Finally we arrived in Shegar and set out to find somewhere to eat.  We decided on a lovely clean restaurant with exceedingly friendly Chinese proprietors only to discover they had no English menu.

An uproariously drunken party of Chinese  Frontier Guards was going on in the back room.  Two guards with 'little English' and an electronic Thesaurus were produced and set about helping us out.

Despite our best mime and our new friends help we ended up not with sweet and sour chicken, but a steaming bowl of cabbage and chicken complete with skin, bones and feet.  It tasted ok with rice and we did our best to do justice to the scrawny chicken

The commanding officer then came from the back room to insist we join them in a toasting game.   As anyone who has read Peter Hessler's 'River Town' knows, this is never a good idea.

We had so much fun the cares of a long day on the road evaporated and our fellow toasters were too far gone to realize we were not matching them drink for drink.

Blissfully unaware our worst day was  yet to come we bade farewell to the revelers and hoped there would be no incidents on the border that night as the frontier army were in no shape to respond.