The Silk Road
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
137
158
Trip End
Jul 21, 2007
Kashgar,
China
Thursday, May 31, 2007
There is still no tarmac and we are sharply reminded of the precarious nature of the road when we come to a halt in front of an enormous boulder that has literally detached from the cliffside beside the road, crashing down onto the track and blocking it. A group of local men have just arrived on the scene (from god knows where!) and are crudely trying to break it up with pickaxes and shovels. We get out and lend a hand, throwing smaller rocks off the cliffside.
After half an hour, an opening is made just wide enough for the fearless landcruiser to squeeze through and we continue undaunted
animal market 1
.And then tarmac thankfully appears again and we coast around the mountains, snaking down and down until we come to a Chinese checkpoint where the worthless bureaucrats uselessly check our passports and patronisingly wave us on. Apart from the officials noone here is Chinese, they are all clearly Uyghurs, olive skinned, clearly central asian in appearance, all donning the same pillbox hats or white skull caps, indicating their Islamic faith.
And for the first time since Lhasa, we see trees. Those green leafy things lining the streets, waving slowly in the light wind. The air is a lot warmer here and we even spot camels plodding along on the dunes.
We reach the first town of any size since we left Ali, Yecheng. Again this place doesn't feel or look anything like China, the people here are all Uyghur, Afghanistan or Russian. We gnosh on fatty mutton kebabs and flat bread while Lakpa and Achung negotiate with a taxi to take us the rest of the way, so that they can dodge the many fines levied against Tibetan vehicles at Chinese checkpoints along the road from here to Kashgar.
We all jump in the taxi and he drives round the corner, gets out, and brings another taxi which we are then unceremoniously packed into. We kick off at this as we are now suddenly sharing a taxi with another guy who sits up front while we three are squeezed into the back. The first driver has obviously overcharged Lakpa and is making a swift commission.
As we shout at him, the car is mobbed by more than fifty blatant rubberkneckers! Fascinated by the aliens! We eventually sort a car out just for the three of us and take off into the twilight through billiard table flat landscape, bound for Kashgar
animal market 2
.Kashgar has an overwhelmingly arabic feel to it. The road signs have arabic script as well as Chinese characters, and it's old streets, which we sniffed out quite quickly from the new Chinese part of the city, smell of spices and kebabs, and ring with the sound of hammers and Russified shouts, as copper teapots and knives are manufactured right there on the roadside. The place is bustling with activity as bearded men with weathered faces and pillbox hats sit in groups in old tea houses called chaikhanas that overlook the street, and animatedly discuss the days business. It is refreshing to be in a different place and we all take warmly to Kashgar immediately.
After we wisely left our two cards in cash machines in Lhasa, Kerrys dad had done some research and mailed a new card to the poste restante section of Kashgar P.O. on the off chance that we could pick it up when we arrived. So this was our first mission, and after an initial rebuff, we rocked up to China Post and there it was miraculously waiting for us in an envlope next to the clerk!! Result! And it's a big thankyou to the resourceful papa bear for saving our bacon. We were fluid once more!
We celebrated with a slurp of cold water in the town square and revelled in the excellent people watching potential
animal market 3
. The variety is amazing. Some pale faces look as if they belong in Moscow, some dark skinned wrinkled old blokes hail from Afghanistan, a few are Chinese, but the majority are clearly central asian. Despite the 27 degree heat here (which we are digging) all the women wear thick tights, an old women rocks up to the Chaikhana and unselfonsciously extracts a roll of notes from underneath her tights on her calf to pay for her grandsons drink. As always the white people show is in full effect as we are the only westerners in the area.It's also a nice change to be in a more realistic time zone. Even though we have travelled thousands of miles west through China, the vast country spans three average time zones, but the official time remains Beijing time. In Tibet the sun didn't go down until 10 o'clock! But here most people outside of government run businesses rail against this imposed nonsense and operate on Xinjiang time which is a much more sensible two hours forward.
Kashgar has been around for two millennia, ever since trade was established between China and the west, and caravans carrying anything from horses to silk to jade to paper to spices passed through here. And ever since that time, the Kashgar Sunday market has been going and is world reknowned. The population of the city swells by fifty thousand every week especially for the market and we were keen to check it out. We went first to the livestock market where goats, sheep, donkeys and cattle are traded. It was a manic atmosphere with traders haggling over their herds. The main market was huge but a little dissapointing, basically it was a limited amount of goods, kitchen implements and fabric that just repeated over and over spread across a vast area.
The next day we spent doing admin and getting frustrated as we had problems at each juncture. But we arranged our transport to the Torugart Pass that would see us into Central Asia, and posted a parcel. And next day we were finally leaving China for good.
