I was supposed to cross the border around 11:00 am and there was supposed to be a driver waiting for me. Thankfully at 3:30 pm the driver was still waiting for me. Actually there were two people waiting - a driver and another man, Sadik, who spoke very good English. I thanked them for their patience and off we headed on the 250 km drive to Kashgar.
After the relatively stressful drive through the snowbound mountains of Kyrgyzstan, it was a pleasure to speed along on nice new Chinese roads. I was quite relieved that I was going to make it to Kashgar that night.
The border checks and security checks however were not over with. There was a more significant border post some 150 km down the road and then after that there were two more security checks where all the traffic on the road stopped and cars were checked and all passengers went through a security screening. There was certainly a significant security presence in this Ouigour province of China. As we approached the city of Kashgar, which was way bigger than I had expected, the security presence was even more obvious. Every 400 meters or so in town there was a very conspicuous Police Station.
My hotel was not very carefully selected by me. It was quite a ways from the center of town and it was very large (1500 rooms). When I checked in they had no record of my reservation and no one spoke English, they had rooms but both my credit cards didn’t work in their machine (their problem not my cards). If it hadn’t been for Sadik who picked me up at the border I would have been in trouble. As a consequence I hired him to give me a tour of town the next day.
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| Kebabs on the Grill, Kashgar |
At night I walked around the streets near the hotel looking for food. I went into a couple of restaurants and tried to get it across what I might like to eat but without success. No English, only Chinese Menus, and no pictures of food. I ended up eating some very tough lamb/mutton kebabs which I could point to on the grill. Not very good meat at all.
The next morning my guide, Sadik, and his driver picked me up as arranged 10:30 Beijing time, 8:30 local time and off we went for a tour of Kashgar. It is a huge city but there are not many things to see. The first stop was the Afaq Khoja Mausoleum and Mosque where I got to see yet another example of a tiled mosque and a graveyard. Not quite as good as the ones in Uzbekistan but interesting nevertheless.
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| Afaq Khoja Mausoleum, Kashgar |
From the mosque we drove to the railway station to get my ticket. I had purchase a ticket from Kashgar to Urumqi on the internet and had been delivered a code number that had to be exchanged for a paper ticket at the station. After going through two security screenings to get into the ticket hall of the station everything went quite smoothly without me needing any assistance. I handed over the code number with my passport and I received a paper ticket in return.
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| Old Town Kashgar |
From the station we drove over to the old part of town. The old part of town sits next to a river, not a very big one, but probably the reason for the town’s placement. We walked over the bridge to the crumbling buildings of the older part of town. This part of town was quite dilapidated and the condition of the homes and the roads were quite bad. We walk around for a while just to get the flavor of what it is like to live there and then move over to the renovated part of the old town. This part of town had been fully refurbished and was quite nice. They have tried to maintain some of the look and feel of the old city by preserving some of the old crafts and trades (woodwork, pottery, metal work, bakers, herbal medicine, etc).
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| Old Town Kashgar |
As we wandered around you had to be careful to avoid the electric motor scooters. They were everywhere and they were fast and silent and all you heard was the soft whoosh of rubber tires on the road. I saw no accidents but I can’t believe they don’t have an issue with so many quiet scooters. Apparently a few years ago it was decreed that there would be no more polluting petrol engine scooters so everyone had to switch to electric ones. That is the way to do it.
Sadik took me to a restaurant which was supposed to have the best meat in town. Lamb or mutton of course. I didn’t see much beef and with the Ouigours being Moslem there is no pork. The restaurant served one dish as far as I could see, a round of bread with a dollop of lamb stew in the middle. No utensils, just eat with your hands. Toothpicks and water for washing found by the door as you leave. Actually the meat was not that good - tough and grissly with bones and lots of fat. Everyone else seemed to like it but me.
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| Dried Snakes, Kashgar Market |
After lunch we walked around the stalls in the main street of the old part of town. We sampled some pomegranate juice which seems to be a local favorite. We walked around the square where there is a mosque but didn’t go inside. Then we headed up a street where the money changers hung out and I changed some money - not much only $50. The street rate was not much different from the rate in the hotel. We had a quick look at the old British Consulate building which sits behind a large hotel and then, since we were saving the markets for tomorrow, Sunday, there wasn’t a lot more to see. They dropped me back at the hotel for my afternoon nap.
In the evening I took a cab downtown and walked around many of the places I had seen earlier in the day. I did find a restaurant that had pictures of food dishes on the window and the food looked like I could eat it so I went in. I pointed to some noodle dish and the waiter shook her head. I pointed to another and again she shook her head. I was just about to leave when another waiter brought out another dish for someone else. It looked edible so I pointed at that - success. It was actually langman - a type of spaghetti noodle dish that was common in Kyrgyzstan.
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| Mao Statue, Kashgar |
I walked towards my hotel past the statue of Mao Tse Tung. There didn't seem to be much of a presence of Mao in China these days, but there he was in all his splendor pointing the way forward.
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| Spice Vendor, Kashgar Bazaar |
The next day I check out of the hotel and Sadik and the driver met me again to take me to the Sunday Markets and then to the train station for my train to Urumqi. The first market was adjacent to the old part of town and really it wasn’t that special. It was a large covered market with lots of stalls selling all manner of items - cloth, hats, clothing, spices, nuts, herbs, watches, everything. The second market was quite a way out of town and it was the much more interesting Sunday Animal Market.
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
The Animal Market was quite large with a sheep section, a cattle section, a horse section, a donkey section, and then a few exotics like camels and yaks. It was fascinating to wander around the crowded market and see all the dealing in animals. The horse dealers were showing off their horses and galloping them up and down. The donkeys were braying and looking very sad and forlorn. Lots of manhandling of animals too - feeling and probing different parts of the cattle, carrying sheep, shearing of sheep.
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
There were also food stands where lamb kebabs were available. Plenty of butchering of lamb too. Very weird to see live sheep tied up next to a stall, with a pile of sheep heads and skins on the floor and then a butcher chopping up the meat and hanging it on hooks.
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
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| Sunday Animal Market, Kashgar |
I spent a most enjoyable hour or so walking around this market and it really was the most interesting thing in Kashgar.
I was dropped off at the station and Sadik accompanied me into the station to make sure I was in the right place. There were three scans and pat downs to get into the station and on the last one they discovered I had some scissors in the bottom of my bag. These were the elaborate Crane (the bird) shaped scissors that I had bought in Uzbekistan. The police at the station made me take them out and didn’t want to let me keep them. Sadik was helpful in explaining that they were a gift from Uzbekistan and so they eventually agreed to me keeping them but before they gave them back they taped them up with a serious amount of packing tape.
I had a couple of hours to wait in the station before my train. Various sections were marked off in the waiting area for the different trains and then just before departure of the train everyone got up and went out to the platform. I found my compartment, which I was sharing with a couple of other men. At least I had one of the bottom bunks. The train pulled out on time and we rolled across the barren landscape towards Urumqi. All went well till around 11:00 pm when there was an awful disruption in the next compartment - lots of shouting and screaming and it sounded like punches were thrown. The excitement eventually died down.
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| My Companion on the way to Urumqi |
Around 9:00 the next morning we rolled into Urumqi and I set out to discover what the town had to offer. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a left luggage area and I didn’t want to walk around with all my luggage. The police at the station were also all about moving people out of the station so I didn’t really have a chance to figure out what to do until I was outside. There I found an airport bus and so despite what would be a long wait for my flight I figured life would be simpler just waiting rather than struggling around a not so attractive Urumqi with heavy bags. As we passed through Urumqi to the airport we were held up while a procession of police and army vehicles slowly passed through the street with their alarms sounding. I had seen this previously in Kashgar. I think they are just letting the people know that the police and army are watching and they have a presence there so don’t try anything that might incur their wrath. That is not a nice environment to live under, particularly if you are a Ouigour feeling lost in your own country.
So then it was a long wait at the Urumqi airport until I could check in for my flight to Beijing and get into the rather meagre China Airways lounge. Meagre but more comfortable than the rest of the airport. An uneventful flight to Beijing where I arrived at 2:00 in the morning for a midday flight to San Francisco. At least customs were open and I got to go through to the much better equipped lounge to wait for my flight home. There was comfortable seating, showers, sleeping pods, and food so the waiting was not a hardship.
We were delayed an hour or so on leaving Beijing which made me miss my connection in San Francisco for Sacramento. I didn’t wait for the next flight but got BART to Richmond for the Amtrak train. The BART trip was perhaps the trip that made me most uncomfortable of my entire journey - smelly, dirty carriages, homeless people sleeping in the train, not at all pleasant.
Many more photos are here.
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