A land ends, another begins. Where is the border? A tearing river, high mountains. Wild areas, beautiful and untouched. Lonely. You often can't move freely in this areas. If you don't wont to cross illegally the green border, you remain hanging on an invisible line. A land ends, another begins. Borderland.

In Central Asia, border demarcations are not always logical. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were re-drawn on the drawing board, countries have been invented where none existed before. Looking at the Fergana Valley, you will find foreign land parts in the actual country. Arrows on the map indicate the affiliation of such country parts. Boundaries extend around a city or through the middle of a plain. Such borders are crossed quickly, the barrier exists only on paper. Nations have been cut. They are difficult to squeeze into a national thinking, they hold on to their old cultural boundaries. An ideological powder keg, ready to fly into the air.

Also the border crossing at Korgas in the extreme north-west of China is located in the floodplain of the mighty Ili river. The border is man-made. A hundred meters wide corridor of iron and barbed wire. On the last kilometers before the border are small mud huts. Coyly crouched next to the main road. Many motorists will fail to see them, the view already directed at the swanky skyscrapers which Korgas should transform to China's showcase city. The first Chinese city when traveling from Kazakhstan to China, the last town, when leaving China. A modern China should be remembered. The mud huts are a faux pas. If the Chinese government know that they are still noticed by someone, they would perhaps be demolished. On every rooftop is flapping a red flag. Have they been arranged by the government? Are they here for the Uyghur and Kazakh, who live here, to remember them on which side they are? Or have they been hanged up here voluntarily? In order not to be a nobody in no man's land, in order to show that even such huts belong to China yet?

At the border fence trucks are crisscrossing in front of a barrier and the line of people is chaotic and disordered. Everyone is trying to squeeze through the one-meter wide passage in order to achieve the customs clearance before the next evening. We arrive at 8' clock in the morning. A drunken customs officer stays on top of the guard house, wielding a chain in the air and yelling into the crowd. We are stunned. It takes an hour until we've found out that we don't have to pass with the bicycles by the people's entry but by the vehicle's gate. Just before the lunch break we've thrashed us through the portal and get the exit stamp in the passport. We are not allowed to ride by bike through the iron corridor. The hundred meters in the official shuttle bus to Kazakhstan cost us 10$ per person. The half of it goes in front of our eyes in the pants bag of the next staying customs official.

It is afternoon when we cycle into the Kazakh steppe. The air shimmers, the sweat draws a white salt pattern on the brim and on the back of the T-shirt. Thoughts burst in the heat, break the monotony of the landscape. Time to look back ... It was still on the Tibetan Plateau, as we've met Christian. He started from Germany, cycled through Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. From the holy mountain Amnye Machen we are traveling together, along the Qinghai Lake, where the police stopped us the first time. In a guarded pickup we were taken to the provincial border. Vague reasons. Military restricted zone. All questions have only worsened the situation. Later, we find on the satellite image further west a huge white hole. A gigantic open asbestos mine. China operates one of the biggest gulag networks of the world. The police can send people in the mines without trial to "re-education through labor" up to four years. The country has too much to hide. The world closes its eyes to.

A valley full of sand dunes. Clouds gather, it rains in the desert. Then wilderness, hostile to life. We buy bigger bottles, are hoping for tailwinds, which doesn't come. Remnants of the great Chinese wall. Here, the Middle Kingdom was over, began the long journey to the West. The Silk Road. Today drive truck caravans on a highway in the same direction. Weathered dirt mounds let hardly imagine the old watchtowers who have secured the way here. Shadowless width. 150 km per day. We cycle uphill. The Tien Shan ranges here well into the desert. It has become cooler, we camp among fragrant pines. Water in abundance. Summer flowers everywhere. Once we reach 4000 meters, glaciers and snowfields. In the morning we hike on one of the nearby peaks. Hard prongs, bedded in soft clouds. Mountains in the sky. Celestial Mountains.

The daily grind of a cyclist: to get up, to cook instant noodles, to pack mattress, sleeping bag and tent. A break after the first thirty kilometers. Then continue. Lunch time is getting closer. On the bike you have plenty of time to wallow the past. Until well into childhood. Or imagine what some people are doing at home straight now. Breakfast on Sunday morning perhaps? No, better forgot it quite quickly ... Or cynical stories : The Chinese asbestos fish. He swims in the irrigation canals of Qinghai. If you catch it and throw it on the grill, it laughs at you. It's the asbestos fish, it's fireproof. Or the caramel river. It flows quite a while beside us. Caramel brown. Direct route to the caramel factory. Where the delicious "Alpenliebe” caramel chocolate drops are produced. Would be not there just now time for such a candy ? "Hey, stop, I need some chocolate dopping!" The evening is approaching. In the absence of an alternative, it will probably be instant noodles for dinner again. How many days now? In a Lonely Planet guide book, which was standing around somewhere, we read "the best reason to travel to China, is the food ." They have no clue. Set up tent. Listen into the night. The place is safe. Asleep.

The sun rises over the vast grasslands of Bayanbulak. Flat hills, long shadows. Mongols live here. They haven't selected their home land according to the lines on a piece of paper. Yurts and herds of horses. Mongolia, in the middle of China. China isn't proud of it. Again we are arrested by the police. Restricted area. No overnight stay in a hotel, no photos. On television flickers the World Cup Match Ghana - United States. The officer is bored, asking for money, insisting on a travel card which we don't have, want to know if the woman is married to any of the two men. Disjointed. Completely unimportant. Luckily it's him too strenuous to organize a transport for us. We are allowed to continue...

When reaching the Sharyn Canyon we say goodbye to Christian. In two days he flies home. We've cycled three thousand kilometers together. A lot. When he sits already on the plane, we reach the Kolsay National Park. A fantastic place high up on the Kazakh - Kyrgyz border. Three crystal clear mountain lakes, dense forests and meadows full of Edelweiss. Beautiful and lonely. We ride up to the border ridge in two days, looking down to Kyrgyzstan. Clouds loom over the sky blue Issyk Koel, tear the thoughts, so we can look ahead. A year has passed. We fly home from Almaty. Our journey is over. New challenges await us. One step and we reach an invisible line. One step more and we enter borderland.