures with grazing horses. Whooper Swans and Goldeneye took the list to 245 and 246. Sayram Lake 塞里木湖 We arrived at Huocheng 霍城, a town close to the border crossing at Horgas 霍尔果斯口岸 and looked around for somewhere to stay for our last night in China. The hotel we found was pretty ordinary. Having read of the Yining Hotel 伊宁宾馆 in Yining 伊宁, which was the old Russian Consulate set in wooded grounds, we decided to press on another 50kms to get there. We passed fields of lavender, lined with poplars. We got lost in the centre of Yining, but Jemi found a taxi and told him to go to the hotel while we followed. Cunning, no? Frank appeared to have been daydreaming and didn’t know what was going on. After we’d been following the taxi for five minutes he announced that Jemi was not on board the car. We found rooms in the middle price range (RMB 180) and settled in. Quickly we found Rooks, Common Myna and Turkestan Tit to take our total to 249. We heard the same vigorous whirring call we’d heard in Jinghe 精河. This time we got a view of the vocalist: - Nightingale ! Well, you don’t get them in Hong Kong and you don’t get many in the UK, that’s our excuse for being so slow to recognise the call. We had another pleasant, inexpensive dinner in a family–run restaurant round the corner from the hotel, toasted 250 bird species with cheap Chinese beer, and told ourselves what jolly clever explorers we were. 29 May - To the border With a keen sense of anticipation we checked out of the hotel and covered the distance to Horgas 霍尔果斯 in about an hour. We cruised up to the barrier where Frank actually used his initiative to get out and ask the Border Guard to open the gate. “Sorry” he replied - “This crossing point is closed on Sundays !”
Close on Sunday Horgas  Crossing Point
 
If we were disappointed, Frank looked absolutely crestfallen.
 
With a sense of anti-climax we turned around and found a very new hotel in Horgas.  Jemi got Russian lessons from the helpful Chinese manageress. In the afternoon Nigel and I wandered around the town in a desultory manner, seeing Little Owls nesting in the rocky fields near the Crossing Point, and European Bee-eaters (triplist: 251) on the wires above.
 
 
30 May   Goodbye to all that
 
On Mondays the Horgas Crossing Point 霍尔果斯口岸 definitely is open. There were several Chinese Immigration Officers on duty but only two booths were operating. It wasn’t really busy but the queue in the hallway was something of a scrum, as queue-jumping Kazakh babushkas laden with chinese shopping jostled to get to the counters first. The car exit formalities were sorted out and Frank escaped with the plates and the other documents.
 
A flock of Rosy Starlings (252: our last “trip bird” in China) passed overhead as we left the Chinese part of the crossing.
 
Vehicles were jostling to move in both directions. Down the road traffic was being directed - or waved at, anyway- by a white man in a big Russian-looking hat. We were in Kazakhstan.
 
To be continued....