Eclipse Tour 2009

Written by Mārtiņš K., translated and details added by Agnese

We are getting up early as we have agreed before - at 7am. The other kupe growls as usual that there should still be time to sleep. They are actually right - we arrive at the destination station 2 hours later than planned.
Improvised policeman set up by army are everywhere in Urumchi/Urumqi city. On the one hand we have a feeling of safety because of the high security, on the other hand, of course, it wouldn’t be nice to get in rougher checks and get fumbled. The most frightening fact to me is that somebody could take away the knife given to me as a present from a friend of mine. Metal detector beeps, but the lady fumbles my pockets and lets go.
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The seats on the later train which would be the best according to the schedule (evening) are sold out. So are all places on at least 2 other reasonably good trains and all the sleeping places on all trains today. The best places we could get are soft seats for a train that leaves at about 4pm, therefore we won’t have much time in the city. But it’s better to take this train than wait till tomorrow, so we buy the tickets.
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We arrange two cabs which could take us to museum of minerals. The agreed price is 25yuans for each. Our cab takes us to a wrong place at first - to history or similar museum. After short expounding, we arrive at our proper destination. The first group reports that the museum is closed, however the main object of interest for our astronomers - the huge meteorite - is found exposed next to the museum and we can see it. We take a picture of ourselves and tick off this item from our must-see list.
It’s drizzling small drizzle, but as the temperature of the air is not low there’s no threat of getting soaked. We decide to go to Urumchi Red hill park.
Me, Mārtiņš M and Everita want to go by foot, which we do. Others take a cab. Initially we follow the intuition and hopefully head in the right direction. Of course, it turns out to be wrong. A lady on the street explains that we should go in completely opposite direction.
It is interesting to observe both daily rhythm of local people and local lazybones.
The rain gets more intense and we get a bit wet. On our way to the park we realize that it won’t be possible to get there more or less along azimuth, and to reach the entrance we need to make a detour of several blocks size. In a little while we arrive at the destination.

When we start walking in the park, the drizzle stops and we get dry very quickly. The park offers very interesting and extensive scenery of the city.
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After the walk in the park we get some cash from ATM and bank. The first ATM we notice on our way, works with our bank cards, which seems quite surprising for Agnese as she has read that there might not be more than couple ATMs in this whole city. We continue to supermarket to buy some needed products while Agnese and Mārtiņš M. tries (more or less successfully) to get prepaid SIM card from some Chinese operator.
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A bit of stress and a bit more stress about some irresponsibility or something like that, as we thought at that time. We bought also some cognac, which was probably produced or bottled in China.
And then for 15 yuans per each of the 2 cabs we get back to railway station to go further.

At the entrance of railway station there are metal detector checks again. Me and Mārtiņš M are asked to open bags for detailed check. The manual metal detector beeps because of knife that’s attached to my belt under shirt, however as there is camera battery close by in the pocket, they find that and ask to show. Mārtiņš M. was asked if he has a knife or anything like that in the bag. And he honestly shows his knife. I answer without lying that I don’t have knife in the bag. I was let go, however problems arise with the knife of Mārtiņš M. It appears that we would have needed to declare or file or similarly note such things. As the train leaves in couple of minutes, there’s no time to discuss about the conflict, and the knife is given away for confiscation voluntarily.

Aggregated from 5 sentence/5 facts texts of all of us. Put together and translated by me. Prepare for a long reading (sorry)

In the afternoon of 2009.07.14 we arrived at a small village just before Chinese border. Kazakh border guards stepped in to check our passports, but I don’t remember if they checked the baggage. Our carriage was the last one to be checked, so the border guards stepped out and said that we can step out also to walk around the village while the wheels of the train are changed. Everita and MārtiņšK were the only ones to get out - the doors closed just before the rest of us, and the train started to move backwards. We thought it would stop in some seconds, but in fact it moved for some minutes till a place with lots of wheels and rails and trains. We got a message from MārtiņšK - “Bļ.., kur aizbraucāt” (”Fck, where did you go to”) - we didn’t know ourselves :D.

We had nothing to do, so we started to watch a movie on the laptop. Time after time the train moved - it seemed that the wheels were changed for one carriage at a time. Although they moved the whole carriage up at least 1m, the wheel changing procedure was very unnoticeable - only Emīls saw some moment that we were higher above the ground than we used to be, but sadly didn’t bother to tell the others - we would like to see it too. Unfortunately, they didn’t have electricity in the train at this time, and the battery of the laptop ran out in half an hour, so we couldn’t watch the movie till the end.
While we stayed in the train, MārtiņšK and Everita were wandering around the village. The air there was dryer than cookies of sweetcrust pastry and temperature above 30C. The village was located in the middle of nowhere, cows were walking down the streets and abandoned houses were intensively torn down .

Some time after leaving the village behind, we reached the Chinese border.
We were checked very seriously here.
The first team that visited us were medicals. They came in the kupe and aimed with a weapon-like object to our foreheads without saying a word. The object luckily appeared to be an infrared thermometer. It seems that China is only country which takes pig, bird and other flues for real. When they checked Anders’s temperature, it was apparently a bit higher than normal and they had to check it again with a regular thermometer. Who knows, what would have happened if he really have had a fever.

The second team was the food control. First they visited girls’ kupe, from which girls shouted the boys to eat the carrots. They were thinking “wtf?”. Only later they understood that every vegetable and fruit will be taken from them. This way we lost our carrots and cucumber, but we managed to save the tomatoes in our stomachs :). There was also a funny discussion:
Chinese official: - мясо есть? (Do you have meat?)
MārtiņšM: - нет. (No.)
The official carefully checks all the bags and sacks. Prepared to leave, but notices that there is another sack on the upper berth. He takes out a loaf of bread from it, all covered with flown-out melted cheese, and gives to MārtiņšK to hold it while taking out the second loaf, which is also broken apart. After that he takes out a sausage.
Chinese official:- а ето что такое? (And what is this?)
MārtiņšM: - hm.. , колбаса. (sausage.)
Chinese official (angrily):- колбаса ета же есть мясо! (Sausage is meat after all!)
… turns around and leaves taking the sausage with him.
Now we know that we should have hide the sausages in the trash bin, because they didn’t check it. And even if they had checked - we had thrown them away ourselves. However they didn’t take away our canned meat - maybe because we told them that those are “konservi” (preserves), not some meat. Anyway it seems that you cannot take anything fresh or any meat into China.
Long time after leaving border I found our Kazakh melon somewhere under blankets and sheets in the upper (over-corridor) section of kupe. Great success!

After we had put back all the things taken out with 2nd officials’ team, new team - border guards - appeared and asked to take everything out one more time. We took out the sacks of our bags and tried to tell in English what’s in there, but it doesn’t seem that the border guard understood a word, although he nid-nod. We think that he was just pleased with fulfillment of his duties. He also skimmed through Kristīne’s book in English and nodded wisely. Her tri-pod seemed very interesting. She had to put the camera on, and only then he understood, what is it meant for. They went away with Kristīne’s DVD movie - maybe to watch it?? Fortunately, they returned it later.
MārtiņšM had to show them Agnese’s star maps from his e-book and gadget party in boys’ kupe began. They played with MārtiņšK’s magnetic toy Neo cube, one border guard (quite pretty ) checked the photos in the cameras and cellphones. MārtiņšK said that there’s nothing interesting in his, but she answered “it’s my job”. Most of MārtiņšK’s pictures had “drunk and asleep friends, laden with things” on them. For one of them she asked, what is this. MārtiņšK replied - “I don’t remember…”. In the last pictures she checked, there was a kitty which she liked . It was great that she stopped there as the further pictures depicted MārtiņšK’s fraternity friends with rapiers - not good to show pictures of any weapons to border guards, is it?
They also checked Anders’s book in English and didn’t like something in it so Anders had to tell them, what’s written in it. Fortunately they didn’t find MārtiņšM’s laptop.

After a while, suddenly everyone left. In a moment one of them returned and searched for something, but didn’t find. We hoped that we would get some souvenir, e.g. a torch, but we didn’t find anything ourselves also.

Overall, it seemed that our group had created a little stress to both train attendants and Chinese border-guards, but everything was alright in the end. Only some 2 persons of them spoke English or Russian. Mostly we used sign language and were translating over a chain - Anders spoke in English, MārtiņšM translated to Russian and Chinese border-guard lady translated from Russian to Chinese to her colleagues. The same chain to the opposite direction. Together with wheel changing we spent several hours at the border posts, something like 6 hours or even more. It was dark outside when we started to move further.

Got over the border, we chatted and joked till 5am although had to get up at 7am.

I’m not used to write in English, so maybe there will be lots of mistakes here. Though I think that I should write this one in some international language, because the information of such tours are interesting to those who plan to do something similar. Last time we thought that the writing will be easier in Latvian and we will translate afterwards. But you can surely guess how it turned out. No post was translated as we had no time or were too lazy. So, let’s start in English from the beginning.

This blog will be about me and my friends who are going to watch the Total Solar Eclipse of 2009 in Shanghai. We will go there by train starting in Riga, Latvia, which is the city where we live, work or study. And by plane back. The Eclipse takes place in 22nd of July, 2009 and will be visible from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh China and Japan isles. The wikipage is here and the NASA official page is here. There are lots of maps in the latter.

Yet there are 3 possible routes - through Mongolia, through Kazakhstan and through China around Mongolia. We are not sure of timetables for Almaty-China train Zhibek Zholy as there are unclear information in websites, so I have asked some people from couchsurfing.com to find out it at Almaty railway station. They haven’t responded with timetables yet though.

Meanwhile we are trying to spare money as the journey is not so cheap and we are not millionaires also. Actually it would be much cheaper to go by plane both directions. But - what’s the fun flying by plane. I mean, we will do it when we will be 80.

That’s for now. I hope to give details in later posts.