Advertisement
Published: August 24th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We arrived in Kashgar late Saturday afternoon. We were dusty and simply focussed on getting clean again! The following day we went out to the Kashgar Sunday Markets. Kashgar has been a main trading city since the early days of the Silk Route. We are not far from the Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan boarders (Russia to the North) so it has always been a focus for trade. The Sunday Market has been operating since those days. Like any animal market - it is a real social event for the farmers that come into town. Donkey, Cows, Goats and Sheep (as well as Watermelons) were all being traded. We wandered around for a couple of hours, just fascinated by the people watching. Later a couple of decided to jump on to of the truck to get the overall perspective - it was teeming with people at this stage.
Later we were dropped at the other part of the market (they have moved the animal market further out of town). Once again it was buzzing with people. Trying to get through the fabric section was nuts! We were on the search for tennis balls - but couldn't find any - so were just
content to push our way through the crowds and buy pistachios. The day just seemed to go.
Yesterday we headed into the Old Town. Kashgar has the face of a modern Chinese city, so it was lovely to wander around the Old Town. It was all so relaxed - I really enjoyed it. We have another day here and then head for the Kyrgyrzstan Boarder tomorrow.
We had a very funny night last night. The word from the Chinese agent was that with the bombings in Xinxiang Province the border check points were very tight. They were allowing traffic to head towards the Pakistan border but not necessarily back. Claire, Dave and John (the Chinese guide) decided that seeing though they could not guarantee the groups return from (can't remember which lake) the lake then they would not take the truck in and spend another day in Kashgar. Some members of the group somehow heard ... 'we are stiching you up and denying you something' ... so they organised private cars to the lake. That left only 6 of us with Claire, Dave and John back in Kashgar. We had a great day wandering around Kashgar. It was
one of the guys birthday (Jakko) but he had gone to the lake with the others. We decided that we would have a party anyway .... we had cake, silly string, I heart China Headbands, beer, food @ John's cafe and because we could ... fireworks. Lucy and Anna had bought musical instruments and they played some tunes for us and then the night turned silly from there (a lot of laughs were had all round). I'm not sure how Jakko felt when he saw the photos when they returned (they had a great time ... but Jakko had a very quiet birthday and some of the others could not understand 'why we didn't wait')
Advertisement
Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 16; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0725s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb