The Ball 2002

Hello everyone from Rob – the infamous Battersea Park football fouler.

Chris adds: here’s an action replay, as if you needed reminding

The Infamous Battersea Park Fouler about to get his name

The Infamous Battersea Park Fouler’s destiny is decided

I’m currently packing my bags to join Phil and Chris in Xiahe, near Lanzhou. I’ve already had my first taste of Chinese officialdom facing the stern woman behind the glass at the Chinese Embassy in London last Thursday morning. She grabbed my forms without a word and refused to answer any of my questions about bits of the visa application form I couldn’t complete. As I left the embassy to wait two hours for them to express process my application, I met three travellers on the steps who had been refused a visa, despite having submitted airline tickets, full itinery and contacts in China. I hadn’t submitted any of this information; I hadn’t even bought a flight yet, so I wasn’t very hopeful.

I returned two hours later to face another stern woman behind glass and…

Written by Gershon Portnoi

The evening of May 5 will be one few Kashgar locals ever forget after a dramatic night of football in the heart of the old city.

The teams at The Yumulakshahar

The football’s journey to Seoul continued at the Kashgar Colliseum, a gladiator-style pit arena where around 10 international travellers and many local children took part in an epic contest which would have graced the original Rome amphitheatre itself.

The famous bazaar

Our goal in Kashgar was to visit the fabled Sunday market where local life gathers to meet, exchange, barter and haggle. People make long journeys from the outlying regions to attend the market, which echoes with the trading cries of Tajiks, Kyrgyz and Uyghurs.

A little tale of how Phil became The Pied Piper of Kashgar for a day

Phil leads the children, or are they following him?

On a particularly windy day in the desert, we decided to go for a walk to find an internet cafe which was rumoured to have a copy of Photoshop. I thought it would mean I could upload and edit some photos without the customary difficulties we’ve experienced here in China. It turned out to be another wild goose chase, but resulted in a charming incident in the backstreets of old Kashgar…

China has felt like sanctuary after the tribulations of the journey from Kazakhstan, and after spending a couple of days in Urumqi and hooking back up with the Boy Noble, we collectively decided to make a 3000km detour to Kashgar, the gateway to the Karakoram highway, on the far western edge of the Taklamakan desert.

A warm welcome in Kashgar

Kashgar is another of those places, like Samarkhand and Bukhara, whose name resounds with mystery and allure. It lies at the very heart of the continent, close to the borders of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and is rightly considered the crossroads of Asia…

The Ball arrives in China!

This was going to be a posting about some of our experiences in Almaty, but I’ve decided to skip writing about that for several reasons…

On our way from Bishkek to Issy-Kul in a 4×4 driven by ‘man o the mountains’ Slava we pass through a dramatic valley along the course of a fast flowing river. As the sun begins to fade Aleena our guide tells us how 40 rivers flow into the lake but none flow out. Strange in itself, stranger still as I had been watching the river flow the opposite way as we approach the lake uphill. I say as much to Chris…