Hi,
i have just crossed China on the KKH from the Khunjerab pass to Irkeshtam via Kashgar. The company we used was called Newland travel or kashgarsilkroad.com. I'm sure they trade under several different names, but the boss was called Ablimit.

Our group consisted of:
VW camper 1972
Land rover 1968
2x Trabants 1980's
Fiat 126 1980's
Jawa 250 Motorcycle 1970's

We were all quite well speed matched so everything was looking fine to start with.

The whole experience was less than pleasurable.

The problems started when we tried individually to extract the payment details from Ablimit. There was just no response. No deposit was asked for either.

We were told we would cross the border and drive the 150 ish kms with a guard to pass through customs in Tashkurgan. This didn't happen and we had to do the customs inspection at the Khunjerab pass new customs building. Making our arrival at Tashkurgan approx 02:00 AM !!!
The guide from Newland or whatever it was called that day met us and then informed us that we had to pay for our cars to be disinfected and also pay to park in the customs car park overnight. All was new information to us.
The customs experience wasn't too bad considering it was 03:00 AM.

The next day it took all day to do the 290kms because of the frequent police checkpoints and road repairs.

The Kashgar hotel details were given to us so as the convoy had become split up two of the group made it to the hotel fist only to find that the booking hadn't been made.
After many calls we found that the hotel had been changed without informing us. This meant we were late to that hotel too. Long long days due to bad organisation.

When eventually we arrived at the booked hotel the owner/boss Ablimit met us and i can only assume that he was drunk as he stank of alcohol. A small argument started and the guy went absolutely mad at us in the lobby of the hotel. Not professional.

The payments were made the next day in cash. I'm convinced it was to avoid tax. They gave some feeble excuse about bank transfers not working to China. Absolute rubbish!

We were meant to stay two nights in Kashgar. The guide gave the information that the day we were meant to cross the border to Kyrgyzstan the Chinese authorities were doing a systems upgrade and the border would be closed. This proved to be a lie as another group that we met on the same route crossed on our original exit date.
The lie was probably to save them the cost of the Kashgar hotel for our group for one night.

I have to add that our guide (Abdul) was great and got a lot of abuse for his bosses incompetence.

He got as frustrated as we did at some points but kept his cool and eventually sorted every problem efficiently.

In short i would keep well clear of this company. China was nice but extremely hard work to get through in the way we did it. I wont be travelling there again. There are easier parts of the world to be an overlander in.

Nobby

Hi Nobby, thanks for sharing. And now you reached Osh?
Because I see the old VW and Defender

Thanks for that detailed info. We know who to stay clear of...
Hope the rest of your trip is smooth.