Thankfully a delightful upstairs cafe in our Silver Star Hotel was actually open in the morning and served a very good hot buffet breakfast. Despite the fun we had, had with our fierce independence, we had grown a bit weary of finding our own meals and gratefully enjoyed a mixture of Chinese and European styled foods.

We had a late start as Abdulrahman assured us that we would have plenty of time as we would be travelling on motorways all the way to Urumqi, our final destination. We must admit, by then we were very keen to return to Urumqi and spend that afternoon and the next day in one of our favourite Chinese cities - and our usual base for our travels.

Well, yes, we did travel along motorways but once again a lot was not completed and we had to follow complex detours which seemed to take forever. And when we did travel along the motorways, the speed limits were reduced at times to an infuriating 20 kilometers an hour. It must have been extremely frustrating for Sabir and Abdulrahman as we dawdled along a series of dead straight three lane 120 kilometer per hour highways, our car travelling at no more than 50 kilometers per hour at the most. "Perhaps the signs were accidentally left over from road work" offered Abdulrahman when we asked incredulously why the speed limit was so ridiculously slow. That was the rules and goodness knows what the real reason was - and we never did find out.

What we did find out however was like our travels from Tashkorgan to Kashgar, in addition to the speed limits, drivers are given time cards for travel from one location to another. And arriving early means a hefty fine for obvious speeding. And so, like our Tashkorgan taxi driver, Sabir and Abdulrahman seemed to take an awfully long time to get going and there were frequent lengthy stops. It all seemed like frightful overkill (forgive the pun) to us. However, everyone driving seemed to take the road rules very seriously. Only the police or labelled government officials' cars sped along the motorways.

The countryside from Korla to the Tian Shan Mountain Range was flat, dismal and industrial. Huge chimney stacks belched dirty smoke into a sky still saturated with the dust of the last two day's sand storm. It was a depressing scene. The motorway then climbed up and over the steep Tian Shan Range. It was like being on the moon. Surprisingly, there was no life at all. Not even a weed or two. Even the Taklamakan Desert hosted some sort of life. The mountains reminded me of the colours of Siamese cats; buff coloured loess covered slopes with curious dark brown to black coal gravel on their extremes. Other areas looked like they had been mined, with large depressions and again with no life at all. On a closer look, we discovered that the mined look was simply erosion - which was quite fascinating in itself. It was not an attractive scene however.

Descending the Tian Shan, the flat grey countryside leading to Urumqi was covered with large wind farms. Splendidly awesome white towers, their wildly swinging arms became a series of uncoordinated crazy performers practising some contorted dance routine. And most strangely, as the wind died down, their arms became graceful dancers in strangely synchronised harmony. The whole scene was quite fascinating and undeniably beautiful. 

Salt pans accompanied the wind towers, along with poor sour pastures and thin looking cattle. We passed a particularly large salt lake. I asked Abdulrahman what the name of the lake was. "Salt Lake" he replied. "Perhaps the local Uighur name would be more interesting" I suggested. It was of course Tuk Gol (Salt Lake).

The 455 kilometer trip from Korla took us a tedious seven and a half hours, arriving in Urumqi in the very late afternoon. As usual when tours finish, our farewells were brief. Sabir had parked the car on a busy road at the back of our hotel and there was no time for lengthy thanks or fond farewells. All up we had travelled some 2,025 kilometers on our travels from Kashgar through the Southern Silk Road across the Taklamakan Cross Desert Highway and onto Urumqi. It had been a fabulous and fascinating trip and we would highly recommend this tour to any of our readers.