The next day we grabbed food at the same Pakistani place as the night before. The lady who ran the place was Uighar. She told us about how she loved Pakistani food, and had learned to cook it on a few trips to Pakistan. She said it made her eat more and that it was more interesting to her than Uigher food which had less variety.After eating, we head to the bus station to check on tickets to Kyrgyzstan. I waited in the car as Andy and Omar went in to check times and prices. The taxi driver misunderstood and thought we were dropping them off and driving to the next hotel, so we went off and I had to keep explaining that we needed to wait and then go back...so a few blocks later, we started driving back, looping around to a place we could turn around. In the meantime, Andy and Omar thought I was kidnapped by the driver and I could see them in the distance looking around the parking area. Finally the taxi came back around, we picked them up and moved on to Chini Bagh, where the travel agent's office was.At CITS travel agency we sat down to figure out passage to Kyrgyzstan and get a refund on part of our previous trip. It turned out we could leave that day in about 10 minutes. The timings were limited due to the hours that the border was open. So we had barely enough time to set out immediatly by car and reach the border in time to get across, then jump into another car that was waiting for us on the Kyrgyzstan side and travel through rugged country to get to Osh. We went through all the details as quickly as possible, with the travel agent using additional staff who spoke the appropriate languages to make arrangements with a travel agency in Kyrgyzstan for that side of the trip. We were in luck (or so we thought) and a driver was already in the area to take us on from the Kyrgyzstan border to Osh. Along the way we were told we would have to hitch a ride with a truck across the 8km between both borders.In the middle of all of that Mike arrived, making it possible for us to leave immediatly. We thought he was arriving that night, so it was kind of surreal to see him walk right in as we were discussing plans for Kyrgyzstan. He'd just come off a rough ride to get to Kashghar and had not eaten since lunch the day before, but he too was ready to get out of China.So Andy and he ran off to do some last minute things, Omar went to get some water and snacks for all of us, and I sat waiting for our driver. It turned out to be Mr. Ling, who had taken us to Kashturgan.This time with Mike in tow, we could communicate using his Chinese language skills. Mr. Ling was far more talkative as we sped toward the border. Along the way we stopped for gas, and all of us had to get out of the car outside the gas station before the car was allowed to enter with only the driver. Security checkpoint after checkpoint we were checked and let to pass. Finally we made it to the Chinese side of the border, filled our departure cards, paid the fees, had our passports stamped and luggage checked. The staff was much more at ease at the border. They examined us closely, but were far friendlier than the rest of the checkpoints before, where there was obviously a great deal of tension. So crossed several more Chinese checkpoints, performing some music for some of the soldiers at their request. That made them pretty happy, and one was kind enough to ask a crossing truck to take us through the middle stretch across to the Kyrgyzstan border. We hopped in a truck with an Uzbek driver of a double trailered truck, traveling at about 5 miles an hour over unpaved road. He was very friendly and we pulled out our instruments and performed a few songs including an Uzbek song that Andy knew to entertain each other across the way.We thanked him once we reached the Kyrgyz checkpoint after a few more Chinese checkpoints, and meeting some of his friends along the way and passing scores of huge trucks waiting to enter China. I didn't take any pictures of any of this due to security reasons..as in securing myself from getting beat by the friendly border folks!At the Kyrgyz checkpoint we went through the usual questions and scrutiny, before meeting our driver, Plat on the other side. He strapped our heavy bags to the top of his old Russian jeep, and we started down the unpaved road in Kyrgyzstan. The driving was slow, but intense. Sometimes we would go off on dirt side roads, away from the stone filled main road from the Kyrgyzstan border. It is known as one of the worst roads in the country...which seems odd as it is an important trade route into China. At times the car would speed up and we'd avoid potholes and smack right into others. Our driver seemed pretty funny, as we tried to communicate with his limited English and our even more limited Russian. He was retired from the Russian Military and drove for a living now.There was some kind of deal to stay the night at some overpriced place along the way that the travel agency had relations with, so we refused to pay 8 times the cost. We had also requested to go straight to Osh, so the confusion now became more and more annoying. I don't think our driver, Plat was at fault for this, but he really did not seem to have ever taken anyone from the border before. He was confused and thrown off by misinformation that we would stay at the over priced (8x what it should have been) tourist trap along the barren road into Kyrgyzstan. The mountains around were beautiful. It was red and dusty, with bits of green all over, as we bumped and swerved and jumped along the road.Plat would at times insist that we stop somewhere and at other times insist that we keep going to Osh. He was a thin, older man and in any case this was an insanely intense drive, so we didn't want him to have to drive all the way through, but he wouldn't communicate to us properly about our options either. It was, stay in the tourist trap or drive all the way through. He would get very frustrated and annoyed, and not really try and communicate his thoughts properly. The sun went down and it was darkness everywhere. We had no Kyrgyz currency as we had not stopped anywhere we could change it. At last, late into the night we stopped for food and Plat filled up on some coffee. He paid for the meal, which we agreed to pay him back for in dollars.As we drove, he became afraid that we would not pay him at times, or he would change his mind about sleeping and then stop somewhere, only to argue that we had to continue due to safety issues. I know this drive was torture for him and also for us, though he had the advantage of understanding the language, and we had the advantage of not destroying our arms yanking the steering wheel from big pot hole to little pothole, to side of road, up and down inclines, stopping to cool down the engine etc along the way.This was without a doubt the worst ride we had been on, and during this trip we've had some really tough ones.