China - the big push to Kashgar

We had heard that the crossing to China would be hard. It did not disappoint, even though we had arranged a guide. Without transferring through China to Pakistan, there was only one other way of stitching together the two halves of our trip. That involved Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which was certainly not on the preferred country list!
Other than my worries about whether or not the guide that we had arranged would turn up, I was concerned that we had no paperwork to present the official with confirming that we had a guide, and our meeting time of 11am was unclear (China runs on two times - Beijing and local, which vary by 2 hours).
After leaving Narin, we headed South for around 200km to the first Kyrgyzstan exit point. Our passports were stamped and then we set up camp for the night (yes, it was raining again!). We were within 60km of the Chinese border and there were no hotels. A local on horseback did invite us to stay in his yurt, but by this point, we had already set up our tent and it had rained hard. To get to the yurt, we would have to ride over grass with our road tyres and we risked getting our bikes bogged into the grass the next morning when we exited. We did not want anything to potentially make us miss our meeting the guide at the border to regrettably had to decline. Especially given that it was freezing cold that night (at an altitude of over 3000m), there was a constant rumble of trucks rolling past us and we only had nuts, raisins and a melon as food!
In the morning, we gathered our things and got back onto a worsening track towards the second Kyrgyzstan border, where our bikes were searched, we filled in some paperwork and got another exit stamp?! We received a stern warning that if China did not let us in, our visa would not permit us to return to Kyrgyzstan. We were really reliant on our guide turning up as otherwise, we would not be allowed into China.
Around 10km later, we were at the first Chinese checkpoint. It consisted of one man, who spoke no English. He took a look at our passport, asked us something that we didn't understand before eventually sending us on (without any stamp). Around 20km later, we got to another checkpoint, which was much more thorough and happily we were approached by our guide. Phew! He had turned up after all. Booking stuff over the phone and internet does work!
The guide helped out with translation, our bags were searched with particular interest that books did not contain any political material and then we were on our way...
...to the next checkpoint 80km away. We still had no stamp in our passports and yet we were around 90km into China! The next (and final) checkpoint was down a pretty badly surfaced gravel road with very little grip, so we crept along before finally reaching a pristine surface and the final checkpoint. After they returned from their siesta, the border control police searched our bags again, scrutinised the paperwork (some of which the guide had got wrong but duly corrected) and then an hour to 2 later, we were 'free' to be escorted to Kaskgar.
In China, we are only allowed to use our bikes under the escort of our guide. Given that there are no legible road signs at all and that speed limits change without any warning, it was probably a good job that we had a guide. Whilst it was pretty expensive to arrange, with hindsight, it took a fair bit of stress out of the whole procedure.