Qini Bagh Hotel Kashgar

Arrived in Kashgar after a 28 hour bus ride...the ride wasn't bad and the scenery in parts was really beautiful although I was on the wrong side of the buss to get good pictures.

Kashgar is a town famed for being a Silk Road hub, in the centre of Asia where China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan meet. The town retains much of its traditional Uigher feel - despite large swathes of the town having been rebuilt with the Chinese style wide roads and tall buildings - and the bulk of activity is still focused in the old town and in the number of bazaars leading off from the Id Kah mosque. The city is far less Chinese in feel than Urumqi, with the vast major...

Well, we finally made it - Kasghar, the end of our travels in China (geographically at least). Romantic, end-of-the-train-line, silk-road outpost. Obviously, nowhere in China would ever be described as "romantic" (the ever present sound of someone hoiking not too far off usually kills that impression), but it does seem like a nice place to hang-out. The usual pleasant and relaxing journey here from Dunhuang - first a 2.5hr bus journey to the Dunhuang trainstation (in which we were seriously s...

Tues 5th July Gilgit-Karimibad We're heading to Karimabad (2438 metres) in the Hunza Valley today, a few hours north of Gilgit. The area is famous for its agriculture, which is made possible by its system of stone channels, up to 8 kms long, which carry water from the river to the fields. It's also a much more liberal area, as the people are Ismaili Moslems, a branch which split from the Shiites in the 8th century. There are now several million in the world (in Hunza and Gojal, India, East Af...

After the Gobi March 2006, comp[etitors and staff alike stormed into the hotel to take a well deserved long shower; imagine the smell as over 140 people arrived at the hotel on Saturday evening after 6 days without proper washing.... It felt sooo good to spend half an hour in the shower and get cuddled up in big fluffy white towels that didn't look white anymore after we dried our bodies. I had one more day in Urumqi where I picked up my passport with a 30 day extension. The next day, Ted, a ...

After days of "roughing" it in the mountains of Pakistan, it was good to be in Kashgar for some creature comforts. It's a decent sized chinese city, with a number of buildings more than 10 floors high. It is (I think) the second largest city in the remote, yet immense, western chinese province of Xinjiang. The provincial capital is Urumqi (or Mookie, as I call it), where I was at last year. Sometimes the distance between places makes this feel like Australia- it takes 24 hours by train to get...

Entry and photos to follow.

Entry and photos to follow.

After arriving from Pakistan I had spent a few days in Kashgar taking in the sights and drinking alcohol freely again after the hardships of Pakistan. I had decided to take the Southern Silk road out of Kashgar which skirts the Southern edge of the Takla Makan desert. This route links several scattered Oasis cities together. It is very infrequently travelled by outsiders today. It seemed a fairly easy trip as far as Charklik, but after that my guidebook the Rough Guide gave only the barest of...